POETRY.

COLOURS OF LIGHT.

THIS is not easy to understand For you that come from a distant land Where all the colours are low in pitch—

Deep purples, emeralds soft and rich,

Where autumn's flaming and summer's green—

Here dwells a beauty you have not seen.

All is pitched in a higher key.

Lilac, topaz, and ivory Palest jade-green and pale clear blue Like aquamarines that the sun shines through,

Gold and silver, we have at will—

Silver and gold on each plain and hill. Silver-green off the myall leaves, • Tawny gold of the garnered sheaves, Silver rivers that silent glide, Golden sands by the water-side, Golden wattle and golden broom, Shining silver of starflower bloom.

Amber sunshine and smoke-blue shade, Opal colours that glow and fade.

On the gold of the upland grass Blue cloud-shadows that swiftly pass; .• Wood-smoke blown in an azure mist, Hills of tenuous amethyst . . .

Oft the colours are pitched so high The deepest note is the cobalt sky.

We have to wait till the sunset comes For shades that feel like the beat of drums

Or like organ-notes in their rise and fall—

Purple and orange and cardinal, Or the peacock-green that turns soft and slow To peacock-blue as the great stars show .

Sugar-gum boles flushed to peach-bloom pink; Blue-gums, stark at the clearing's brink, Ivory pillars, their smooth fine slope Dappled with delicate heliotrope; Grey of the twisted mulga roots, Golden bronze of the budding shoots; Tints of the lichens that cling and spread, Nile-green, primrose, and palest red . .

Fawn and pearl of the lyre-bird's train, Sheen of the bronze-wing, blue of the crane; Cream of the plover, grey of the dove; These are the hues of the land I love 1 Kurruinbede, N.S.W., 1911.

DOROTHEA MACRELLAR.-