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An Anthology of Australian Verse
Edited by Bertram Stevens
Dedicated to
DAVID SCOTT MITCHELL, Esq.
Sydney
Preface
The Editor has endeavoured to make this selection representative of the best short poems written by Australians or inspired by Australian scenery and conditions of life, — “Australian” in this connection being used to include New Zealand. The arrangement is as nearly as possible chronological; and the appendix contains brief biographical particulars of the authors, together with notes which may be useful to readers outside Australia.
The Editor thanks Messrs. H. H. Champion, Henry Gyles Turner, E. B. Loughran, A. Brazier and Walter Murdoch (Melbourne), Mr. Sydney Jephcott (Upper Murray, Vic.), Mr. Fred. Johns (Adelaide), Mr. Thomas Cottle (Auckland), Mr. J. C. Andersen (Christchurch), Messrs. David Scott Mitchell, Alfred Lee, A. W. Jose, and J. Le Gay Brereton (Sydney), for their generous help. Mr. Douglas Sladen’s anthologies, Messrs. Turner and Sutherland’s “Development of Australian Literature”, and `The Bulletin’ have also furnished much useful information.
Contents
Introduction
William Charles Wentworth.
Australasia
“Australasia: a Poem”
Charles Harpur.
Love
Words
A Coast View
“Poems”
William Forster.
`The Love in her Eyes lay Sleeping’ “Midas”
James Lionel Michael.
`Through Pleasant Paths’
“John Cumberland”
Personality
Periodical (Sydney, 1858)
Daniel Henry Deniehy.
Love in a Cottage
A Song for the Night
Periodical (Sydney, 1847)
Richard Rowe.
Superstites Rosae
Soul Ferry
“Peter ‘Possum’s Portfolio”
Sir Henry Parkes.
The Buried Chief
“Fragmentary Thoughts”
Thomas Alexander Browne (`Rolf Boldrewood’). Perdita
“Old Melbourne Memories”
Adam Lindsay Gordon.
A Dedication
“Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes” Thora’s Song
“Ashtaroth: A Dramatic Lyric”
The Sick Stock-rider
“Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes”
Henry Kendall.
Prefatory Sonnets
September in Australia
Rose Lorraine
“Leaves from Australian Forests” To a Mountain
Araluen
After Many Years
Hy-Brasil
“Songs from the Mountains”
Outre Mer
“Poems”
Marcus Clarke.
The Song of Tigilau
“Austral Edition of the collected Works of Marcus Clarke”
Patrick Moloney.
Melbourne
“An Easter Omelette” (Melbourne, 1879)
Alfred Domett.
An Invitation
A Maori Girl’s Song
“Ranolf and Amohia”
James Brunton Stephens.
The Dominion of Australia
The Dark Companion
“Miscellaneous Poems”
Day
Night
“Convict Once”
Thomas Bracken.
Not Understood
Spirit of Song
“Musings in Maoriland”
Ada Cambridge.
What of the Night?
Good-bye
The Virgin Martyr
Honour
Despair
Faith
Manuscript
Alexander Bathgate.
The Clematis
“Far South Fancies”
Philip Joseph Holdsworth.
Quis Separabit?
Manuscript
My Queen of Dreams
“Station Hunting on the Warrego”
Mary Hannay Foott.
Where the Pelican Builds
New Country
No Message
Happy Days
“Morna Lee and other Poems”
Henry Lea Twisleton.
To a Cabbage Rose
“Poems”
Mrs. James Glenny Wilson.
Fairyland
A Winter Daybreak
The Lark’s Song
“A Book of Verses”
Edward Booth Loughran.
Dead Leaves
Isolation
Ishmonie
“‘Neath Austral Skies”
John Liddell Kelly.
Immortality
Heredity
“Heather and Fern”
Robert Richardson.
A Ballade of Wattle Blossom
A Song
“Willow and Wattle”
James Lister Cuthbertson.
Australia Federata
At Cape Schanck
“Barwon Ballads”
Wattle and Myrtle
Periodical (Melbourne)
The Australian Sunrise
Periodical (Geelong)
John Farrell.
Australia to England
Periodical (Sydney, 1897)
Arthur Patchett Martin.
Bushland
“The Withered Jester, and other Verses”
Douglas Brooke Wheelton Sladen.
Under the Wattle
Periodical (1888)
Victor James Daley.
Players
Periodical (Sydney, 1900)
Anna
Periodical (Sydney, 1902)
The Night Ride
Manuscript
Alice Werner.
Bannerman of the Dandenong
“A Time and Times”
Ethel Castilla.
An Australian Girl
A Song of Sydney
“The Australian Girl, and other Verses”
Francis William Lauderdale Adams.
Something
Gordon’s Grave
To A. L. Gordon
“Poetical Works”
Love and Death
Manuscript
Thomas William Heney.
Absence
“In Middle Harbour, and other Verse” A Riverina Road
Periodical (Sydney, 1891)
Patrick Edward Quinn.
A Girl’s Grave
Periodical (Sydney, 1889)
John Sandes.
`With Death’s Prophetic Ear’
“Ballads of Battle”
Inez K. Hyland.
To a Wave
Bread and Wine
“In Sunshine and in Shadow”
George Essex Evans.
An Australian Symphony
A Nocturne
A Pastoral
“Loraine, and other Verses”
The Women of the West
Periodical (Melbourne)
Mary Colborne-Veel.
`What Look hath She?’
Saturday Night
`Resurgam’
“The Fairest of the Angels, and other Verse” Distant Authors
Periodical (London)
John Bernard O’Hara.
Happy Creek
A Country Village
Flinders
“Lyrics of Nature”
M. A. Sinclair.
The Chatelaine
Periodical (Dunedin, N.Z.)
Sydney Jephcott.
Chaucer
White Paper
Splitting
“The Secrets of the South”
Home-woe
A Ballad of the last King of Thule A Fragment
Manuscript
Andrew Barton Paterson (`Banjo’).
The Daylight is Dying
Clancy of the Overflow
Black Swans
The Travelling Post Office
“The Man from Snowy River”
The Old Australian Ways
By the Grey Gulf-Water
“Rio Grande’s Last Race, and other Verses”
Jessie Mackay.
The Grey Company
A Folk Song
Dunedin in the Gloaming
The Burial of Sir John Mackenzie
Periodical (Dunedin, N.Z.)
Henry Lawson.
Andy’s gone with Cattle
Out Back
The Star of Australasia
Middleton’s Rouseabout
The Vagabond
The Sliprails and the Spur
“In the Days when the World was Wide, and other Verses”
Arthur Albert Dawson Bayldon.
Sunset
The Sea
To Poesy
“The Western Track, and other Verses”
Jennings Carmichael.
An Old Bush Road
A Woman’s Mood
“Poems”
Agnes L. Storrie.
Twenty Gallons of Sleep
A Confession
“Poems”
Martha M. Simpson.
To an Old Grammar
Periodical (Sydney)
William Gay.
Primroses
“Christ on Olympus, and other Poems” To M.
Vestigia Nulla Retrorsum
“Sonnets”
Edward Dyson.
The Old Whim Horse
“Rhymes from the Mines, and other Lines”
Dowell O’Reilly.
The Sea-Maiden
Periodical (Sydney, 1895)
David MacDonald Ross.
