Henry Kendall: Verses about Nature

BENEATH the shelter of the bush,
In undisturbed repose—
Unruffled by the kiss of breeze—
There lurks a smiling rose;
Beneath thine outer beauty, gleams,
In holy light enshrined,
A symbol of the blooming flower,
A pure, unspotted mind.

The lovely tint that crowns the hill
When westward sinks the sun,
The milder dazzle in the stream
That evening sits upon,
The morning blushes, mantling o’er
The face of land and sea,
They all recall to mind the charms
That are combined in thee!

In the depths of a Forest secluded and wild,
The night voices whisper in passionate numbers;
And I’m leaning again, as I did when a child,
O’er the grave where my father so quietly slumbers.
The years have rolled by with a thundering sound
But I knew, O ye woodlands, affection would know it,
And the spot which I stand on is sanctified ground
By the love that I bear to him sleeping below it.

Oh! well may the winds with a saddening moan
Go fitfully over the branches so dreary;
And well may I kneel by the time-shattered stone,
And rejoice that a rest has been found for the weary.

Another battle! and the sounds have rolled
By many a gloomy gorge and wasted plain
O’er huddled hills and mountains manifold,
Like winds that run before a heavy rain
When Autumn lops the leaves and drooping grain,
And earth lies deep in brown and cloudy gold.
My brothers, lo! our grand old England stands,
With weapons gleaming in her ready hands,
Outside the tumult! Let us watch and trust
That she will never darken in the dust
And drift of wild contention, but remain
The hope and stay of many troubled lands,
Where so she waits the issue of the fight,
Aloof; but praying “God defend the Right!”

Today, while yet the rumour filled the street,
I left your faces troubled with the thought
Of brothers to a bodeful fury wrought;
And, hurrying past a thousand twinkling feet,
With clouded heart a solitude I sought,
The haunt of many leaves--a cool retreat--
And mused of strife with untold interest fraught;
Of homes; of bloody battles to be fought;
Nor stirred till night rose stormy, and the deep
Moaned like some monster shaken in its sleep.
Then doleful sounds came up from lea and lynn
Where rain fell heavy on the gloomy deep,
As if the world, so old and sick of sin,
Had turned her face into the dark to weep.

Peace hath an altar there. The sounding feet
Of thunder and the wildering wings of rain
Against fire-rifted summits flash and beat,
And through grey upper gorges swoop and strain;
But round that hallowed mountain-spring remain,
Year after year, the days of tender heat,
And gracious nights whose lips with flowers are sweet,
And filtered lights, and lutes of soft refrain.
A still, bright pool. To men I may not tell
The secrets that its heart of water knows,
The story of a loved and lost repose;
Yet this I say to cliff and close-leaved dell:
A fitful spirit haunts yon limpid well,
Whose likeness is the faithless face of Rose.

A grace that was lent for a very few hours,
By the bountiful Spirit above us;
She sleeps like a flower in the land of the flowers,
She went ere she knew how to love us.
Her music of Heaven was strange to this sphere,
Her voice is a silence for ever;
In the bitter, wild fall of a sorrowful year,
We buried our bird by the river.

But the gold of the grass, and the green of the vine,
And the music of wind and of water,
And the torrent of song and superlative shine,
Are close to our dear little daughter.
The months of the year are all gracious to her,
A winter breath visits her never;
She sleeps like a bird in a cradle of myrrh,
By the banks of the beautiful river.

The Caves of the sea have been troubled to-day
With the water which whitens, and widens, and fills;
And a boat with our brother was driven away
By a wind that came down from the tops of the hills.
Behold I have seen on the threshold again
A face in a dazzle of hair!
Do you know that she watches the rain, and the main,
And the waves which are moaning there?
Ah, moaning and moaning there!
Now turn from your casements, and fasten your doors,
And cover your faces, and pray, if you can;
There are wails in the wind, there are sighs on the shores,
And alas, for the fate of a storm-beaten man!
Oh, dark falls the night on the rain-rutted verge,
So sad with the sound of the foam!
Oh, wild is the sweep and the swirl of the surge;
And his boat may never come home!
Ah, never and never come home!

