THE BROTHERHOOD OF NATURE.

To feel that softening of the heart, the sigh
That oft becomes a tear, when soft and low
We watch the flame along the western sky,

And turn to heaven to mark its beauty go;
To link far fancies to the lengthened flow
Of unknown sunsets, beautiful as this:

These, these are idle fancies, but they throw O'er life's rude doubts the shadow of a bliss

We still would call a dream, yet cannot all dismiss.

When, like the last gaze of a parting eye,
Made beautiful by tears, day, loitering, moves
The lingering kisses of his last good-bye,

And turns expiring from the world he loves;
While the blush dies away, and eve removes
The veil from every orb which trembled there,

And heaven grows beautiful with sounds, and moves The silent language of the heart to wear,

Lips melting into words, words trembling into prayer.

For these are moments when, like love, the heart,
Lost in the folds of beauty's sweet excess,

Made beautiful by heaven, becomes a part
Of that sweet heaven and all its loveliness;

And thoughts grown more than thoughts on lips

that press,

Like folded flowers, the love-made music there,

Glide out unconscious of their sweet caress,

And mingle with the calm that everywhere

Floats through the troubled sense, and yet seem absent there.

Out with the silent night, when man seems part
Of all he looks upon, and lingering here,
The deep calm settles on the silent heart,

So soft, so low, so absent, yet so near.
Out with those laughing sentinels that peer
Down on the wrecks of human hope, and all

So like yon world that glimmers sweetly there,
A mimicked semblance, that would still recall
The loveliness of life, to hide that life's young fall.

I've watched the stars until they seemed to grow
The mirrors of that moment when the heart
Forgets itself and all of life, to know

What seems like love, yet love cannot impart.
All that is beautiful, yet forms a part

Beyond the beautiful in life, to live

The shadow of a presence, that can start

All that we wish to say, yet cannot give,

Thoughts told in throbs, not words, prayer-formed for heaven to breathe.

For, like this human life, each nature holds
A portion of that principle which moves
All feelings to one centre, and unfolds

The wordless breathings of a thousand loves.
Yon far-off moon, that, like a flower, dissolves
Itself in sweetness, mountains, waves, and skies,
All seem the lips where one great truth resolves
Its beauty for an utterance that, like eyes,
Breathes out the living soul from 'neath its rude disguise.

BESIDE THE SEA.

Down beside the restless ocean and its troubled tones of sadness,

With my last hope left in fragments, like its surges on the shore,

I can watch the waters laughing, in the mimicked smile of gladness,

And, like them, hide all the sadness that still lingers in the roar.

And my thought runs back to childhood, with its sunshine and the gleaming

That looks brighter through the darkness that has gathered o'er its way;

And the pleasant fancies weaving things that are not dreams, yet seeming,

Lift the phantoms of a beauty that a life has breathed

away.

For the dead and dying fragrance of the earliest flower we cherished,

For the love so like the shadow of a presence now no

more,

How each heart forgets its future, to revive the hour that perished,

And to ask again the solace that its beauty gave

before!

But how ghost-like on the morrow broods the shadow

of the sorrow,

Still reproving, never moving from the wrong it comes to chide!

And how oft the heart must borrow all that shame and all that sorrow

For the wrong that would not follow with the one who sinned and died!

How the secret, sad complaining of the waters ever gaining,

Laughing, sighing, surging, dying, with a grief so like our own,

Breathes a music ever framing sounds of sadness, while the feigning

Of a gladness still remaining, laughs above the mournful moan !

And whene'er the past comes stealing with its shadows, still concealing

All the sunshine that would linger on the hour as

yet unknown,

I can walk the beach, appealing for the solace of that feeling

That the waters seem revealing in a voice half like my own.

JOHN LIDDELL KELLY.

[Born in Lanarkshire, Scotland, 19th February 1850. From compositor rose to reporter; emigrated to New Zealand on account of failing health. Author of "Prize Jubilee Poem " in competition open to New Zealand. Now engaged as subeditor of Auckland Star. Visited South Sea Islands two years ago, and got material for poems on Tahitian, Samoan, and Tongan life and scenery. Author of libretto of comic opera, Pomare; or, Love in Topsy-Turveydom; and Tahiti, the Land of Love and Beauty; also Tarawera; or, the Curse of Tuhotudescriptive of the volcanic eruption in 1886.

John Liddell

Kelly is mentioned and poems quoted in a volume published, entitled A Hundred Scottish Poets. Collected works not yet published. James Kelly, brother of John Liddell Kelly, who wrote the volume, The Printers' Carnival, and other Poems, died seven years ago. Father was also poetical. John Liddell Kelly wrote a great many humorous verses for a society journal, the Auckland Observer, while it was edited by W. A. T. Rathbone, now of London.]

INTRODUCTORY.

The pivotal incidents of this poem-Tuhotu's four days' buria beneath volcanic débris, his rescue alive, and his denunciation by his people as a wizard, are well-authenticated episodes of the Tarawera eruption of 10th June 1886. It is also asserted that Tuhotu had, in general terms, predicted disaster to the natives of the devastated district, whose immoralities he strongly condemned. The type of Maori character of which Tuhotu was a representative will soon be as extinct as the moa. Learned in Maori lore, as well as in the "new superstition" of Christianity, he kept up the reputation of a prophet among his people, many of whom have a lingering faith in the ancient mythology of the race. He is therefore depicted as holding a dual kind of belief in Maori superstitions and Christian doctrines, a concept whose reasonableness is proved by the adherence of many intelligent natives to the "Hauhau " religion; but towards the close of the poem Tuhotu's expression of doubt as to the reality of his "vision" indicates that the purer faith was becoming dominant.

TARAWERA; OR, THE CURSE OF TUHOTU.

I.

TUHOTU'S RESURRECTION.

SCENES of horror, sounds of wailing,

Wild confusion, woe, and dread;

Earth abysmal, yawning, rocking;

Flames and smoke in heavens o'erhead.