Love’s Treasure House
The Sea to the Shell
The Silent Tide
The Watch on Deck
Autumn
“The After Glow”
Mary Gilmore.
A Little Ghost
Periodical (Orange, N.S.W.)
Good-Night
Periodical (Brisbane)
Bernard O’Dowd.
Love’s Substitute
Our Duty
Manuscript
Edwin James Brady.
The Wardens of the Seas
Manuscript
Will. H. Ogilvie.
Queensland Opal
Periodical (London)
Wind o’ the Autumn
Periodical (London)
Daffodils
Periodical (Edinburgh)
A Queen of Yore
Periodical (Sydney)
Drought
Periodical (London)
The Shadow on the Blind
Periodical (London)
Roderic Quinn.
The House of the Commonwealth
Periodical (Sydney)
The Lotus-Flower
Manuscript
David McKee Wright.
An Old Colonist’s Reverie
“Station Ballads, and other Verses”
Christopher John Brennan.
Romance
“XXI Poems: Towards the Source” Poppies
Manuscript
John Le Gay Brereton.
The Sea Maid
“Oithona”
Home
“Sea and Sky”
Wilfred
Periodical (Sydney)
Arthur H. Adams.
Bayswater, W.
Manuscript
Bond Street
Periodical (London)
Ethel Turner.
A Trembling Star
`Oh, if that Rainbow up there!’
“Gum Leaves”
Johannes Carl Andersen.
Soft, Low and Sweet
“Songs Unsung”
Maui Victor
Periodical (Dunedin, N.Z.)
Dora Wilcox.
In London
“Verses from Maoriland”
Ernest Currie.
Laudabunt Alii
Periodical (Timaru, N.Z.)
George Charles Whitney.
Sunset
Manuscript
James Lister Cuthbertson. [reprise]
Ode to Apollo
Periodical (Melbourne)
Notes on the Poems
Biographical Notes
———————————-
An Anthology of Australian Verse
———————————-
Introduction
As the literature of a country is, in certain respects, a reflex of its character, it may be advisable to introduce this Anthology with some account of the main circumstances which have affected the production of Australian poetry.
Australia was first settled by the British a little more than a century ago, so that we are still a young community. The present population, including that of New Zealand, is a little under five millions, or about the same as that of London; it is chiefly scattered along the coast and the few permanent waterways, and a vast central region is but sparsely inhabited as yet. All climates, from tropical to frigid, are included within the continent, but the want of satisfactory watersheds renders it peculiarly liable to long droughts and sudden floods. The absence of those broad, outward signs of the changing seasons which mark the pageant of the year in the old world is probably a greater disadvantage than we are apt to suspect. Here, too, have existed hardly any of the conditions which obtained in older communities where great literature arose. There is no glamour of old Romance about our early history, no shading off from the actual into a dim region of myth and fable; our beginnings are clearly defined and of an eminently prosaic character. The early settlers were engaged in a hand-to-hand struggle with nature, and in the establishment of the primitive industries. Their strenuous pioneering days were followed by the feverish excitement of the gold period and a consequent rapid expansion of all industries. Business and politics have afforded ready roads to success, and have absorbed the energies of the best intellects. There has been no leisured class of cultured people to provide the atmosphere in which literature is best developed as an art; and, until recently, we have been content to look to the mother country for our artistic standards and supplies. The principal literary productions of our first century came from writers who had been born elsewhere, and naturally brought with them the traditions and sentiments of their home country.
We have not yet had time to settle down and form any decided racial characteristics; nor has any great crisis occurred to fuse our common sympathies and create a national sentiment. Australia has produced no great poet, nor has any remarkable innovation in verse forms been successfully attempted. But the old forms have been so coloured by the strange conditions of a new country, and so charged with the thoughts and feelings of a vigorous, restless democracy now just out of its adolescence, that they have an interest and a value beyond that of perhaps technically better minor poetry produced under English skies.
The first verses actually written and published in Australia seem to have been the Royal Birthday Odes of Michael Robinson, which were printed as broadsides from 1810 to 1821. Their publication in book form was announced in `The Hobart Town Gazette’ of 23rd March, 1822, but no copy of such a volume is at present known to exist. The famous “Prologue”, said to have been recited at the first dramatic performance in Australia, on January 16th, 1796 (when Dr. Young’s tragedy “The Revenge” and “The Hotel” were played in a temporary theatre at Sydney), was for a long time attributed to the notorious George Barrington, and ranked as the first verse produced in Australia. There is, however, no evidence to support this claim. The lines first appeared in a volume called “Original Poems and Translations” chiefly by Susannah Watts, published in London in 1802, a few months before the appearance of the “History of New South Wales” (1803) — known as George Barrington’s — which also, in all probability, was not written by Barrington. In Susannah Watts’ book the Prologue is stated to be written by “A Gentleman”, but there is no clue to the name of the author. Mr. Barron Field, Judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, printed in Sydney in 1819 his “First Fruits of Australian Poetry”, for private circulation. Field was a friend of Charles Lamb, who addressed to him the letter printed in “The Essays of Elia” under the title of “Distant Correspondents”. Lamb reviewed the “First Fruits” in `The Examiner’, and one wishes for his sake that the verses were more worthy.
The first poem of any importance by an Australian is William Charles Wentworth’s “Australasia”, written in 1823 at Cambridge University in competition for the Chancellor’s medal. There were twenty-seven competitors, and the prize was awarded to W. Mackworth Praed, Wentworth being second on the list. Wentworth’s poem was printed in London in the same year, and shortly afterwards in `The Sydney Gazette’, the first Australian newspaper. In 1826 there was printed at the Albion Press, Sydney, “Wild Notes from the Lyre of a Native Minstrel” by Charles Tompson, Junior, the first verse of an Australian-born writer published in this country. There was also published in Sydney in 1826 a book of verses by Dr. John Dunmore Lang, called “Aurora Australis”. Both Lang and Wentworth afterwards conducted newspapers and wrote histories of New South Wales, but their names are more famous in the political than in the literary annals of the country. At Hobart Town in 1827 appeared “The Van Diemen’s Land Warriors, or the Heroes of Cornwall” by “Pindar Juvenal”, the first book of verse published in Tasmania. During the next ten years various poetical effusions were printed in the colonies, which are of bibliographical interest but of hardly any intrinsic value. Newspapers had been established at an early date, but until the end of this period they were little better than news-sheets or official gazettes, giving no opportunities for literature. The proportion of well-educated persons was small, the majority of the free settlers being members of the working classes, as very few representatives of British culture came willingly to this country until after the discovery of gold.
It was not until 1845 that the first genuine, though crude, Australian poetry appeared, in the form of a small volume of sonnets by Charles Harpur, who was born at Windsor, N.S.W., in 1817. He passed his best years in the lonely bush, and wrote largely under the influence of Wordsworth and Shelley. He had some imagination and poetic faculty of the contemplative order, but the disadvantages of his life were many. Harpur’s best work is in his longer poems, from which extracts cannot conveniently be given here. The year 1842 had seen the publication of Henry Parkes’ “Stolen Moments”, the first of a number of volumes of verse which that statesman bravely issued, the last being published just before his eightieth year. The career of Parkes is coincident with a long and important period of our history, in which he is the most striking figure. Not the least interesting aspect of his character, which contained much of rugged greatness, was his love of poetry and his unfailing kindness to the struggling writers of the colony. Others who deserve remembrance for their services at this time are Nicol D. Stenhouse and Dr. Woolley. Among the writers of the period D. H. Deniehy, Henry Halloran, J. Sheridan Moore and Richard Rowe contributed fairly good verse to the newspapers, the principal of which were `The Atlas’ (1845-9), `The Empire’ (1850-8), and two papers still in existence — `The Freeman’s Journal’ (1850) and `The Sydney Morning Herald’, which began as `The Sydney Herald’ in 1831. None of their writings, however, reflected to any appreciable extent the scenery or life of the new country.
