Henry Kendall: Verses about Kindness

The crag-pent breezes sob and moan where hidden waters glide;
And twilight wanders round the earth with slow and shadowy stride.
The gleaming clouds, above the brows of western steeps uphurled,
Look like the spires of some fair town that bounds a brighter world.
Lo, from the depths of yonder wood, where many a blind creek strays,
The pure Australian moon comes forth, enwreathed with silver haze.
The rainy mists are trooping down the folding hills behind,
And distant torrent-voices rise like bells upon the wind.
The echeu's* songs are dying, with the flute-bird's mellow tone,
And night recalls the gloomy owl to rove the wilds alone;
Night, holy night, in robes of blue, with golden stars encrowned,
Ascending mountains like to walls that hem an Eden round.

Oh, lovely moon! oh, holy night! how good your God must be,
When, through the glories of your light, He stoops to look at me!
Oh, glittering clouds and silvery shapes, that vanish one by one!
Is not the kindness of our Lord too great to think upon?
If human song could flow as free as His created breeze,
When, sloping from some hoary height, it sweeps the vacant seas,
Then should my voice to heaven ascend, my tuneful lyre be strung,
And music sweeter than the winds should roam these glens among.
Go by, ye golden-footed hours, to your mysterious bourne,
And hide the sins ye bear from hence, so that they ne'er return.
Teach me, ye beauteous stars, to kiss kind Mercy's chastening rod,
And, looking up from Nature's face, to worship Nature's God.

SHALL he, on whom the fair lord, Delphicus,
Turned gracious eyes and countenance of shine,
Be left to lie without a wreath from us,
To sleep without a flower upon his shrine?

Shall he, the son of that resplendent Muse,
Who gleams, high priestess of sweet scholarship,
Still slumber on, and every bard refuse
To touch a harp or move a tuneful lip?

No! let us speak, though feeble be our speech,
And let us sing, though faltering be our strain,
And haply echoes of the song may reach
And please the soul we cannot see again.

We sing the beautiful, the radiant life
That shone amongst us like the quiet moon,
A fine exception in this sphere of strife,
Whose time went by us like a hallowed tune.

Yon tomb, whereon the moonlit grasses sigh,
Hides from our view the shell of one whose days
Were set throughout to that grand harmony
Which fills all minor spirits with amaze.

This was the man whose dear, lost face appears
To rise betimes like some sweet evening dream,
And holy memories of faultless years,
And touching hours of quietness supreme.

He, having learned in full the golden rule,
Which guides great lives, stood fairly by the same,
Unruffled as the Oriental pool,
Before the bright, disturbing angel came.

In Learning’s halls he walked—a leading lord,
He trod the sacred temple’s inner floors;
But kindness beamed in every look and word
He gave the humblest Levite at the doors.

When scholars poor and bowed beneath the ban,
Which clings as fire, were like to faint and fall,
This was the gentle, good Samaritan,
Who stopped and held a helping hand to all.

No term that savoured of unfriendliness,
No censure through those pure lips ever passed;
He saw the erring spirit’s keen distress,
And hoped for it, long-suffering to the last.

Moreover, in these days when Faith grows faint,
And Heaven seems blurred by speculation wild,
He, blameless as a mediaeval saint,
Had all the trust which sanctifies a child.

But now he sleeps, and as the years go by,
We’ll often pause above his sacred dust,
And think how grand a thing it is to die
The noble death which deifies the just.

High travelling winds by royal hill
Their awful anthem sing,
And songs exalted flow and fill
The caverns of the spring.

To-night across a wild wet plain
A shadow sobs and strays;
The trees are whispering in the rain
Of long departed days.

I cannot say what forest saith —
Its words are strange to me:
I only know that in its breath
Are tones that used to be.

Yea, in these deep dim solitudes
I hear a sound I know —
The voice that lived in Penrith woods
Twelve weary years ago.

And while the hymn of other years
Is on a listening land,
The Angel of the Past appears
And leads me by the hand;

And takes me over moaning wave,
And tracts of sleepless change,
To set me by a lonely grave
Within a lonely range.

The halo of the beautiful
Is round the quiet spot;
The grass is deep and green and cool,
Where sound of life is not.

Here in this lovely lap of bloom,
The grace of glen and glade,
That tender days and nights illume,
My gentle friend was laid.

I do not mark the shell that lies
Beneath the touching flowers;
I only see the radiant eyes
Of other scenes and hours.

I only turn, by grief inspired,
Like some forsaken thing,
To look upon a life retired
As hushed Bethesda’s spring.

The glory of unblemished days
Is on the silent mound —
The light of years, too pure for praise;
I kneel on holy ground!

Here is the clay of one whose mind
Was fairer than the dew,
The sweetest nature of his kind
I haply ever knew.

This Christian, walking on the white
Clear paths apart from strife,
Kept far from all the heat and light
That fills his father’s life.

The clamour and exceeding flame
Were never in his days:
A higher object was his aim
Than thrones of shine and praise.

Ah! like an English April psalm,
That floats by sea and strand,
He passed away into the calm
Of the Eternal Land.

The chair he filled is set aside
Upon his father’s floor;
In morning hours, at eventide,
His step is heard no more.

No more his face the forest knows;
His voice is of the past;
But from his life of beauty flows
A radiance that will last.

Yea, from the hours that heard his speech
High shining mem’ries give
That fine example which will teach
Our children how to live.

Here, kneeling in the body, far
From grave of flower and dew,
My friend beyond the path of star,
I say these words to you.

Though you were as a fleeting flame
Across my road austere,
The memory of your face became
A thing for ever dear.

I never have forgotten yet
The Christian’s gentle touch;
And, since the time when last we met,
You know I’ve suffered much.

I feel that I have given pain
By certain words and deeds,
But stricken here with Sorrow’s rain,
My contrite spirit bleeds.

For your sole sake I rue the blow,
But this assurance send:
I smote, in noon, the public foe,
But not the private friend.

I know that once I wronged your sire,
But since that awful day
My soul has passed through blood and fire,
My head is very grey.

Here let me pause! From years like yours
There ever flows and thrives
The splendid blessing which endures
Beyond our little lives.

From lonely lands across the wave
Is sent to-night by me
This rose of reverence for the grave
Beside the mountain lea.