The dauntless three! For twenty days and nights
These heroes battled with the haughty heights;
For twenty spaces of the star and sun
These Romans kept their harness buckled on;
By gaping gorges, and by cliffs austere,
These fathers struggled in the great old year.
Their feet they set on strange hills scarred by fire,
Their strong arms forced a path through brake and briar;
They fought with Nature till they reached the throne
Where morning glittered on the great UNKNOWN!
There, in a time with praise and prayer supreme,
Paused Blaxland, Lawson, Wentworth, in a dream;
There, where the silver arrows of the day
Smote slope and spire, they halted on their way.
Behind them were the conquered hills — they faced
The vast green West, with glad, strange beauty graced;
And every tone of every cave and tree
Was as a voice of splendid prophecy.

I walked through a Forest, beneath the hot noon,
On Etheline calling and calling!
One said: “She will hear you and come to you soon,
When the coolness, my brother, is falling.”
But I whispered: “O Darling, I falter with pain!”
And the thirsty leaves rustled, and hissed for the rain,
Where a wayfarer halted and slept on the plain;
And dreamt of a garden of Roses!
Of a cool sweet place,
And a nestling face
In a dance and a dazzle of Roses.
In the drought of a Desert, outwearied, I wept,
O Etheline, darkened with dolours!
But, folded in sunset, how long have you slept
By the Roses all reeling with colours?
A tree from its tresses a blossom did shake,
It fell on her face, and I feared she would wake,
So I brushed it away for her sweet sake;
In that garden of beautiful Roses!
In the dreamy perfumes
From ripe-red blooms
In a dance and a dazzle of Roses.

When underneath the brown dead grass
My weary bones are laid,
I hope I shall not see the glass
At ninety in the shade.
I trust indeed that, when I lie
Beneath the churchyard pine,
I shall not hear that startling cry
“‘Thermom’ is ninety-nine!”
If one should whisper through my sleep
“Come up and be alive,”
I’d answer—No, unless you’ll keep
The glass at sixty-five.
I might be willing if allowed
To wear old Adam’s rig,
And mix amongst the city crowd
Like Polynesian “nig”.

Far better in the sod to lie,
With pasturing pig above,
Than broil beneath a copper sky—
In sight of all I love!
Far better to be turned to grass
To feed the poley cow,
Than be the half boiled bream, alas,
That I am really now!

For cow and pig I would not hear,
And hoof I would not see;
But if these items did appear
They wouldn’t trouble me.
For ah! the pelt of mortal man
Weighs less than half a ton,
And any sight is better than
A sultry southern sun.

Sing her a song of the sun:
Fill it with tones of the stream, —
Echoes of waters that run
Glad with the gladdening gleam.
Let it be sweeter than rain,
Lit by a tropical moon:
Light in the words of the strain,
Love in the ways of the tune.
Softer than seasons of sleep:
Dearer than life at its best!
Give her a ballad to keep,
Wove of the passionate West:
Give it and say of the hours —
“Haunted and hallowed of thee,
Flower-like woman of flowers,
What shall the end of them be?”

You that have loved her so much,
Loved her asleep and awake,
Trembled because of her touch,
What have you said for her sake?
Far in the falls of the day,
Down in the meadows of myrrh,
What has she left you to say
Filled with the beauty of her?

Take her the best of your thoughts,
Let them be gentle and grave,
Say, “I have come to thy courts,
Maiden, with all that I have.”
So she may turn with her sweet
Face to your love and to you,
Learning the way to repeat
Words that are brighter than dew.

JUST when the western light
Flickered out dim,
Flushing the mountain-side,
Summit and rim,
A last, low, lingering gleam
Fell on a yellow stream,
And then there came a dream
Shining to him.

Splendours miraculous
Mixed with his pain
All like a vision of
Radiance and rain!
He faced the sea, the skies,
Old star-like thoughts did rise;
But tears were in his eyes,
Stifled in vain.

Infinite tokens of
Sorrows set free
Came in the dreaming wind
Far from the sea!
Past years about him trooped,
Fair phantoms round him stooped,
Sweet faces o’er him drooped
Sad as could be!

“This is our brother now:
Sisters, deplore
Man without purpose, like
Ship without shore!
He tracks false fire,” one said,
“But weep you—he must tread
Whereto he may be led—
Lost evermore.”

“Look,” said another,
“Summit and slope
Burn, in the mountain-land—
Basement and cope!
Till daylight, dying dim,
Faints on the world’s red rim,
We’ll tint this Dream for him
Even—with hope!”