With the discovery of gold a new era began for Australia. That event induced the flow of a large stream of immigration, and gave an enormous impetus to the development of the colonies. Among the ardent spirits attracted here were J. Lionel Michael, Robert Sealy, R. H. Horne, the Howitts, Henry Kingsley and Adam Lindsay Gordon. Michael was a friend of Millais, and an early champion of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Soon after his arrival in Sydney he abandoned the idea of digging for gold, and began to practise again as a solicitor. Later on he removed to Grafton on the Clarence River; there in 1857 Henry Kendall, a boy of 16, found work in his office, and Michael, discerning his promise, encouraged him to write. Most of the boy’s earliest verses were sent from Michael’s office to Parkes, who printed them in his paper `The Empire’. When Kendall left Grafton, Michael gave him a letter of introduction to Stenhouse, which brought him in touch with the small literary group in Sydney; and his first volume, “Poems and Songs”, was published in Sydney in 1862. It was not long before he recognised the extreme weakness of most of its contents, and did what he could to suppress the book. He sent specimens of his best work to the London `Athenaeum’, and wrote a pathetic letter to the Editor, which was printed in the issue of 27th September, 1862, together with some of the poems and a most kindly comment. Kendall soon wrote again, sending more poems, and received encouraging notices in `The Athenaeum’ on 19th September, 1863, 27th February, 1864, and 17th February, 1866. These form the first favourable pronouncement upon Australian poetry by an English critical journal of importance. Their stimulating effect upon Kendall was very great. From the indifference of the many and the carping criticisms of some of the magnates here, he had appealed to one of the highest literary authorities in England, and received praise beyond his wildest expectations.
Meanwhile the colony of Victoria, which began its independent career in 1851, had been advancing even more rapidly than New South Wales. `The Argus’ newspaper had been in existence since 1846, and other periodicals sprang up in Melbourne which gave further scope to letters. `The Australasian’ was established in 1854, and soon became the most important literary journal in Australia. Adam Lindsay Gordon, who had landed in Adelaide in the same year as Henry Kingsley — 1853 — published a little book of verse in 1864 at Mt. Gambier, S.A., and began to contribute verses to a Melbourne sporting paper in 1866. These were printed anonymously, and attracted some attention; but a collection of his ballads — “Sea Spray and Smoke Drift” — brought very little praise and no profit. Marcus Clarke came to Melbourne in 1864, and soon afterwards began to write for `The Argus’ and other papers. About the same time the presence of R. H. Horne, the distinguished author of “Orion”, in Melbourne lent a lustre to that city, which was for the time the literary centre of Australia. Horne corresponded with Kendall, and contributed to a paper edited by Deniehy in Sydney — `The Southern Cross’ (1859-60). He was the presiding genius of the literary gatherings at Dwight’s book-shop in Melbourne, and no doubt exercised a beneficial influence upon the writers around him.
In 1870, after a series of crushing disappointments, Gordon committed suicide. His dramatic end awakened sympathy and gave an additional interest to his writings. It was soon found that in the city and the bush many of his spirited racing ballads were well known. The virile, athletic tone of his verse, which taught
“How a man should uphold the sports of his land And strike his best with a strong right hand And take his strokes in return” —
and the practical philosophy, summed up in the well-known quatrain —
“Life is mostly froth and bubble, Two things stand like stone;
Kindness in another’s trouble,
Courage in your own” —
appeal strongly to Australians. Gordon’s work cannot be considered as peculiarly Australian in character; but much of it is concerned with the horse, and all of it is a-throb with the manly, reckless personality of the writer. Horses and horse-racing are especially interesting to Australians, the Swinburnian rush of Gordon’s ballads charms their ear, and in many respects he embodies their ideal of a man. There are few Australians who do not know some of his poems, even if they know no others, and his influence upon subsequent writers has been very great.
Brunton Stephens, who came to Queensland in 1866, wrote there a long poem called “Convict Once” which, when published in London in 1871, gained high praise from competent critics, and gave the author an academic reputation. A little book of humorous verses issued in Melbourne in 1873 almost immediately became popular, and a later volume of “Miscellaneous Poems” (1880), containing some fine patriotic utterances as well as many in lighter vein, established him as one of our chief singers.
The first important poem from New Zealand — Domett’s “Ranolf and Amohia” — was published in London in 1872. Domett spent thirty years in New Zealand. He wrote a good deal of verse before leaving England and after his return, but “Ranolf and Amohia” is the only poem showing traces of Australian influence. It is a miscellany in verse rather than an epic, and contains some fine descriptions of New Zealand scenery.
The death of Kendall in Sydney in 1882 closed what may be regarded as the second literary period. He had published his finest work in “Songs from the Mountains” (1880), and had the satisfaction of knowing that it was a success, financially and otherwise. Kendall’s audience is not so large as Gordon’s, but it is a steadily growing one; and many readers who have been affected by his musical verse hold the ill-fated singer in more tender regard than any other. He lived at a time when Australians had not learned to think it possible that any good thing in art could come out of Australia, and were too fully occupied with things of the market-place to concern themselves much about literature.
Several attempts have been made to maintain magazines and reviews in Sydney and Melbourne, but none of them could compete successfully with the imported English periodicals. `The Colonial Monthly’, `The Melbourne Review’, `The Sydney Quarterly’, and `The Centennial Magazine’ were the most important of these. They cost more to produce than their English models, and the fact that their contents were Australian was not sufficient in itself to obtain for them adequate support. Newspapers have played a far more important part in our literary world. `The Australasian’, `Sydney Mail’ and `Queenslander’ have done a good deal to encourage local writers, but the most powerful influence has been that of `The Bulletin’, started in Sydney in 1880. Its racy, irreverent tone and its humour are characteristically Australian, and through its columns the first realistic Australian verse of any importance — the writings of Henry Lawson and A. B. Paterson — became widely known. When published in book form, their verses met with phenomenal success; Paterson’s “The Man from Snowy River” (1895) having already attained a circulation of over thirty thousand copies. It is the first of a long series of volumes, issued during the last ten years, whose character is far more distinctively Australian than that of their predecessors. Their number and success are evidences of the lively interest taken by the present generation here in its native literature.
Australia has now come of age, and is becoming conscious of its strength and its possibilities. Its writers to-day are, as a rule, self-reliant and hopeful. They have faith in their own country; they write of it as they see it, and of their work and their joys and fears, in simple, direct language. It may be that none of it is poetry in the grand manner, and that some of it is lacking in technical finish; but it is a vivid and faithful portrayal of Australia, and its ruggedness is in character. It is hoped that this selection from the verse that has been written up to the present time will be found a not unworthy contribution to the great literature of the English-speaking peoples.
