Poetry – Archie Biggs

 

Poetry Postcards : Archie Bigg

The Norfolk Pine by Archie Bigg

For more than a million years they stand

Planted with care by Father Time,

Tended with love by nature’s hand

A beautiful tree, the Norfolk pine.

And through their branches the white birds play

As above they soar and twist and climb

While deep below the rich moist clay

Holds fast the roots of the Norfolk pine.

In the year of seventeen seventy-four

Captain Cook, explorer fine

Walked the untrodden forest floor

And he told his king of the Norfolk pine.

“I have”, claimed he, “in my travels vast

‘Neath a southern sky where bright stars shine

Found a suitable tree for the yards and masts

Of His Majesty’s ships, in the Norfolk pine”.

The settlers came from a distant shore

With a strange new sound in a bygone time

The voice of man with his crosscut saw

As he took for his use the Norfolk pine.

And in anguish nature’s hands were wrought.

Be patient, friend, said Father Time.

But man took all and he gave back nought

Though it served man well did the Norfolk pine.

Then a new generation of man was born

And he looked to the future beyond his time

Then he planted the hills that before were shorn

And he planted the valleys with Norfolk pine.

Thus he looked at the forest with different eyes,

At the beauty there of a tree so fine

As it speaks to the wind with a gentle sigh,

A beautiful tree is the Norfolk pine

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