Through South Westland : A journey to the Haast and Mount Aspiring New Zealand . ds I had learned to love : Lost is the sense of noiseless, sweet escapeFrom dust of stony plains, from sun and gale,\Vhen the feet tread where shade and silence drapeThe stems with peace beneath the leafy when a pleasant rustling stirs each shapeCreeping with whisperings that rise and failThrough labyrinths half-lit by chequered playOf light on golden moss now burned away. I had entered the promised land. I had seen aworld as it was before man came there ; in afteryears it could never be quite the same aga
Through South Westland : A journey to the Haast and Mount Aspiring New Zealand . ds I had learned to love : Lost is the sense of noiseless, sweet escapeFrom dust of stony plains, from sun and gale,\Vhen the feet tread where shade and silence drapeThe stems with peace beneath the leafy when a pleasant rustling stirs each shapeCreeping with whisperings that rise and failThrough labyrinths half-lit by chequered playOf light on golden moss now burned away. I had entered the promised land. I had seen aworld as it was before man came there ; in afteryears it could never be quite the same again. Forif I went back to it, I might not find the FairyLand of my dreams. The forest world must 122 THROUGH SOUTH WESTLAND. give place before the fire and the axe, but thememory of it, as I saw it in my brief sojourn, cannever pass away. So, as the sun sank behind the purple barrierof the western mountains, out-lining their edgesin gold : and their long shadows stretched acrossthe plain: and the harvesters came back in thegloaming : I said. Farewell. PART II. THE SILVER CHAPTER I. THE START. To youth there comes a whisper out of the westO loiterer, hasten where there waits for thee A life to build, a love therein to nest And a Mans work ser\ing the age to be. Peace, peace awhile ! before his tireless feetHiU beyond hiU the road in sunlight goes. He breathes the breath of morning clear and sweetAnd his eyes love the high eternal snows. Henry Newbolt. For some months we had been sojourning in theCity of the Plains, and as summer drew on andwide roads grew dusty, and the freshness fadedfrom trees and gardens, a great longing grew upin our hearts for the cool, dim forests, for thesnow peaks, and blue glacier rivers : and little bylittle the plan grew. The first seeds of it weresown far away in South Westland by our black-bearded friend at the Haast. We rememberedhow he had fired our fancy by his glowing descrip-tions of a region where scarcely any one but theirSurvey j)arty
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