My head is filled with olden rhymes beside this moaning sea,
But many and many a day has gone since I was dear to thee!
I know my passion fades away, and therefore oft regret
That some who love indeed can part and in the years forget.
Ah! through the twilights when we stood the wattle trees between,
We did not dream of such a time as this, fair Geraldine.
I do not say that all has gone of passion and of pain;
I yearn for many happy thoughts I shall not think again!
And often when the wind is up, and wailing round the eaves,
You sigh for withered Purpose shred and scattered like the leaves,
The Purpose blooming when we met each other on the green;
The sunset heavy in your curls, my golden Geraldine.

I think we lived a loftier life through hours of Long Ago,
For in the largened evening earth our spirits seemed to grow.
Well, that has passed, and here I stand, upon a lonely place,
While Night is stealing round the land, like Time across my face;
But I can calmly recollect our shadowy parting scene,
And swooning thoughts that had no voice — no utterance, Geraldine.

And they shook their sweetness out in their sleep
On the brink of that beautiful stream,
But it wandered along with a wearisome song
Like a lover that walks in a dream:
So the roses blew
When the winds went through,
In the moonlight so white and still;
But the river it beat
All night at the feet
Of a cold and flinty hill -
Of a hard and senseless hill!

I said, "We have often showered our loves
Upon something as dry as the dust;
And the faith that is crost, and the hearts that are lost -
Oh! how can we wittingly trust?
Like the stream which flows,
And wails as it goes.
Through the moonlight so white and still,
To beat and to beat
All night at the feet
Of a cold and flinty hill -
Of a hard and senseless hill?

"River, I stay where the sweet roses blow,
And drink of their pleasant perfumes!
Oh, why do you moan, in this wide world alone,
When so much affection here blooms?
The winds wax faint,
And the moon like a saint
Glides over the woodlands so white and still!
But you beat and you beat
All night at the feet
Of that cold and flinty hill -
Of that hard and senseless hill!"

With sweet Regret — (the dearest thing that Yesterday has left us) —
We often turn our homeless eyes to scenes whence Fate has reft us.
Here sitting by a fading flame, wild waifs of song remind me
Of Annie with her gentle ways, the Girl I left behind me.

I stood beside the surging sea, with lips of silent passion —
I faced you by the surging sea, O brows of mild repression!
I never said — “my darling, stay!” — the moments seemed to bind me
To something stifling all my words for the Girl I left behind me.

The pathos worn by common things — by every wayside flower,
Or Autumn leaf on lonely winds, revives the parting hour.
Ye swooning thoughts without a voice — ye tears which rose to blind me,
Why did she fade into the Dark, the Girl I left behind me.

At night they always come to me, the tender and true-hearted;
And in my dreams we join again the hands which now are parted;
And, looking through the gates of Sleep, the pleasant Moon doth find me
For ever wandering with my Love, the Girl I left behind me.

You know my life is incomplete, O far-off faint Ideal!
When shall I reach you from a depth of darkness which is real?
So I may mingle, soul in soul, with her that Heaven assigned me;
So she may lean upon my love, the Girl I left behind me.

They built his mound of the rough, red ground,
By the dip of a desert dell,
Where all things sweet are killed by the heat,
And scattered o'er flat and fell;
In a burning zone they left him alone,
Past the uttermost western plain,
And the nightfall dim heard his funeral hymn
In the voices of wind and rain.

The songs austere of the forests drear,
And the echoes of clift and cave,
When the dark is keen where the storm hath been,
Fleet over the far-away grave.
And through the days when the torrid rays
Strike down on a coppery gloom,
Some spirit grieves in the perished leaves,
Whose theme is that desolate tomb.

No human foot or paw of brute
Halts now where the stranger sleeps;
But cloud and star his fellows are,
And the rain that sobs and weeps.
The dingo yells by the far iron fells,
The plover is loud in the range,
But they never come near to the slumberer here,
Whose rest is a rest without change.

Ah! in his life, had he mother or wife,
To wait for his step on the floor?
Did beauty wax dim while watching for him
Who passed through the threshold no more?
Doth it trouble his head? He is one with the dead;
He lies by the alien streams;
And sweeter than sleep is death that is deep
And unvexed by the lordship of dreams.

WHEN God drave the ruthless waters
From our cornfields to the sea,
Came she where our wives and daughters
Sobbed their thanks on bended knee.
Hidden faces! there ye found her
Mute as death, and staring wild
At the shadow waxing round her
Like the presence of her child—
Of her drenched and drowning child!

