The Harbour at Night: Picton,New Zealand. Warm is the night and still ; the misty clouds Obscure the moon so that there scarce is light Left in the world ; all round, the silent hills Sleep mystically ; and no night-haunting bird Startles the glooming trees with mournful cry. Silent the harbour sleeps, but myriad lights Spread, phosphorescent, out from shore to shore— Ripples and streaks of fire that live and die Moment by moment, till the waters seem Like to a sky of darkest purply-blue Turned upside-down, and thick with silver stars. Like silver phantoms round the weedy piles Of the dim-lighted wharf the fishes pass In endless-seeming lines from right to left, Ever the one direction following. Far away, And faint with distance, through the moonless air The steamer’s whistle sounds ; anon her lights Shine, dim and misty, as she rounds the point, While answering lights glare out upon the wharf. She nearer comes—the water ’neath her bows Is streaked with trembling lines of green and red And golden hues, that broad and broader grow As on she creeps, a larger-looming form Whose ever-throbbing engines beat and beat. Now in her path the ghost-like silver fish— With sound of quick and sudden little waves Rising and flapping on a sandy shore— Affrighted leap ; then for a moment sound Dies all away, and then breaks forth again In throb of engines, shouts, and rattling chains, And hissing steam, as to the trembling wharf The vessel is made fast, The flaring lamps Flicker and flame in the soft rainy air, And cast a glow upon the busy scene Of loading and unloading ; silence flies Into the darkest hollows of the hills. Clara Singer Poynter .