Manawai Lagoon
p. 44 · Read in the full issue
Dip your brush in silver, freely use your gold, Steal the fire of every gem that Indian temples hold; Pilfer from the moonbeams many tender hues, From summer skies or cornflowers’ eyes, filch the magic blues. (Hopeless, brother artist! Not for man the boon To paint the glory or the moods of Manawai Lagoon.) Though you bring the silver, though you fling the gold, Flaunt crimson that the waratahs’ inmost hearts enfold; As vainly you’d bring purples from orchid flowers rare, As hopeless you’d seek treasured tints from your own lady’s hair — Never could a palette show the glory of the moon, When mirrored, like an opal fire, in Manawai Lagoon.
See a glow of emerald! Sheen of Tancred’s shield!
Shades of faery golden-cups from a cowslip field!
Blue of Hathor’s mantle, flung where shadows sleep; Pearly greys and diamond rays, when passing cloudlets weep; Rose caught from the rip’ning peach, twilight hues from June, This thousand sunsets’ hoarded wealth at Manawai Lagoon.
Alice Allen Innes.
Mrs. D. C. Alley, widow of the Rev.
D. C. Alley, of the Methodist Mission at Teop. Bougainville, who was one of those lost on the “Montevideo Maru” sunk at sea in 1942, has married again. Mrs.
Alley was married at Invercargill, New Zealand, recently to the Rev. C. E.
Dickens, of the Methodist Church at Dannevirke, New Zealand. Mr. Alley re mained at his post until the Japanese moved into Bougainville and removed him to Rabaul. He was the only New Zea land missionary to fall into the hands of the Japanese. The others were evacuated or retired to the mountains.