Dark thoughts live when tears won’t gather;
Who can tell us what she felt?
It was human, O my Father,
If she blamed Thee while she knelt!
Ever, as a benediction
Fell like balm on all and each,
Rose a young face whose affliction
Choked and stayed the founts of speech—
Stayed and shut the founts of speech!

Often doth she sit and ponder
Over gleams of happy hair!
How her white hands used to wander,
Like a flood of moonlight there!
Lord—our Lord! Thou know’st her weakness:
Give her faith that she may pray;
And the subtle strength of meekness,
Lest she falter by the way—
Falter, fainting, by the way!

“Darling!” saith she, wildly moaning
Where the grass-grown silence lies,
“Is there rest from sobs and groaning—
Rest with you beyond the skies?
Child of mine, so far above me!
Late it waxeth—dark and late;
Will the love with which I love thee,
Lift me where you sit and wait—
Darling! where you sit and wait?”

Amongst the thunder-splintered caves
On Ocean's long and windy shore,
I catch the voice of dying waves
Below the ridges old and hoar;
The spray descends in silver showers,
And lovely whispers come and go,
Like echoes from the happy hours
I never more may hope to know!
The low mimosa droops with locks
Of yellow hair, in dewy glade,
While far above the caverned rocks
I hear the dark Bellambi's Maid!

The moonlight dreams upon the sail
That drives the restless ship to sea;
The clouds troop past the mountain vale,
And sink like spirits down the lee;
The foggy peak of Corrimal,
Uplifted, bears the pallid glow
That streams from yonder airy hall
And robes the sleeping hills below;
The wandering meteors of the sky
Beneath the distant waters wade,
While mystic music hurries by -
The songs of dark Bellambi's Maid!

Why comes your voice, you lonely One,
Along the wild harp's wailing strings?
Have not our hours of meeting gone,
Like fading dreams on phantom wings?
Are not the grasses round your grave
Yet springing green and fresh to view?
And does the gleam on Ocean's wave
Tide gladness now to me and you?
Oh! cold and cheerless falls the night
On withered hearts and hopes decayed:
And I have seen but little light
Since died the dark Bellambi's Maid!

AH, often do I wait and watch,
And look up, straining through the Real
With longing eyes, my friend, to catch
Faint glimpses of your white Ideal.

I know she loved to rest her feet
By slumbrous seas and hidden strand;
But mostly hints of her I meet
On moony spots of mountain land.

I’ve never reached her shining place,
And only cross at times a gleam;
As one might pass a fleeting face
Just on the outside of a Dream.

But you may climb, her happy Choice!
She knows your step, the maiden true,
And ever when she hears your voice,
She turns and sits and waits for you.

How sweet to rest on breezy crest
With such a Love, what time the Morn
Looks from his halls of rosy rest,
Across green miles of gleaming corn!

How sweet to find a leafy nook,
When bees are out, and Day burns mute,
Where you may hear a passion’d brook
Play past you, like a mellow flute!

Or, turning from the sunken sun,
On fields of dim delight to lie—
To close your eyes and muse upon
The twilight’s strange divinity!

Or through the Night’s mysterious noon,
While Sound lies hushed among the trees,
To sit and watch a mirror’d moon
Float over silver-sleeping seas!

Oh, vain regret! why should I stay
To think and dream of joys unknown?
You walk with her from day to day,
I faint afar off—and alone.

Feet of the flying, and fierce
Tops of the sharp-headed spear,
Hard by the thickets that pierce,
Lo! they are nimble and near.
Women are we, and the wives
Strong Arrawatta hath won;
Weary because of our lives,
Sick of the face of the sun.

Koola, our love and our light,
What have they done unto you?
Man of the star-reaching sight,
Dipped in the fire and the dew.

Black-headed snakes in the grass
Struck at the fleet-footed lord—
Still is his voice at the pass,
Soundless his step at the ford.

Far by the forested glen,
Starkly he lies in the rain;
Kings of the council of men
Shout for their leader in vain.

Yea, and the fish-river clear
Never shall blacken below
Spear and the shadow of spear,
Bow and the shadow of bow.

Hunter and climber of trees,
Now doth his tomahawk rust,
(Dread of the cunning wild bees),
Hidden in hillocks of dust.