William Charles Wentworth.
Australasia
Celestial poesy! whose genial sway
Earth’s furthest habitable shores obey; Whose inspirations shed their sacred light, Far as the regions of the Arctic night,
And to the Laplander his Boreal gleam Endear not less than Phoebus’ brighter beam, — Descend thou also on my native land,
And on some mountain-summit take thy stand; Thence issuing soon a purer font be seen Than charmed Castalia or famed Hippocrene; And there a richer, nobler fane arise,
Than on Parnassus met the adoring eyes. And tho’, bright goddess, on the far blue hills, That pour their thousand swift pellucid rills Where Warragamba’s rage has rent in twain Opposing mountains, thundering to the plain, No child of song has yet invoked thy aid ‘Neath their primeval solitary shade, — Still, gracious Pow’r, some kindling soul inspire, To wake to life my country’s unknown lyre, That from creation’s date has slumbering lain, Or only breathed some savage uncouth strain; And grant that yet an Austral Milton’s song Pactolus-like flow deep and rich along, — An Austral Shakespeare rise, whose living page To nature true may charm in ev’ry age; — And that an Austral Pindar daring soar,
Where not the Theban eagle reach’d before. And, O Britannia! shouldst thou cease to ride Despotic Empress of old Ocean’s tide; — Should thy tamed Lion — spent his former might, — No longer roar the terror of the fight; — Should e’er arrive that dark disastrous hour, When bow’d by luxury, thou yield’st to pow’r; — When thou, no longer freest of the free, To some proud victor bend’st the vanquish’d knee; — May all thy glories in another sphere
Relume, and shine more brightly still than here; May this, thy last-born infant, then arise, To glad thy heart and greet thy parent eyes; And Australasia float, with flag unfurl’d, A new Britannia in another world.
Charles Harpur.
Love
She loves me! From her own bliss-breathing lips The live confession came, like rich perfume From crimson petals bursting into bloom! And still my heart at the remembrance skips Like a young lion, and my tongue, too, trips As drunk with joy! while every object seen In life’s diurnal round wears in its mien A clear assurance that no doubts eclipse. And if the common things of nature now
Are like old faces flushed with new delight, Much more the consciousness of that rich vow Deepens the beauteous, and refines the bright, While throned I seem on love’s divinest height ‘Mid all the glories glowing round its brow.
Words
Words are deeds. The words we hear
May revolutionize or rear
A mighty state. The words we read
May be a spiritual deed
Excelling any fleshly one,
As much as the celestial sun
Transcends a bonfire, made to throw A light upon some raree-show.
A simple proverb tagged with rhyme
May colour half the course of time; The pregnant saying of a sage
May influence every coming age;
A song in its effects may be
More glorious than Thermopylae,
And many a lay that schoolboys scan A nobler feat than Inkerman.
A Coast View
High ‘mid the shelves of a grey cliff, that yet Riseth in Babylonian mass above,
In a benched cleft, as in the mouldered chair Of grey-beard Time himself, I sit alone, And gaze with a keen wondering happiness Out o’er the sea. Unto the circling bend That verges Heaven, a vast luminous plain It stretches, changeful as a lover’s dream — Into great spaces mapped by light and shade In constant interchange — either ‘neath clouds The billows darken, or they shimmer bright In sunny scopes of measureless expanse.
‘Tis Ocean dreamless of a stormy hour, Calm, or but gently heaving; — yet, O God! What a blind fate-like mightiness lies coiled In slumber, under that wide-shining face! While o’er the watery gleam — there where its edge Banks the dim vacancy, the topmost sails Of some tall ship, whose hull is yet unseen, Hang as if clinging to a cloud that still Comes rising with them from the void beyond, Like to a heavenly net, drawn from the deep And carried upward by ethereal hands.
William Forster.
`The Love in her Eyes lay Sleeping’
The love in her eyes lay sleeping,
As stars that unconscious shine,
Till, under the pink lids peeping, I wakened it up with mine;
And we pledged our troth to a brimming oath In a bumper of blood-red wine.
Alas! too well I know
That it happened long ago;
Those memories yet remain,
And sting, like throbs of pain,
And I’m alone below,
But still the red wine warms, and the rosy goblets glow; If love be the heart’s enslaver,
‘Tis wine that subdues the head.
But which has the fairest flavour, And whose is the soonest shed?
Wine waxes in power in that desolate hour When the glory of love is dead.
Love lives on beauty’s ray,
But night comes after day,
And when the exhausted sun
His high career has run,
The stars behind him stay,
And then the light that lasts consoles our darkening way. When beauty and love are over,
And passion has spent its rage,
And the spectres of memory hover, And glare on life’s lonely stage,
‘Tis wine that remains to kindle the veins And strengthen the steps of age.
Love takes the taint of years,
And beauty disappears,
But wine in worth matures
The longer it endures,
And more divinely cheers,
And ripens with the suns and mellows with the spheres.
James Lionel Michael.
`Through Pleasant Paths’
Through pleasant paths, through dainty ways, Love leads my feet;
Where beauty shines with living rays, Soft, gentle, sweet;
The placid heart at random strays,
And sings, and smiles, and laughs and plays, And gathers from the summer days
Their light and heat,
That in its chambers burn and blaze And beam and beat.
I throw myself among the ferns
Under the shade,
And watch the summer sun that burns On dell and glade;
To thee, my dear, my fancy turns,
In thee its Paradise discerns,
For thee it sighs, for thee it yearns, My chosen maid;
And that still depth of passion learns Which cannot fade.
The wind that whispers in the night,
Subtle and free,
The gorgeous noonday’s blinding light, On hill and tree,
All lovely things that meet my sight, All shifting lovelinesses bright,
Speak to my heart with calm delight, Seeming to be
Cloth’d with enchantment, robed in white, To sing of thee.
The ways of life are hard and cold
To one alone;
Bitter the strife for place and gold — We weep and groan:
But when love warms the heart grows bold; And when our arms the prize enfold,
Dearest! the heart can hardly hold
The bliss unknown,
Unspoken, never to be told —
My own, my own!
Personality
“Death is to us change, not consummation.” Heart of Midlothian.
A change! no, surely, not a change,
The change must be before we die;
Death may confer a wider range,
From pole to pole, from sea to sky, It cannot make me new or strange
To mine own Personality!
For what am I? — this mortal flesh,
These shrinking nerves, this feeble frame, For ever racked with ailments fresh
And scarce from day to day the same — A fly within the spider’s mesh,
A moth that plays around the flame!
THIS is not I — within such coil
The immortal spirit rests awhile:
When this shall lie beneath the soil, Which its mere mortal parts defile,
THAT shall for ever live and foil
Mortality, and pain, and guile.
Whatever Time may make of me
Eternity must see me still
Clear from the dross of earth, and free From every stain of every ill;
Yet still, where-e’er — what-e’er I be, Time’s work Eternity must fill.
When all the worlds have ceased to roll, When the long light has ceased to quiver When we have reached our final goal
And stand beside the Living River, This vital spark — this loving soul,
Must last for ever and for ever.
To choose what I must be is mine,
Mine in these few and fleeting days, I may be if I will, divine,
Standing before God’s throne in praise, — Through all Eternity to shine
In yonder Heaven’s sapphire blaze.
