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Good and Ill - [Strange Rendezvous]
New Zealand Electronic Text Collection
Evil is to be conquered by absorption, not by rejection. I passed my life in one horizon, locked in the sky's blue prison. That blue bubble of the sky broke, and left me here to die. The sky is a cup whereof men sip, with air and sunlight wet the lip. But there is one whose ceaseless strife imper...
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My Pretty Maid - The Rakehelly Man - Collected Poems
New Zealand Electronic Text Collection
Where are we going to, my pretty maid? Better get cracking, for rose cheeks fade. We'll go for a trip to the Cape of Good Hope. Jot down pyjamas, binoculars, soap. Where are we going to, my pretty maid? We've letters to answer and bills to be paid. Your mother was young and your father was bold, ...
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The Voyage - Collected Poems
New Zealand Electronic Text Collection
For Philip Smithells I never imagined all this fuss and ceremony. What are all these people doing? Why aren't they fighting? There's hardly room for the band. Yes, that's the word— sardines. I love their smiles. And look at the streamers. I admire these people. Nothing is too good for them, nothi...
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Jack the Ripper - [Strange Rendezvous]
New Zealand Electronic Text Collection
Little Jack Horner pulled the wings off birds and insects and such things, attempting to discover why the insects and the birds could fly. He pulled to bits expensive toys to find out what thing made the noise; he could not eat a simple plum without enquiring how it come. Young Jack, a surgeon fr...
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To a Millionaire - [Strange Rendezvous] - Collected Poems
New Zealand Electronic Text Collection
Lord of our world, take off your velvet mask. Remove your gentle glove, disclose the claw-like hand, the dried blood under the nails, the murder print that never shows. We have spotted your guilt before the final bloodstained page of our modern super-thriller; ignoring the views of the bum police...
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Lines For a Rebel - [Strange Rendezvous]
New Zealand Electronic Text Collection
It is no fault in us that we should grieve for irremediable wrong and mortal woe: the death of sons, lost youth, rain-flattened crops, tempest and drought, all that the gods bestow. For such, take comfort: call to mind the dead whom we have loved, how bravely they drew breath, and with such splen...
New Zealand Electronic Text Collection
Remembered Cowardice - [Strange Rendezvous]
New Zealand Electronic Text Collection
Shapeless and soft with slime I pictured him, that loathsome beast that stirred and slopped the brim, and heaved his body through the brain's black mud, fouling the sweetness of my living blood. I gazed at the flowers that grew beside the pool and made them fairies, played the moonstruck fool wit...
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The Builders - [Strange Rendezvous]
New Zealand Electronic Text Collection
These have their temples, citadels and schools, builded by those of old who toiled and wrought new gods to guard the world, nor comfort sought nor honour in their day. But we whose tools inherit that vast labour, no smooth rules nor laws have we, no sure foundation, naught but our own hard, bitte...
New Zealand Electronic Text Collection
Milton - [Strange Rendezvous] - Collected Poems
New Zealand Electronic Text Collection
Old Milton, sitting in darkness many days, with food and drink, and knowledge, and some music, evoked the demon sleeping in his blood and builded Hell and Heaven in a dark room. No thought of men impaired his musings. His was a sedentary genius. Not for him the life of action, the bending of the ...
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Disquisition on Death - [Strange Rendezvous]
New Zealand Electronic Text Collection
(From an unfinished poem, 1929) Let us speak, my beloved, of death, and of the divine right of kings. Let us discuss the Constitution of the realms of darkness and our vassalage and subservience to my Lord Barebones. I have sung him often, prettily enough, in times past, knowing him for a very ho...
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Night Song - [Strange Rendezvous] - Collected Poems
New Zealand Electronic Text Collection
Though Time's black mountain overhangs the night where she's engrossed in sleep its shadow cannot bruise my love, so calm she lies, she dreams so deep. She is not hurt by what shall be, death stands enchanted in her eyes; remote and lovely, a floating flower on the lily pool of sleep she lies. Dr...
New Zealand Electronic Text Collection
Tapu - [Strange Rendezvous] - Collected Poems
New Zealand Electronic Text Collection
To stave off disaster, or bring the devil to heel, or to fight against fear, some carry a ring or a locket, but I, who have nothing to lose by the turn of the wheel, and nothing to gain, I carry the world in my pocket. For all I have gained, and have lost, is locked up in this thing, this cup of ...
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Love Song - [Strange Rendezvous]
New Zealand Electronic Text Collection
Lay you so cold and still no wound could make you cry no kiss could break your sleep in dark and bulk of earth our clasp all bone to bone beneath the ruined wall or in the dead of night the wind among the rocks the uproar of the sea or came you round the door stood still for ever there your look ...
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The Cave - [Strange Rendezvous]
New Zealand Electronic Text Collection
From the cliff-top it appeared a place of defeat, the nest of an extinct bird, or the hole where the sea hoards its bones, a pocket of night in the sun-faced rock, sole emblem of mystery and death in that enormous noon. We climbed down, and crossed over the sand, and there were islands floating i...
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The Revenge - [Strange Rendezvous]
New Zealand Electronic Text Collection
When I am dead, I'll plague you every way, haunt you by night and follow you by day, pluck at your arm along the shouting street and watch you turn, a silent ghost to greet. Invisible as the wind that turns the mill my naked essence will pervade you still; I'll mix myself with every breath you ta...
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Country Pleasures - Collected Poems [of A. R. D. Fairburn]
New Zealand Electronic Text Collection
Marcus Aurelius (Memories of England, 1930) No dragon's blood breaking in crimson flowers, no timeless jungle, obscenity of apes, no serpents lust-entangled in hot bowers where in the moonlight flit the tiger-shapes; no crunch of living bones, no clouds that rise malarial from the whining swamp w...
New Zealand Electronic Text Collection
[section] - Country Pleasures - Collected Poems
New Zealand Electronic Text Collection
Marcus Aurelius
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Deserted Farmyard - Country Pleasures - Collected Poems
New Zealand Electronic Text Collection
The barn is bare of hoof and horn, the yard is empty of its herds; the thatch is grey with age and torn, and spattered with the dung of birds. The well is full of newts, the chain long broken, and the spindle cracked, and deep in nettles stands the wain three-wheeled, with rotten hay half-stacked...
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On Entering a New Abode - Country Pleasures
New Zealand Electronic Text Collection
In this dry thatch are fleas and building birds; through the withered straw great water-drops do leak when the cloud sails over; crooked are the walls and cracked with age; loud do the floorboards creak. Yet in this little house we shall not fear the world's rough usage, storms nor tempest-shocks...
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Epitaph for a Trilogist - Gall
New Zealand Electronic Text Collection
Two trilogies, ten good-sized buckets full of novels for the middle-class, all much alike one another, capable and dull, and many clever articles and such-like— these were the excrement of his long toil. And so for twenty years or more he kept old men and women at their midnight oil, and old maid...
New Zealand Electronic Text CollectionA National Digital Forum initiative hosted by the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa
