A Spring Sonnet

Last night beneath the mockery of the moon
I heard the sudden startled whisperings
Of wakened birds settling their restless wings;
The North-east brought his word of gladness, "Soon!"
And all the night with wonder was a-swoon.
A soul had breathed into long-dreaming things;
Some unseen hand hovered above the strings:
Some cosmic chord had set the earth in tune.
And when I rose I saw the Bay arrayed
In her grey robe against the coming heat.
A pulse awoke within the stirring street--
The wattle-gold upon the pavements thrown,
And through the quiet of the colonnade
The smoky perfume of boronia blown.

The Dwellings Of Our Dead

They lie unwatched, in waste and vacant places,
In sombre bush or wind-swept tussock spaces,
Where seldom human tread
And never human trace is—
The dwellings of our dead!
No insolence of stone is o'er them builded;
By mockery of monuments unshielded,
Far on the unfenced plain
Forgotten graves have yielded
Earth to free earth again.
Above their crypts no air with incense reeling,
No chant of choir or sob of organ pealing;
But ever over them
The evening breezes kneeling
Whisper a requiem.
For some the margeless plain where no one passes,
Save when at morning far in misty masses
The drifting flock appears.
Lo, here the greener grasses
Glint like a stain of tears!

For some the quiet bush, shade-strewn and saddened,
Whereo'er the herald tui, morning-gladdened,
Lone on his chosen tree,
With his new rapture maddened,
Shouts incoherently.
For some the gully where, in whispers tender,
The flax-blades mourn and murmur, and the slender
White ranks of toi go,
With drooping plumes of splendour,
In pageantry of woe.
For some the common trench where, not all fameless,
They fighting fell who thought to tame the tameless,
And won their barren crown;
Where one grave holds them nameless—
Brave white and braver brown.
But in their sleep, like troubled children turning,
A dream of mother-country in them burning,
They whisper their despair,
And one vague, voiceless yearning
Burdens the pausing air …

“ Unchanging here the drab year onward presses;
No Spring comes trysting here with new-loosed tresses ,
And never may the years
Win Autumn's sweet caresses —
Her leaves that fall like tears .
And we would lie 'neath old-remembered beeches ,
Where we could hear the voice of him who preaches
And the deep organ's call ,
While close about us reaches
The cool, grey, lichened wall .”
But they are ours, and jealously we hold them;
Within our children's ranks we have enrolled them,
And till all Time shall cease
Our brooding bush shall fold them
In her broad-bosomed peace.
They came as lovers come, all else forsaking,
The bonds of home and kindred proudly breaking;
They lie in splendour lone—
The nation of their making
Their everlasting throne!

A Pair Of Lovers In The Street

A PAIR of lovers in the street!
I dare not mock: with reverence meet
My unforgetting heart I cheat.

Ah, God, spare me—so soon again
At the barred door to beat in vain,
And find their dalliance such fierce pain!

I, yearning up from Hell’s abyss,
See, dreaming through their worlds of bliss,
This Dante and his Beatrice!

For these the distant goal have won
For which God made the plasm and sun;
His patient labouring is done.

For these each Spring has been a bride,
And lonely worlds were spawned and died.
Chaos for them in birth-throes cried.

Far out in seas of Space forlorn
This crescent wave was slowly born
That thunders on the beach of morn.

Ah, they, so soon to be meshed in
The web of splendour, silken-thin,
The nebulae were set to spin!

Up the long path from joy to joy
Love led the way. Can aught destroy
The task that was the stars’ employ?

Their ecstasy to God is more
Than Lucifer at Heaven’s door
Entreating pardon for his war.

These two are gods, for, by love swayed,
They have God’s special task essayed,
And new worlds for their gladness made.

This little hour so lightly given
Makes earth too mean a place to live in,
And broken toys His Hell and Heaven.

All Time, expectant of their bliss,
Hangs fearful. Space through her abyss
Shudders if they this hour should miss.

For if their kiss they went without,
The stars would be a raining rout,
And time in anguish flicker out.

About God’s room from star to sun
A stealthy slippered Thing would run,
Quenching cold tapers one by one.

But they have kissed. Eternity,
Like a great clock, beats steadily
For these mazed fools—but not for me!

Of God’s wide universe the strands
They hold within their clinging hands;
The stars march on at their commands.

So from this moment blossom free
New universes tirelessly—
Aeons of unguessed ecstasy!

But I can only bow and beat
Vain hands about God’s mercy-seat,
And, still remembering, still entreat.

Surely my penance is complete!
The rack turns grimly when I meet
A pair of lovers on the street