Father, the soul that counts it gain
To love Thee and Thy law on earth, Unchanged but free from mortal stain,
Increased in knowledge and in worth, And purified from this world’s pain,
Shall find through Thee a second birth.
A change! no surely not a change!
The change must be before we die;
Death may confer a wider range
From world to world, from sky to sky, It cannot make me new or strange
To mine own Personality!
Daniel Henry Deniehy.
Love in a Cottage
A cottage small be mine, with porch
Enwreathed with ivy green,
And brightsome flowers with dew-filled bells, ‘Mid brown old wattles seen.
And one to wait at shut of eve,
With eyes as fountain clear,
And braided hair, and simple dress, My homeward step to hear.
On summer eves to sing old songs,
And talk o’er early vows,
While stars look down like angels’ eyes Amid the leafy boughs.
When Spring flowers peep from flossy cells, And bright-winged parrots call,
In forest paths be ours to rove
Till purple evenings fall.
The curtains closed, by taper clear
To read some page divine,
On winter nights, the hearth beside, Her soft, warm hand in mine.
And so to glide through busy life,
Like some small brook alone,
That winds its way ‘mid grassy knolls, Its music all its own.
A Song for the Night
O the Night, the Night, the solemn Night, When Earth is bound with her silent zone, And the spangled sky seems a temple wide, Where the star-tribes kneel at the Godhead’s throne; O the Night, the Night, the wizard Night, When the garish reign of day is o’er,
And the myriad barques of the dream-elves come In a brightsome fleet from Slumber’s shore! O the Night for me,
When blithe and free,
Go the zephyr-hounds on their airy chase; When the moon is high
In the dewy sky,
And the air is sweet as a bride’s embrace!
O the Night, the Night, the charming Night! From the fountain side in the myrtle shade, All softly creep on the slumbrous air
The waking notes of the serenade;
While bright eyes shine ‘mid the lattice-vines, And white arms droop o’er the sculptured sills, And accents fall to the knights below,
Like the babblings soft of mountain rills. Love in their eyes,
Love in their sighs,
Love in the heave of each lily-bright bosom; In words so clear,
Lest the listening ear
And the waiting heart may lose them.
O the silent Night, when the student dreams Of kneeling crowds round a sage’s tomb; And the mother’s eyes o’er the cradle rain Tears for her baby’s fading bloom;
O the peaceful Night, when stilled and o’er Is the charger’s tramp on the battle plain, And the bugle’s sound and the sabre’s flash, While the moon looks sad over heaps of slain; And tears bespeak
On the iron cheek
Of the sentinel lonely pacing,
Thoughts which roll
Through his fearless soul,
Day’s sterner mood replacing.
O the sacred Night, when memory comes With an aspect mild and sweet to me,
But her tones are sad as a ballad air In childhood heard on a nurse’s knee;
And round her throng fair forms long fled, With brows of snow and hair of gold,
And eyes with the light of summer skies, And lips that speak of the days of old. Wide is your flight,
O spirits of Night,
By strath, and stream, and grove,
But most in the gloom
Of the Poet’s room
Ye choose, fair ones, to rove.
Richard Rowe.
Superstites Rosae
The grass is green upon her grave,
The west wind whispers low;
“The corn is changed, come forth, come forth, Ere all the blossoms go!”
In vain. Her laughing eyes are sealed, And cold her sunny brow;
Last year she smiled upon the flowers — They smile above her now!
Soul Ferry
High and dry upon the shingle lies the fisher’s boat to-night; From his roof-beam dankly drooping, raying phosphorescent light, Spectral in its pale-blue splendour, hangs his heap of scaly nets, And the fisher, lapt in slumber, surge and seine alike forgets.
Hark! there comes a sudden knocking, and the fisher starts from sleep, As a hollow voice and ghostly bids him once more seek the deep; Wearily across his shoulder flingeth he the ashen oar, And upon the beach descending finds a skiff beside the shore.
‘Tis not his, but he must enter — rocking on the waters dim, Awful in their hidden presence, who are they that wait for him? Who are they that sit so silent, as he pulleth from the land — Nothing heard save rumbling rowlock, wave soft-breaking on the sand?
Chill adown the tossing channel blows the wailing, wand’ring breeze, Lonely in the murky midnight, mutt’ring mournful memories, — Summer lands where once it brooded, wrecks that widows’ hearts have wrung — Swift the dreary boat flies onwards, spray, like rain, around it flung.
On a pebbled strand it grateth, ghastly cliffs around it loom, Thin and melancholy voices faintly murmur through the gloom; Voices only, lipless voices, and the fisherman turns pale, As the mother greets her children, sisters landing brothers hail.
Lightened of its unseen burden, cork-like rides the rocking bark, Fast the fisherman flies homewards o’er the billows deep and dark; THAT boat needs no mortal’s mooring — sad at heart he seeks his bed, For his life henceforth is clouded — he hath piloted the Dead!
Sir Henry Parkes.
The Buried Chief
(November 6th, 1886)
With speechless lips and solemn tread They brought the Lawyer-Statesman home: They laid him with the gather’d dead,
Where rich and poor like brothers come.
How bravely did the stripling climb,
From step to step the rugged hill: His gaze thro’ that benighted time
Fix’d on the far-off beacon still.
He faced the storm that o’er him burst, With pride to match the proudest born:
He bore unblench’d Detraction’s worst, — Paid blow for blow, and scorn for scorn.
He scaled the summit while the sun
Yet shone upon his conquer’d track: Nor falter’d till the goal was won,
Nor struggling upward, once look’d back.
But what avails the “pride of place”, Or winged chariot rolling past?
He heeds not now who wins the race, Alike to him the first or last.
Thomas Alexander Browne (`Rolf Boldrewood’).
Perdita
She is beautiful yet, with her wondrous hair And eyes that are stormy with fitful light, The delicate hues of brow and cheek
Are unmarred all, rose-clear and bright; That matchless frame yet holds at bay
The crouching bloodhounds, Remorse, Decay.
There is no fear in her great dark eyes — No hope, no love, no care,
Stately and proud she looks around
With a fierce, defiant stare;
Wild words deform her reckless speech, Her laugh has a sadness tears never reach.
Whom should she fear on earth? Can Fate One direr torment lend
To her few little years of glitter and gloom With the sad old story to end
When the spectres of Loneliness, Want and Pain Shall arise one night with Death in their train?
. . . . .
I see in a vision a woman like her
Trip down an orchard slope,
With rosy prattlers that shout a name In tones of rapture and hope;
While the yeoman, gazing at children and wife, Thanks God for the pride and joy of his life.
. . . . .
Whose conscience is heavy with this dark guilt? Who pays at the final day
For a wasted body, a murdered soul, And how shall he answer, I say,
For her outlawed years, her early doom, And despair — despair — beyond the tomb?
Adam Lindsay Gordon.
A Dedication
They are rhymes rudely strung with intent less Of sound than of words,
In lands where bright blossoms are scentless, And songless bright birds;
Where, with fire and fierce drought on her tresses, Insatiable summer oppresses
Sere woodlands and sad wildernesses, And faint flocks and herds.
