Poet of Old Lands and New.

The sorrows of “Dark Rosaleen” and the lament of the evicted crofter for his home-glen and his ruined clan were the two national calls of the Celtic race that inspired our sweet singer. She wrote, too, of the pioneer spirit, and she gave her own touch of mysticism to the poetry of that other most imaginative of folk-poets the Maori.

Only Eileen Duggan of all our poets has approached her fine quality—the inner dream-vision that informs everything it touches with the essence of spirituality.

Jessie Mackay's volume of verse, “Land of the Morning,” first published more than a quarter of a century ago, is a glorious treasury of such thoughts, as well as of great poems that incite to action like a war-song. She is a true daughter of New Zealand in her love of the country scene in the outer parts. Early memories colour one's outlook through life. Jessie Mackay was reared in a rugged tussock land. Like another Canterbury woman country-bred, she could say of her childhood surroundings:—“From the dark gorge, where burns the morning star, I hear the glacier river rattling on And sweeping o'er his ice-ploughed shingle bar.”

Something from those solitary places must have gone to shape her character, predispose her to calm, clear thinking, the “harvest of a quiet eye” yielded by the sight of far stretching ranges and roomy landscapes of the downs. Like yet another Canterbury-lover, her thoughts must often have returned in the noisy places of the crowds to the leisurely scenes of heartsease far back: “…. the pastures and peace Which gardened and guarded those valleys With grasses as high as the knees, Calm as high as the sky.”

She saw and felt her land in its every mood. Here is the nor'-wester, the hot and dusty wind that Canterbury knows only too well:—

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“A tinder earth, a burning blue With eyes of Nemesis glaring through, Heavy as death and hot as hate! Windy brown to the mountain-gate—

Windy brown to meet the sky!
All the sap of the earth is dry.”

But relief comes in the evening, “the hour between the lights,” when the breeze of solace comes down from the Southern Alps:—

“…. the maidens of the cool
Vast Eden of the after-glow
Dream-heavy from the cooling snow,
Their wings drop comfort as they glide,
To cure the world at eventide:
And more—they left the gate ajar
Of Eden, where their dwellings are;
For here, unsealing ear and eyes,

Returns the Wind of Paradise!”