New Zealand

Her beauty abides in all changes
O'er isles where the palm meets the pine,
Where torrents sweep cold from white ranges
To coasts of the fern-tree and vine,
Till the voices of streams that rushed waking
The gorges hoarse cataracts fill
Are lost in the roar of seas breaking,
The sound never still.
Her never the fever-mists shrouding
Nor blasts of the desert-wind blight,
Nor pall of drear smoke overclouding
Toil's merciless cities of night;
But her Sun-God wings shafts from his quiver
Over hills that are pasturelands fair.
By shores where each league hath its river,
And life thrills the air.
Peaks piercing the silence of heaven,
Snows gleaming in luminous space,
See her waves round a hemisphere driven
Fling their crests to the wind as thet race;
And the stars watch her lamp newly lighted
And its beams shot afar o'er the sea
With a light of old wrongs at length righted
By men who are free.

—William Pember Reeves.