Where in dreariest days, when all dews end, And all winds are warm,
Wild Winter’s large flood-gates are loosen’d, And floods, freed from storm,
From broken-up fountain heads, dash on Dry deserts with long pent up passion — Here rhyme was first framed without fashion — Song shaped without form.
Whence gather’d? — The locust’s glad chirrup May furnish a stave;
The ring of a rowel and stirrup,
The wash of a wave;
The chaunt of the marsh frog in rushes, That chimes through the pauses and hushes Of nightfall, the torrent that gushes,
The tempests that rave;
In the deep’ning of dawn, when it dapples The dusk of the sky,
With streaks like the redd’ning of apples, The ripening of rye.
To eastward, when cluster by cluster, Dim stars and dull planets, that muster, Wax wan in a world of white lustre
That spreads far and high;
In the gathering of night gloom o’erhead, in The still silent change,
All fire-flush’d when forest trees redden On slopes of the range.
When the gnarl’d, knotted trunks Eucalyptian Seem carved, like weird columns Egyptian, With curious device, quaint inscription, And hieroglyph strange;
In the Spring, when the wattle gold trembles ‘Twixt shadow and shine,
When each dew-laden air draught resembles A long draught of wine;
When the sky-line’s blue burnish’d resistance Makes deeper the dreamiest distance,
Some song in all hearts hath existence, — Such songs have been mine.
Thora’s Song
We severed in Autumn early,
Ere the earth was torn by the plough; The wheat and the oats and the barley
Are ripe for the harvest now.
We sunder’d one misty morning
Ere the hills were dimm’d by the rain; Through the flowers those hills adorning — Thou comest not back again.
My heart is heavy and weary
With the weight of a weary soul;
The mid-day glare grows dreary,
And dreary the midnight scroll.
The corn-stalks sigh for the sickle, ‘Neath the load of their golden grain;
I sigh for a mate more fickle —
Thou comest not back again.
The warm sun riseth and setteth,
The night bringeth moistening dew, But the soul that longeth forgetteth
The warmth and the moisture too.
In the hot sun rising and setting
There is naught save feverish pain; There are tears in the night-dews wetting — Thou comest not back again.
Thy voice in my ear still mingles
With the voices of whisp’ring trees, Thy kiss on my cheek still tingles
At each kiss of the summer breeze. While dreams of the past are thronging
For substance of shades in vain,
I am waiting, watching and longing — Thou comest not back again.
Waiting and watching ever,
Longing and lingering yet;
Leaves rustle and corn-stalks quiver, Winds murmur and waters fret.
No answer they bring, no greeting,
No speech, save that sad refrain,
Nor voice, save an echo repeating — He cometh not back again.
The Sick Stock-rider
Hold hard, Ned! Lift me down once more, and lay me in the shade. Old man, you’ve had your work cut out to guide Both horses, and to hold me in the saddle when I swayed, All through the hot, slow, sleepy, silent ride. The dawn at “Moorabinda” was a mist rack dull and dense, The sun-rise was a sullen, sluggish lamp; I was dozing in the gateway at Arbuthnot’s bound’ry fence, I was dreaming on the Limestone cattle camp. We crossed the creek at Carricksford, and sharply through the haze, And suddenly the sun shot flaming forth; To southward lay “Katawa”, with the sand peaks all ablaze, And the flushed fields of Glen Lomond lay to north. Now westward winds the bridle-path that leads to Lindisfarm, And yonder looms the double-headed Bluff; From the far side of the first hill, when the skies are clear and calm, You can see Sylvester’s woolshed fair enough. Five miles we used to call it from our homestead to the place Where the big tree spans the roadway like an arch; ‘Twas here we ran the dingo down that gave us such a chase Eight years ago — or was it nine? — last March. ‘Twas merry in the glowing morn among the gleaming grass, To wander as we’ve wandered many a mile, And blow the cool tobacco cloud, and watch the white wreaths pass, Sitting loosely in the saddle all the while. ‘Twas merry ‘mid the blackwoods, when we spied the station roofs, To wheel the wild scrub cattle at the yard, With a running fire of stock whips and a fiery run of hoofs; Oh! the hardest day was never then too hard! Aye! we had a glorious gallop after “Starlight” and his gang, When they bolted from Sylvester’s on the flat; How the sun-dried reed-beds crackled, how the flint-strewn ranges rang, To the strokes of “Mountaineer” and “Acrobat”. Hard behind them in the timber, harder still across the heath, Close beside them through the tea-tree scrub we dash’d; And the golden-tinted fern leaves, how they rustled underneath; And the honeysuckle osiers, how they crash’d! We led the hunt throughout, Ned, on the chestnut and the grey, And the troopers were three hundred yards behind, While we emptied our six-shooters on the bushrangers at bay, In the creek with stunted box-trees for a blind! There you grappled with the leader, man to man, and horse to horse, And you roll’d together when the chestnut rear’d; He blazed away and missed you in that shallow water-course — A narrow shave — his powder singed your beard!
In these hours when life is ebbing, how those days when life was young Come back to us; how clearly I recall
Even the yarns Jack Hall invented, and the songs Jem Roper sung; And where are now Jem Roper and Jack Hall? Ay! nearly all our comrades of the old colonial school, Our ancient boon companions, Ned, are gone; Hard livers for the most part, somewhat reckless as a rule, It seems that you and I are left alone. There was Hughes, who got in trouble through that business with the cards, It matters little what became of him;
But a steer ripp’d up Macpherson in the Cooraminta yards, And Sullivan was drown’d at Sink-or-swim; And Mostyn — poor Frank Mostyn — died at last, a fearful wreck, In the “horrors” at the Upper Wandinong, And Carisbrooke, the rider, at the Horsefall broke his neck; Faith! the wonder was he saved his neck so long!
Ah! those days and nights we squandered at the Logans’ in the glen — The Logans, man and wife, have long been dead. Elsie’s tallest girl seems taller than your little Elsie then; And Ethel is a woman grown and wed.
I’ve had my share of pastime, and I’ve done my share of toil, And life is short — the longest life a span; I care not now to tarry for the corn or for the oil, Or for wine that maketh glad the heart of man. For good undone, and gifts misspent, and resolutions vain, ‘Tis somewhat late to trouble. This I know — I should live the same life over, if I had to live again; And the chances are I go where most men go.
The deep blue skies wax dusky, and the tall green trees grow dim, The sward beneath me seems to heave and fall; And sickly, smoky shadows through the sleepy sunlight swim, And on the very sun’s face weave their pall. Let me slumber in the hollow where the wattle blossoms wave, With never stone or rail to fence my bed; Should the sturdy station children pull the bush-flowers on my grave, I may chance to hear them romping overhead.
I don’t suppose I shall though, for I feel like sleeping sound, That sleep, they say, is doubtful. True; but yet At least it makes no difference to the dead man underground What the living men remember or forget. Enigmas that perplex us in the world’s unequal strife, The future may ignore or may reveal;
Yet some, as weak as water, Ned, to make the best of life, Have been to face the worst as true as steel.
Henry Kendall.
Prefatory Sonnets
I.
I purposed once to take my pen and write, Not songs, like some, tormented and awry With passion, but a cunning harmony
Of words and music caught from glen and height, And lucid colours born of woodland light And shining places where the sea-streams lie. But this was when the heat of youth glowed white, And since I’ve put the faded purpose by. I have no faultless fruits to offer you
Who read this book; but certain syllables Herein are borrowed from unfooted dells And secret hollows dear to noontide dew; And these at least, though far between and few, May catch the sense like subtle forest spells.