We, who were followed and bound,
Dashed under foot by the foe,
Sit with our eyes to the ground,
Faint from the brand and the blow.

Dumb with the sorrow that kills,
Sorrow for brother and chief,
Terror of thundering hills,
Having no hope in our grief,

Seeing the fathers are far
Seeking the spoils of the dead
Left on the path of the war,
Matted and mangled and red.

A HEAP of low, dark, rocky coast,
Unknown to foot or feather!
A sea-voice moaning like a ghost;
And fits of fiery weather!

The flying Syrinx turned and sped
By dim, mysterious hollows,
Where night is black, and day is red,
And frost the fire-wind follows.

Strong, heavy footfalls in the wake
Came up with flights of water:
The gods were mournful for the sake
Of Ladon’s lovely daughter.

For when she came to spike and spine,
Where reef and river gather,
Her feet were sore with shell and chine;
She could not travel farther.

Across a naked strait of land
Blown sleet and surge were humming;
But trammelled with the shifting sand,
She heard the monster coming!

A thing of hoofs and horns and lust:
A gaunt, goat-footed stranger!
She bowed her body in the dust
And called on Zeus to change her;

And called on Hermes, fair and fleet,
And her of hounds and quiver,
To hide her in the thickets sweet
That sighed above the river.

So he that sits on flaming wheels,
And rules the sea and thunder,
Caught up the satyr by the heels
And tore his skirts asunder.

While Arcas, of the glittering plumes,
Took Ladon’s daughter lightly,
And set her in the gracious glooms
That mix with moon-mist nightly;

And touched her lips with wild-flower wine,
And changed her body slowly,
Till, in soft reeds of song and shine,
Her life was hidden wholly.

A strong sea-wind flies up and sings
Across the blown-wet border,
Whose stormy echo runs and rings
Like bells in wild disorder.

Fierce breath hath vexed the foreland's face,
It glistens, glooms, and glistens;
But deep within this quiet place
Sweet Illa lies and listens.

Sweet Illa of the shining sands,
She sleeps in shady hollows,
Where August flits with flowerful hands,
And silver Summer follows.

Far up the naked hills is heard
A noise of many waters,
But green-haired Illa lies unstirred
Amongst her star-like daughters.

The tempest, pent in moaning ways,
Awakes the shepherd yonder,
But Illa dreams unknown to days
Whose wings are wind and thunder.

Here fairy hands and floral feet
Are brought by bright October;
Here, stained with grapes and smit with heat,
Comes Autumn, sweet and sober.

Here lovers rest, what time the red
And yellow colours mingle,
And daylight droops with dying head
Beyond the western dingle.

And here, from month to month, the time
Is kissed by peace and pleasure,
While Nature sings her woodland rhyme
And hoards her woodland treasure.

Ah, Illa Creek! ere evening spreads
Her wings o'er towns unshaded,
How oft we seek thy mossy beds
To lave our foreheads faded!

For, let me whisper, then we find
The strength that lives, nor falters,
In wood and water, waste and wind,
And hidden mountain altars.

Like drifts of balm from cedared glens, those darling memories come,
With soft low songs, and dear old tales, familiar to our home.
Then breathe again that faint refrain, so tender, sad, and true,
My soul turns round with listening eyes unto the harp and you!
The fragments of a broken Past are floating down the tide,
And she comes gleaming through the dark, my love, my life, my bride!
Oh! sit and sing — I know her well, that phantom deadly fair
With large surprise, and sudden sighs, and streaming midnight hair!
I know her well, for face to face we stood amongst the sheaves,
Our voices mingling with a mist of music in the leaves!
I know her well, for hand in hand we walked beside the sea,
And heard the huddling waters boom beneath this old Figtree.
God help the man that goes abroad amongst the windy pines,
And wanders, like a gloomy bat, where never morning shines!
That steals about amidst the rout of broken stones and graves,
When round the cliffs the merry skiffs go scudding through the waves;
When, down the bay, the children play, and scamper on the sand,
And Life and Mirth illume the Earth, and Beauty fills the Land!
God help the man! He only hears and fears the sleepless cries
Of smitten Love — of homeless Love and moaning Memories.
Oh! when a rhyme of olden time is sung by one so dear,
I feel again the sweetest pain I’ve known for many a year;
And from a deep, dull sea of sleep faint fancies come to me,
And I forget how lone we sit beneath this old Figtree.

