Isles Of Yesteryear
p. 49 · Read in the full issue
ODEWY dawns, as Day rolls back Night’s robes from out the sky; O first sweet, slumbrous bird-notes sounding softly as a sigh; O scented breath of zephyrs whispering down the lush ravine, As sun-beams shower the palm-fronds with a glittering emerald sheen, Og. the Isles of Yesteryear.
O azure seas a-sleeping ’neath the sky’s inverted bowl, While shadows of the cirrus drift like dreams o’er deep and shoal.
O creaming breakers pouring o’er the reef a marbled floor, As glistening wavelets hasten to the sun kissed coral shore Of .the Isles of Yesteryear.
O the mangoes’ cool, deep shadow, red and-golden fruit-bestrewn; O the sun-set’s glorious pageant; the hum of bees at noon.
O the trade-wind’s thousand voices; the swift bonita’s leap; And the dove’s low fluting love-call ere he wings his head for sleep, On the Isles of Yesteryear.
O fragrant wisp of wood-smoke, and the glow of lamps at dusk, The thudding beat of Kava- stones, the sandal-wood, the musk, The low contented voices at the natives’ hour of rest, From the village in the Valley on the “Islands-of-the-blest.”
Lovely Isles of Yesteryear.
Rumbling bass of rolling combers; shim mering stars in the lagoon; Sparkling gems of dew-drenched wood land —magic largesse of the moon; Patterned lace of light and shadow; skies be-decked with silver fleece; Gleam of flowers in perfumed darkness— O the soul-alluring peace Of the Isles of Yesteryear. rpo-DAY, the Isles lie mutilated—marred JL their smiling beauty now!
Yellow fiends have over-run them. (Why did God this thing allow?) Young maids and women raped and murdered; strong men beaten, starved, enslaved.
“God in Heaven, vengeance! vengeance!” on their graves should be engraved. (Poor ravaged Islands of to-day).
Stars, how can you still shine calmly?
Sun and moon, how rise to see War amok in these fair Islands, strewing death and agony?
Screen your rays so plain revealing hideous things best left unseen— Shattered homes and mangled bodies; fire-scorched earth where all was green. (Unhappy Islands, who shall pay?)
Here, where stood a happy village, dead eyes stare from battered trench.
Rotting corpses’ foul corruption pollutes the air with putrid stench.
Over there, where doves once nested— taught their fledglings how to fly— Men were seized, bound, and tor tured, crucified, and left to die. (Sad Isles, these were your sons, you say?) Roaring bombers’ ghastly havoc; liquid fire’s consuming breath; Warships, tanks, machine-guns, mortars, spewing out their iron death— O stricken Isles, a war-mad world has brought you these, and wop untold.
Nature now alone can help you. Your beauty can’t be bought with gold. (And God once said: “I will repay”).
C. S. Ramsay.
Haapai, Tonga.
Lieut. W. H. Ramsay, elder son of Dr. and Mrs. W. M. Ramsay, of Suva, Fiji, was married to Miss Joan Gleneth Kelle way, of Auckland, in Suva, on March 17.
Mr. A. G. Forbes, who is at present Acting Attorney-General in Fiji, has been appointed Solicitor-General to the Colony and Assistant Legal Adviser to the Western Pacific High Commission. He came to Fiji from Dominica in 1940 a% Resident Magistrate. Early in 1942 he was ap pointed Crown Counsel. In recent months he has given a great deal of time to the revision of the laws of the Colony in preparation for the issue of a new edition of the Statute book this year.