II.
So take these kindly, even though there be Some notes that unto other lyres belong, Stray echoes from the elder sons of song; And think how from its neighbouring native sea The pensive shell doth borrow melody.
I would not do the lordly masters wrong By filching fair words from the shining throng Whose music haunts me as the wind a tree! Lo, when a stranger in soft Syrian glooms Shot through with sunset treads the cedar dells, And hears the breezy ring of elfin bells Far down by where the white-haired cataract booms, He, faint with sweetness caught from forest smells, Bears thence, unwitting, plunder of perfumes.
September in Australia
Grey Winter hath gone, like a wearisome guest, And, behold, for repayment,
September comes in with the wind of the West And the Spring in her raiment!
The ways of the frost have been filled of the flowers, While the forest discovers
Wild wings, with the halo of hyaline hours, And the music of lovers.
September, the maid with the swift, silver feet! She glides, and she graces
The valleys of coolness, the slopes of the heat, With her blossomy traces;
Sweet month, with a mouth that is made of a rose, She lightens and lingers
In spots where the harp of the evening glows, Attuned by her fingers.
The stream from its home in the hollow hill slips In a darling old fashion;
And the day goeth down with a song on its lips Whose key-note is passion;
Far out in the fierce, bitter front of the sea I stand, and remember
Dead things that were brothers and sisters of thee, Resplendent September.
The West, when it blows at the fall of the noon And beats on the beaches,
Is filled with a tender and tremulous tune That touches and teaches;
The stories of Youth, of the burden of Time, And the death of Devotion,
Come back with the wind, and are themes of the rhyme In the waves of the ocean.
We, having a secret to others unknown, In the cool mountain-mosses,
May whisper together, September, alone Of our loves and our losses.
One word for her beauty, and one for the grace She gave to the hours;
And then we may kiss her, and suffer her face To sleep with the flowers.
. . . . .
Oh, season of changes — of shadow and shine — September the splendid!
My song hath no music to mingle with thine, And its burden is ended;
But thou, being born of the winds and the sun, By mountain, by river,
Mayst lighten and listen, and loiter and run, With thy voices for ever.
Rose Lorraine
Sweet water-moons, blown into lights
Of flying gold on pool and creek,
And many sounds and many sights
Of younger days are back this week. I cannot say I sought to face
Or greatly cared to cross again
The subtle spirit of the place
Whose life is mixed with Rose Lorraine.
What though her voice rings clearly through A nightly dream I gladly keep,
No wish have I to start anew
Heart fountains that have ceased to leap. Here, face to face with different days,
And later things that plead for love, It would be worse than wrong to raise
A phantom far too vain to move.
But, Rose Lorraine — ah! Rose Lorraine, I’ll whisper now, where no one hears — If you should chance to meet again
The man you kissed in soft, dead years, Just say for once “He suffered much,”
And add to this “His fate was worst Because of me, my voice, my touch” —
There is no passion like the first!
If I that breathe your slow sweet name, As one breathes low notes on a flute,
Have vext your peace with word of blame, The phrase is dead — the lips are mute. Yet when I turn towards the wall,
In stormy nights, in times of rain, I often wish you could recall
Your tender speeches, Rose Lorraine.
Because, you see, I thought them true, And did not count you self-deceived,
And gave myself in all to you,
And looked on Love as Life achieved. Then came the bitter, sudden change,
The fastened lips, the dumb despair: The first few weeks were very strange,
And long, and sad, and hard to bear.
No woman lives with power to burst
My passion’s bonds, and set me free; For Rose is last where Rose was first,
And only Rose is fair to me.
The faintest memory of her face,
The wilful face that hurt me so,
Is followed by a fiery trace
That Rose Lorraine must never know.
I keep a faded ribbon string
You used to wear about your throat; And of this pale, this perished thing,
I think I know the threads by rote. God help such love! To touch your hand,
To loiter where your feet might fall, You marvellous girl, my soul would stand The worst of hell — its fires and all!
To a Mountain
To thee, O father of the stately peaks, Above me in the loftier light — to thee, Imperial brother of those awful hills
Whose feet are set in splendid spheres of flame, Whose heads are where the gods are, and whose sides Of strength are belted round with all the zones Of all the world, I dedicate these songs. And if, within the compass of this book, There lives and glows ONE verse in which there beats The pulse of wind and torrent — if ONE line Is here that like a running water sounds, And seems an echo from the lands of leaf, Be sure that line is thine. Here, in this home, Away from men and books and all the schools, I take thee for my Teacher. In thy voice Of deathless majesty, I, kneeling, hear
God’s grand authentic Gospel! Year by year, The great sublime cantata of thy storm
Strikes through my spirit — fills it with a life Of startling beauty! Thou my Bible art
With holy leaves of rock, and flower, and tree, And moss, and shining runnel. From each page That helps to make thy awful volume, I
Have learned a noble lesson. In the psalm Of thy grave winds, and in the liturgy
Of singing waters, lo! my soul has heard The higher worship; and from thee, indeed, The broad foundations of a finer hope
Were gathered in; and thou hast lifted up The blind horizon for a larger faith!
Moreover, walking in exalted woods
Of naked glory, in the green and gold Of forest sunshine, I have paused like one With all the life transfigured: and a flood Of light ineffable has made me feel
As felt the grand old prophets caught away By flames of inspiration; but the words
Sufficient for the story of my Dream Are far too splendid for poor human lips! But thou, to whom I turn with reverent eyes — O stately Father, whose majestic face
Shines far above the zone of wind and cloud, Where high dominion of the morning is — Thou hast the Song complete of which my songs Are pallid adumbrations! Certain sounds
Of strong authentic sorrow in this book May have the sob of upland torrents — these, And only these, may touch the great World’s heart; For, lo! they are the issues of that grief Which makes a man more human, and his life More like that frank exalted life of thine. But in these pages there are other tones In which thy large, superior voice is not — Through which no beauty that resembles thine Has ever shone. THESE are the broken words Of blind occasions, when the World has come Between me and my Dream. No song is here Of mighty compass; for my singing robes
I’ve worn in stolen moments. All my days Have been the days of a laborious life,
And ever on my struggling soul has burned The fierce heat of this hurried sphere. But thou, To whose fair majesty I dedicate
My book of rhymes — thou hast the perfect rest Which makes the heaven of the highest gods! To thee the noises of this violent time
Are far, faint whispers; and, from age to age, Within the world and yet apart from it,
Thou standest! Round thy lordly capes the sea Rolls on with a superb indifference
For ever; in thy deep, green, gracious glens The silver fountains sing for ever. Far
Above dim ghosts of waters in the caves, The royal robe of morning on thy head
Abides for ever! Evermore the wind
Is thy august companion; and thy peers Are cloud, and thunder, and the face sublime Of blue mid-heaven! On thy awful brow
Is Deity; and in that voice of thine There is the great imperial utterance
Of God for ever; and thy feet are set Where evermore, through all the days and years, There rolls the grand hymn of the deathless wave.