She knelt by the dead, in her passionate grief,
Beneath a weird forest of Tanna;
She kissed the stern brow of her father and chief,
And cursed the dark race of Alkanna.
With faces as wild as the clouds in the rain,
The sons of Kerrara came down to the plain,
And spoke to the mourner and buried the slain.
Oh, the glory that died with Deloya!

'Wahina,' they whispered, 'Alkanna lies low,
And the ghost of thy sire hath been gladdened,
For the men of his people have fought with the foe
Till the rivers of Warra are reddened!'
She lifted her eyes to the glimmering hill,
Then spoke, with a voice like a musical rill,
'The time is too short; can I sojourn here still?'
Oh, the Youth that was sad for Deloya!

'Wahina, why linger,' Annatanam said,
'When the tent of a chieftain is lonely?
There are others who grieve for the light that has fled,
And one who waits here for you only!'
'Go - leave me!' she cried. 'I would fain be alone;
I must stay where the trees and the wild waters moan;
For my heart is as cold as a wave-beaten stone.'
Oh, the Beauty that was broke for Deloya!

'Wahina, why weep o'er a handful of dust,
When the souls of the brave are approaching?
Oh, look to the fires that are lit for the just,
And the mighty who sleep in Arrochin!'
But she turned from the glare of the flame-smitten sea,
And a cry, like a whirlwind, came over the lea -
'Away to the mountains and leave her with me!'
Oh, the heart that was broke for Deloya!

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.

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.

IT LIES amongst the sleeping stones,
Far down the hidden mountain glade;
And past its brink the torrent moans
For ever in a dreamy shade.

A little patch of dark-green moss,
Whose softness grew of quiet ways
(With all its deep, delicious floss)
In slumb’rous suns of summer days.

You know the place? With pleasant tints
The broken sunset lights the bowers;
And then the woods are full with hints
Of distant, dear, voluptuous flowers!

’Tis often now the pilgrim turns
A faded face towards that seat,
And cools his brow amongst the ferns;
The runnel dabbling at his feet.

There fierce December seldom goes,
With scorching step and dust and drouth;
But, soft and low, October blows
Sweet odours from her dewy mouth.

And Autumn, like a gipsy bold,
Doth gather near it grapes and grain,
Ere Winter comes, the woodman old,
To lop the leaves in wind and rain.

O, greenest moss of mountain glen,
The face of Rose is known to thee;
But we shall never share with men
A knowledge dear to love and me!

For are they not between us saved,
The words my darling used to say,
What time the western waters laved
The forehead of the fainting day?

Cool comfort had we on your breast
While yet the fervid noon burned mute
O’er barley field and barren crest,
And leagues of gardens flushed with fruit.

Oh, sweet and low, we whispered so,
And sucked the pulp of plum and peach;
But it was many years ago,
When each, you know, was loved of each.

He crouches, and buries his face on his knees,
And hides in the dark of his hair;
For he cannot look up to the storm-smitten trees,
Or think of the loneliness there -
Of the loss and the loneliness there.

The wallaroos grope through the tufts of the grass,
And turn to their coverts for fear;
But he sits in the ashes and lets them pass
Where the boomerangs sleep with the spear -
With the nullah, the sling and the spear.

Uloola, behold him! The thunder that breaks
On the tops of the rocks with the rain,
And the wind which drives up with the salt of the lakes,
Have made him a hunter again -
A hunter and fisher again.

For his eyes have been full with a smouldering thought;
But he dreams of the hunts of yore,
And of foes that he sought, and of fights that he fought
With those who will battle no more -
Who will go to the battle no more.

It is well that the water which tumbles and fills
Goes moaning and moaning along;
For an echo rolls out from the sides of the hills,
And he starts at a wonderful song -
At the sound of a wonderful song.

And he sees through the rents of the scattering fogs
The corroboree warlike and grim,
And the lubra who sat by the fire on the logs,
To watch, like a mourner, for him -
Like a mother and mourner for him.

Will he go in his sleep from these desolate lands,
Like a chief, to the rest of his race,
With the honey-voiced woman who beckons and stands,
And gleams like a dream in his face -
Like a marvellous dream in his face?

