Henry Kendall: Verses about Morning

A MORNING crowns the Western hill,
A day begins to reign,
A sun awakes o’er distant seas—
Shall never sleep again.
The world is growing old,
And men are waxing wise;
A mist has cleared—a something falls
Like scales from off their eyes.

Too long the “Dark of Ignorance”
Has brooded on their way;
Too long Oppression ’s stood before,
Excluding light of day.
But now they’ve found the track
And now they’ve seen the dawn,
A “beacon lamp” is pointing on,
Where stronger glows the morn.

Since Adam lived, the mighty ones
Have ever ruled the weak;
Since Noah’s flood, the fettered slave
Has seldom dared to speak.
’Tis time a voice was heard,
’Tis time a voice was spoken
So in the chain of tyranny
A link or two be broken.

A tiny rill will swell a stream,
A spark will cause a flame,
And one man’s burning eloquence
Has help’d to do the same.
And he will persevere,
And soon that blaze must spread,
Till to the corners of the earth
Reflecting beams are shed.

The “few” will try to beat it down,
But can they stop the flood—
Bind up the pinions of the light,
Or check the will of God?
And is it not His will
That deeply injured Right
Should overthrow the iron rule
And reign instead of Might?

How dazzling the sunbeams awoke on the spray,
When Australia first rose in the distance away,
As welcome to us on the deck of the bark,
As the dove to the vision of those in the ark!
What fairylike fancies appear’d to the view
As nearer and nearer the haven we drew!
What castles were built and rebuilt in the brain,
To totter and crumble to nothing again!
We had roam’d o’er the ocean—had travers’d a path,
Where the tempest surrounded and shriek’d in its wrath:
Alike we had roll’d in the hurricane’s breath,
And slumber’d on waters as silent as death:
We had watch’d the Day breaking each morn on the main,
And had seen it sink down in the billows again;
For week after week, till dishearten’d we thought
An age would elapse ere we enter’d the port.

How often while ploughing the ‘watery waste’,
Our thoughts—from the Future have turn’d to the Past;
How often our bosoms have heav’d with regret;
For faces and scenes we could never forget:
For we’d seen as the shadows o’er-curtain’d our minds
The cliffs of old England receding behind;
And had turned in our tears from the view of the shore,
The land of our childhood, to see it no more.

But when that red morning awoke from its sleep,
To show us this land like a cloud on the deep;
And when the warm sunbeams imparted their glow,
To the heavens above and the ocean below;
The hearts had been aching then revell’d with joy,
And a pleasure was tasted exempt from alloy;
The souls had been heavy grew happy and light
And all was forgotten in present delight.

’Tis true—of the hopes that were verdant that day
There is more than the half of them withered away:
’Tis true that emotions of temper’d regret,
Still live for the country we’ll never forget;
But yet we are happy, since learning to love
The scenes that surround us—the skies are above,
We find ourselves bound, as it were by a spell,
In the clime we’ve adopted contented to dwell.

Above the skirts of yellow clouds,
The god-like Sun, arrayed
In blinding splendour, swiftly rose,
And looked athwart the glade;
The sleepy dingo watched him break
The bonds that curbed his flight;
And from his golden tresses shake
The fading gems of Night!
And wild goburras laughed aloud
Their merry morning songs,
As Echo answered in the depths
With a thousand thousand tongues;
The gully-depths where many a vine
Of ancient growth had crept,
To cluster round the hoary pine,
Where scanty mosses wept.

Huge stones, and damp and broken crags,
In wild chaotic heap,
Were lying at the barren base
Of the ferny hillside steep;
Between those fragments hollows lay,
Upfilled with fruitful ground,
Where many a modest floweret grew,
To scent the wind-breaths round;
As fertile patches bloom within
A dried and worldly heart,
When some that look can only see
The cold, the barren part!
The Miser, full with thoughts of gain,
The meanest of his race,
May in his breast some verdure hide,
Though none that verdure trace.

Where time-worn cliffs were jutting out,
With rough and ragged edges,
The snowy mountain-lily slept
Behind the earthy ledges;
Like some sweet Oriental Maid,
Who blindly deems it duty
To wear a veil before her face,
And hide her peerless beauty;
Or like to Innocence that thrives
In midst of sin and sorrows,
Nor from the cheerless scene around
The least infection borrows,
But stayeth out her mortal life —
Though in that lifetime lonely —
With Virtue’s lustre round her heart,
And Virtue’s lustre only.

A patch of sunshine here and there
Lay on a leaf-strewn water-pool,
Whose tribute trickled down the rocks
In gurgling ripples, clear and cool!
As iguanas, from the clefts,
Would steal along with rustling sound,
To where the restless eddies roamed
Amongst the arrowy rushes round.
While, scanning them with angry eyes
From off a fallen myrtle log
That branchless bridged the brushy creek,
There stood and barked, a Shepherd’s Dog!
And underneath a neighbouring mass
Of wattles intertwining,
His Master lay — his back against
The grassy banks reclining.