Araluen
Take this rose, and very gently place it on the tender, deep Mosses where our little darling, Araluen, lies asleep. Put the blossom close to baby — kneel with me, my love, and pray; We must leave the bird we’ve buried — say good-bye to her to-day; In the shadow of our trouble we must go to other lands, And the flowers we have fostered will be left to other hands. Other eyes will watch them growing — other feet will softly tread Where two hearts are nearly breaking, where so many tears are shed. Bitter is the world we live in: life and love are mixed with pain; We will never see these daisies — never water them again. . . . . .
Here the blue-eyed Spring will linger, here the shining month will stay, Like a friend, by Araluen, when we two are far away; But, beyond the wild, wide waters, we will tread another shore — We will never watch this blossom, never see it any more.
Girl, whose hand at God’s high altar in the dear, dead year I pressed, Lean your stricken head upon me — this is still your lover’s breast! She who sleeps was first and sweetest — none we have to take her place! Empty is the little cradle — absent is the little face. Other children may be given; but this rose beyond recall, But this garland of your girlhood, will be dearest of them all. None will ever, Araluen, nestle where you used to be, In my heart of hearts, you darling, when the world was new to me; We were young when you were with us, life and love were happy things To your father and your mother ere the angels gave you wings.
You that sit and sob beside me — you, upon whose golden head Many rains of many sorrows have from day to day been shed; Who, because your love was noble, faced with me the lot austere Ever pressing with its hardship on the man of letters here — Let me feel that you are near me, lay your hand within mine own; You are all I have to live for, now that we are left alone. Three there were, but one has vanished. Sins of mine have made you weep; But forgive your baby’s father now that baby is asleep. Let us go, for night is falling, leave the darling with her flowers; Other hands will come and tend them — other friends in other hours.
After Many Years
The song that once I dreamed about,
The tender, touching thing,
As radiant as the rose without,
The love of wind and wing:
The perfect verses, to the tune
Of woodland music set,
As beautiful as afternoon,
Remain unwritten yet.
It is too late to write them now —
The ancient fire is cold;
No ardent lights illume the brow,
As in the days of old.
I cannot dream the dream again;
But, when the happy birds
Are singing in the sunny rain,
I think I hear its words.
I think I hear the echo still
Of long-forgotten tones,
When evening winds are on the hill
And sunset fires the cones;
But only in the hours supreme,
With songs of land and sea,
The lyrics of the leaf and stream,
This echo comes to me.
No longer doth the earth reveal
Her gracious green and gold;
I sit where youth was once, and feel That I am growing old.
The lustre from the face of things
Is wearing all away;
Like one who halts with tired wings, I rest and muse to-day.
There is a river in the range
I love to think about;
Perhaps the searching feet of change Have never found it out.
Ah! oftentimes I used to look
Upon its banks, and long
To steal the beauty of that brook
And put it in a song.
I wonder if the slopes of moss,
In dreams so dear to me —
The falls of flower, and flower-like floss — Are as they used to be!
I wonder if the waterfalls,
The singers far and fair,
That gleamed between the wet, green walls, Are still the marvels there!
Ah! let me hope that in that place
Those old familiar things
To which I turn a wistful face
Have never taken wings.
Let me retain the fancy still
That, past the lordly range,
There always shines, in folds of hill, One spot secure from change!
I trust that yet the tender screen
That shades a certain nook
Remains, with all its gold and green, The glory of the brook.
It hides a secret to the birds
And waters only known:
The letters of two lovely words —
A poem on a stone.
Perhaps the lady of the past
Upon these lines may light,
The purest verses, and the last,
That I may ever write:
She need not fear a word of blame:
Her tale the flowers keep —
The wind that heard me breathe her name Has been for years asleep.
But in the night, and when the rain
The troubled torrent fills,
I often think I see again
The river in the hills;
And when the day is very near,
And birds are on the wing,
My spirit fancies it can hear
The song I cannot sing.
Hy-Brasil
“Daughter,” said the ancient father, pausing by the evening sea, “Turn thy face towards the sunset — turn thy face and kneel with me! Prayer and praise and holy fasting, lips of love and life of light, These and these have made thee perfect — shining saint with seraph’s sight! Look towards that flaming crescent — look beyond that glowing space — Tell me, sister of the angels, what is beaming in thy face?” And the daughter, who had fasted, who had spent her days in prayer, Till the glory of the Saviour touched her head and rested there, Turned her eyes towards the sea-line — saw beyond the fiery crest, Floating over waves of jasper, far Hy-Brasil in the West.
All the calmness and the colour — all the splendour and repose, Flowing where the sunset flowered, like a silver-hearted rose! There indeed was singing Eden, where the great gold river runs Past the porch and gates of crystal, ringed by strong and shining ones! There indeed was God’s own garden, sailing down the sapphire sea — Lawny dells and slopes of summer, dazzling stream and radiant tree! Out against the hushed horizon — out beneath the reverent day, Flamed the Wonder on the waters — flamed, and flashed, and passed away. And the maiden who had seen it felt a hand within her own, And an angel that we know not led her to the lands unknown.
Never since hath eye beheld it — never since hath mortal, dazed By its strange, unearthly splendour, on the floating Eden gazed! Only once since Eve went weeping through a throng of glittering wings, Hath the holy seen Hy-Brasil where the great gold river sings! Only once by quiet waters, under still, resplendent skies, Did the sister of the seraphs kneel in sight of Paradise! She, the pure, the perfect woman, sanctified by patient prayer, Had the eyes of saints of Heaven, all their glory in her hair: Therefore God the Father whispered to a radiant spirit near — “Show Our daughter fair Hy-Brasil — show her this, and lead her here.”
But beyond the halls of sunset, but within the wondrous West, On the rose-red seas of evening, sails the Garden of the Blest. Still the gates of glassy beauty, still the walls of glowing light, Shine on waves that no man knows of, out of sound and out of sight. Yet the slopes and lawns of lustre, yet the dells of sparkling streams, Dip to tranquil shores of jasper, where the watching angel beams. But, behold! our eyes are human, and our way is paved with pain, We can never find Hy-Brasil, never see its hills again! Never look on bays of crystal, never bend the reverent knee In the sight of Eden floating — floating on the sapphire sea!
Outre Mer
I see, as one in dreaming,
A broad, bright, quiet sea;
Beyond it lies a haven —
The only home for me.
Some men grow strong with trouble,
But all my strength is past,
And tired and full of sorrow,
I long to sleep at last.
By force of chance and changes
Man’s life is hard at best;
And, seeing rest is voiceless,
The dearest thing is rest.
Beyond the sea — behold it,
The home I wish to seek,
The refuge of the weary,
The solace of the weak!
Sweet angel fingers beckon,
Sweet angel voices ask
My soul to cross the waters;
And yet I dread the task.
God help the man whose trials
Are tares that he must reap!
He cannot face the future —
His only hope is sleep.
Across the main a vision
Of sunset coasts, and skies,
And widths of waters gleaming,
Enchant my human eyes.
I, who have sinned and suffered,
Have sought — with tears have sought — To rule my life with goodness,
And shape it to my thought.
And yet there is no refuge
To shield me from distress,
Except the realm of slumber
And great forgetfulness.
Marcus Clarke.
The Song of Tigilau
The song of Tigilau the brave,
Sina’s wild lover,
Who across the heaving wave