Farewell , South Seas

Tropic Verse:

It is thirty years and over since I made these tropic seas, With blue lagoons and foam-encrusted reefs; Where the days were short and sunny and one lived a life of ease.

And no one would condemn your true beliefs.

There was freedom in the Islands, and a carefree atmosphere; Conventions were a quality apart; You might have a mint of money, or be brother to a peer, They were little value in the Islands mart, Where one’s credit was established by a free and open mind, And legal currency most often used Was the silver of companionship, the gold of being kind, And the notes of keeping other folk amused.

Father Time is always changing, and the old gives place to new, The same applies to South Sea Island ways, Where the currency has altered, leaving but an aged few Who trade in values of the by-gone days.

I suppose I’m old and crotchety from living in these isles, And prejudiced where money values go, But I cannot stand the altered ways, the modernistic guiles, The tinsel masters with their tawdry show.

And so, no doubt, it’s best for me to break my island bonds, And take a parting cruise among those scenes, Where sea-spray from the windward reef caresses pinnate fronds, And colour schemes are made of blues and greens. * * * There’s an island down in Buka that I must go off to see, And standing on a point at sunset hour: To watch the red-gold glory scene—a

flaming symphony

Of crashing chords with mighty colour power; Then to watch the rapid fading and the changing colour scheme As flame-reds in an instant turn to pink,

While clouds on far horizons stretch like castles in a dream, Behind whose walls the sun begins to sink. . . .

There’s a road along the foreshore from Rabaul to Kokopo, I love to travel at the break of day, Where the. tang of husk-fires fills the air and smoke is drifting low.

And native waqas glide across the Bay.

Then a mist of steamy vapour, from Tavurvur blots them out.

As they land upon the shores of Matupi; While in the background, standing guard, like some sentinel devout.

The Mother Mount, wind-swept from every sea, While her daughters in the North and in the South keep watch with her.

All this I glimpse ’tween palm-trunks on the beach, Where butterflies dart brightly, and the willy-wagtails whirr, And rarest orchids hang—just out of reach.

When I’ve paid a parting visit to my well loved hunting grounds— From Ninigo to Tasman and the Feads— When I’ve bid a fond farewell to all my old-time sights and sounds, Of native tribes with half-a-dozen creeds, Then I’ll slip away some silent night bound for the Austral land On twenty-thousand tons of modern speed; Life aboard won’t be so easy, ‘twill be hard to understand.

As from the stern I’ll watch my isles recede; And it’s lonely I’ll be feeling as I miss the warm sea-breeze, And the roar of South Seas breaking on the bar, And the longing will grow greater for the whisp’ring in the trees, As Night and Day embrace the Evening Star. ♦ ♦ ♦ Yes, it’s lonely I’ll be feeling when I reach that Austral land.

For no one knows how hard ’twill be for me To leave my sunny South Seas, and the land I understand, And only dream of days when I was free.

Rabaul, —DON GORDON. 9 6 45.