Beneath the shade of ironbarks,
Stretched o’er the valley’s sloping bed —
Half hidden in a tea-tree scrub,
A flock of dusky sheep were spread;
And fitful bleating faintly came
On every joyous breath of wind,
That up the stony hills would fly,
And leave the hollows far behind!
Wild tones of music from the Creek
Were intermingling with the breeze,
The loud, rich lays of countless birds
Perched on the dark mimosa trees;
Those merry birds, with wings of light
Which rival every golden ray
Out-flashing from the lamps of Night,
Or streaming o’er the brow of Day.

Amongst the gnarly apple-trees,
A gorgeous tribe of parrots came;
And screaming, leapt from bough to bough,
Like living jets of crimson flame!
And where the hillside-growing gums
Their web-like foliage upward threw,
Old Nature rang with echoes from
The loud-voiced mountain cockatoo;
And a thousand nameless twittering things,
Between the rustling sapling sprays,
Were flashing through the fragrant leaves,
And dancing like to fabled fays;
Rejoicing in the glorious light
That beauteous Morning had unfurled
To make the heart of Nature glad,
And clothe with smiles a weeping World.

He has a name which can’t be brought
Within the sphere of metre;
But, as he’s Peter by report,
I’ll trot him out as Peter.
I call him mine; but don’t suppose
That I’m his dad, O reader!
My wife has got a Norman nose—
She reads the tales of Ouida.

I never loved a nigger belle—
My tastes are too aesthetic!
The perfume from a gin is—well,
A rather strong emetic.

But, seeing that my theme is Pete,
This verse will be the neater
If I keep on the proper beat,
And stick throughout to Peter.

We picked him up the Lord knows where!
At noon we came across him
Asleep beside a hunk of bear—
His paunch was bulged with ’possum.

(Last stanza will not bear, I own,
A pressure analytic;
But bard whose weight is fourteen stone,
Is apt to thump the critic.)

We asked the kid to give his name:
He didn’t seem too willing—
The darkey played the darkey’s game—
We tipped him with a shilling!

We tipped him with a shining bob—
No Tommy Dodd, believe us.
We didn’t “tumble” to his job—
Ah, why did Pete deceive us!

I, being, as I’ve said, a bard,
Resolved at once to foster
This mite whose length was just a yard—
This portable impostor!

“This babe”—I spoke in Wordsworth’s tone—
(See Wordsworth’s “Lucy”, neighbour)
“I’ll make a darling of my own;
And he’ll repay my labour.

“He’ll grow as gentle as a fawn—
As quiet as the blossoms
That beautify a land of lawn—
He’ll eat no more opossums.

“The child I to myself will take
In a paternal manner;
And ah! he will not swallow snake
In future, or ‘goanna’.

“Will you reside with me, my dear?”
I asked in accents mellow—
The nigger grinned from ear to ear,
And said, “All right, old fellow!”

And so my Pete was taken home—
My pretty piccaninny!
And, not to speak of soap or comb,
His cleansing cost a guinea.

“But hang expenses!” I exclaimed,
“I’ll give him education:
A ‘nig’ is better when he’s tamed,
Perhaps, than a Caucasian.

“Ethnologists are in the wrong
About our sable brothers;
And I intend to stop the song
Of Pickering and others.”

Alas, I didn’t do it though!
Old Pickering’s conclusions
Were to the point, as issues show,
And mine were mere delusions.

My inky pet was clothed and fed
For months exceeding forty;
But to the end, it must be said,
His ways were very naughty.

When told about the Land of Morn
Above this world of Mammon,
He’d shout, with an emphatic scorn,
“Ah, gammon, gammon, gammon!”

He never lingered, like the bard,
To sniff at rose expanding.
“Me like,” he said, “em cattle-yard—
Fine smell—de smell of branding!”

The soul of man, I tried to show,
Went up beyond our vision.
“You ebber see dat fellow go?”
He asked in sheer derision.

In short, it soon occurred to me
This kid of six or seven,
Who wouldn’t learn his A B C,
Was hardly ripe for heaven.

He never lost his appetite—
He bigger grew, and bigger;
And proved, with every inch of height,
A nigger is a nigger.

And, looking from this moment back,
I have a strong persuasion
That, after all, a finished black
Is not the “clean”—Caucasian.

Dear Peter from my threshold went,
One morning in the body:
He “dropped” me, to oblige a gent—
A gent with spear and waddy!

He shelved me for a boomerang—
We never had a quarrel;
And, if a moral here doth hang,
Why let it hang—the moral!

My mournful tale its course has run—
My Pete, when last I spied him,
Was eating ’possum underdone:
He had his gin beside him.