"CHERRY-BLOSSOM TIME"

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 24, 24 December 1932, Page 2

"CHERRY-BLOSSOM TIME"

THE ESPLANADE GARDENS AT PALMERSTON NORTH. (By F. W. Christian, 8.A.) First mark a fair and spacious Square, Picked out with many a gay parterre, Where colours bla'ze, and fragrance rare Steals softly on the summer air. Thence a long leafy Avenue, ltuns downwards to the Manawatu. Along the river, willows green Benew their tresses’ shimmering sheen, When Spring steps in, the Fairy Queen. \ Westwards a wondrous woodland scene, Through shades all shifting gold and grays, Bun the neat, asphalt alleyways. O’er pergola and tree-stock twine, White clematis, veined ivy-bine. And blue and crimson Passion-vine, And flowering gum, and wattle, and pine, With tang of mosses and maidenhair, Waft delicate incense everywhere. Bumbler roses pink glories grouping, Strange creepers wine-red colours trooping, _ There climbing, clinging, trailing, looping Her mauve and lilac clusters drooping Hangs honey-sweet Wistaria, The starry cineraria. Like dwarf in Tyrian robe arrayed, Bright trusses, royal-blue displayed, Basks snugly in the mellow shade Of tall Tree-fern and everglade. Beside the Main Drive’s curve, descry The Pleasant pictures’ perfect eye. Like Eastern pattern on a loom, Thick, ns on hill-side flames the broom, Or blue-bells blow in Devon Coombe, Wave beds a’blush with cherry bloom, Some pink as clouds at morning glow, Some spotless as the driven snow. The Southern Magpie, impishly, To greet the dawn with eldrich glee . From Eucalypt and cypress tree Pipes rich, metallic melody; Enchanter of the whispering woods, The hoary Rangiora broods. Above, the misty, purple hills, Below, th’ insistent Tui trills, The Blackbird golden music spills, And bird-song small each thicket fills—*“Ohne Hast, Oline Bast,” ’neath sun and stars The River frets its shingly bars. *“Ohne Hast, Oline Rast,” a classic old German phrase: “Without haste and without cessation.”