Said the yellow-haired Spirit of Spring
To the white-footed Spirit of Snow,
“On the wings of the tempest take wing,
And leave me the valleys, and go.”
And, straightway, the streams were unchained,
And the frost-fettered torrents broke free,
And the strength of the winter-wind waned
In the dawn of a light on the sea.
Then a morning-breeze followed and fell,
And the woods were alive and astir
With the pulse of a song in the dell,
And a whisper of day in the fir.
Swift rings of sweet water were rolled
Down the ways where the lily-leaves grew,
And the green, and the white, and the gold,
Were wedded with purple and blue.

But the lips of the flower of the rose
Said, “where is the ending hereof?
Is it sweet with you, life, at the close?
Is it sad to be emptied of love?”
And the voice of the flower of the peach
Was tender and touching in tone,
“When each has been grafted on each,
It is sorrow to live on alone.”

Then the leaves of the flower of the vine
Said, “what will there be in the day
When the reapers are red with my wine,
And the forests are yellow and grey?”
And the tremulous flower of the quince
Made answer, “three seasons ago
My sisters were star-like, but since,
Their graves have been made in the snow.”

Then the whispering flower of the fern
Said, “who will be sad at the death,
When Summer blows over the burn,
With the fierceness of fire in her breath?”
And the mouth of the flower of the sedge
Was opened to murmur and sigh,
“Sweet wind-breaths that pause at the edge
Of the nightfall, and falter, and die.”

Where in a green, moist, myrtle dell
The torrent voice rings strong
And clear, above a star-bright well,
I write this woodland song.

The melodies of many leaves
Float in a fragrant zone;
And here are flowers by deep-mossed eaves
That day has never known.

I'll weave a garland out of these,
The darlings of the birds,
And send it over singing seas
With certain sunny words -

With certain words alive with light
Of welcome for a thing
Of promise, born beneath the white,
Soft afternoon of Spring.

The faithful few have waited long
A life like this to see;
And they will understand the song
That flows to-day from me.

May every page within this book
Be as a radiant hour;
Or like a bank of mountain brook,
All flower and leaf and flower.

May all the strength and all the grace
Of Letters make it beam
As beams a lawn whose lovely face
Is as a glorious dream.

And may that strange divinity
That men call Genius write
Some deathless thing in days to be,
To fill those days with light.

Here where the free, frank waters run,
I pray this book may grow
A sacred candour like the sun
Above the morning snow.

May noble thoughts in faultless words -
In clean white diction - make
It shine as shines the home of birds
And moss and leaf and lake.

This fair fresh life with joy I hail,
And this belief express,
Its days will be a brilliant tale
Of effort and success.

Here ends my song; I have a dream
Of beauty like the grace
Which lies upon the land of stream
In yonder mountain place.

The heart that once was rich with light,
And happy in your grace,
Now lieth cold beneath the scorn
That gathers on your face;
And every joy it knew before,
And every templed dream,
Is paler than the dying flash
On yonder mountain stream.
The soul, regretting foundered bliss
Amid the wreck of years,
Hath mourned it with intensity
Too deep for human tears!

The forest fadeth underneath
The blast that rushes by --
The dripping leaves are white with death,
But Love will never die!
We both have seen the starry moss
That clings where Ruin reigns,
And ~one~ must know ~his~ lonely breast
Affection still retains;
Through all the sweetest hopes of life,
That clustered round and round,
Are lying now, like withered things,
Forsaken -- on the ground.

'Tis hard to think of what we were,
And what we might have been,
Had not an evil spirit crept
Across the tranquil scene:
Had fervent feelings in your soul
Not failed nor ceased to shine
As pure as those existing on,
And burning still in mine.
Had every treasure at your feet
That I was wont to pour,
Been never thrown like worthless weeds
Upon a barren shore!

The bitter edge of grief has passed,
I would not now upbraid;
Or count to you the broken vows,
So often idly made!
I would not cross your path to chase
The falsehood from your brow --
I ~know~, with all that borrowed light,
You are not happy now:
Since those that once have trampled down
Affection's early claim,
Have lost a peace they need not hope
To find on earth again.

Lo! in storms, the triple-headed
Hill, whose dreaded
Bases battle with the seas,
Looms across fierce widths of fleeting
Waters beating
Evermore on roaring leas!
Arakoon, the black, the lonely!
Housed with only
Cloud and rain-wind, mist and damp;
Round whose foam-drenched feet and nether
Depths, together
Sullen sprites of thunder tramp!

There the East hums loud and surly,
Late and early,
Through the chasms and the caves,
And across the naked verges
Leap the surges!
White and wailing waifs of waves.

Day by day the sea-fogs gathered—
Tempest-fathered—
Pitch their tents on yonder peak,
Yellow drifts and fragments lying
Where the flying
Torrents chafe the cloven creek!

And at nightfall, when the driven
Bolts of heaven
Smite the rock and break the bluff,
Thither troop the elves whose home is
Where the foam is,
And the echo and the clough.

Ever girt about with noises,
Stormy voices,
And the salt breath of the Strait,
Stands the steadfast Mountain Giant,
Grim, reliant,
Dark as Death, and firm as Fate.

So when trouble treads, like thunder,
Weak men under—
Treads and breaks the thews of these—
Set thyself to bear it bravely,
Greatly, gravely,
Like the hill in yonder seas;

Since the wrestling and endurance
Give assurance
To the faint at bay with pain,
That no soul to strong endeavour
Yoked for ever,
Works against the tide in vain.

Men have said that ye were sleeping—
Hurl, Australians, back the lie;
Whet the swords you have in keeping,
Forward stand to do or die!
Hear ye not, across the ocean,
Echoes of the distant fray,
Sounds of loud and fierce commotion,
Swiftly sweeping on the way?
Hearts have woke from sluggish trances,
Woke to know their native worth;
Freedom with her train advances—
Freedom newly sprung to birth.
Despots start from thrones affrighted—
Tyrants hear the angry tread;
Where the slaves, whose prayers were slighted,
Marching—draw the sword instead.
If the men of other nations
Dash their fetters to the ground;
When the foeman seeks your stations,
Will you willing slaves be found?
You the sons of hero fathers—
Sires that bled at Waterloo!
No! Your indignation gathers—
To your old traditions true;
Should the cannon’s iron rattle
Sound between your harbour doors,
You will rise to wage the battle
In a just and righteous cause.
Patriot fires will scorch Oppression
Should it dare to draw too near;
And the tide of bold Aggression
Must be stayed from coming here.

Look upon familiar places,
Mountain, river, hill and glade;
Look upon those beauteous faces,
Turning up to you for aid.
Think ye, in the time of danger,
When that threatening moment comes—
Will ye let the heartless stranger
Drive your kindred from their homes?
By the prayers which rise above you,
When you face him on the shore,
By the forms of those that love you—
Greet him with the rifle’s roar!
While an arm can wield a sabre,
While you yet can lift a hand,
Strike and teach your hostile neighbour,
This is Freedom’s chosen land.

The wild night comes like an owl to its lair,
The black clouds follow fast,
And the sun-gleams die, and the lightnings glare,
And the ships go heaving past, past, past -
The ships go heaving past!
Bar the doors, and higher, higher
Pile the faggots on the fire:
Now abroad, by many a light,
Empty seats there are to-night -
Empty seats that none may fill,
For the storm grows louder still:
How it surges and swells through the gorges and dells,
Under the ledges and over the lea,
Where a watery sound goeth moaning around -
God help our men at sea!

Oh! never a tempest blew on the shore
But that some heart did moan
For a darling voice it would hear no more
And a face that had left it lone, lone, lone -
A face that had left it lone!
I am watching by a pane
Darkened with the gusty rain,
Watching, through a mist of tears,
Sad with thoughts of other years,
For a brother I did miss
In a stormy time like this.
Ah! the torrent howls past, like a fiend on the blast,
Under the ledges and over the lea;
And the pent waters gleam, and the wild surges scream -
God help our men at sea!

Ah, Lord! they may grope through the dark to find
Thy hand within the gale;
And cries may rise on the wings of the wind
From mariners weary and pale, pale, pale -
From mariners weary and pale!
'Tis a fearful thing to know,
While the storm-winds loudly blow,
That a man can sometimes come
Too near to his father's home;
So that he shall kneel and say,
'Lord, I would be far away!'
Ho! the hurricanes roar round a dangerous shore,
Under the ledges and over the lea;
And there twinkles a light on the billows so white -
God help our men at sea!

ALL NIGHT long the sea out yonder—all night long the wailful sea,
Vext of winds and many thunders, seeketh rest unceasingly!
Seeketh rest in dens of tempest, where, like one distraught with pain,
Shouts the wild-eyed sprite, Confusion—seeketh rest, and moans in vain:
Ah! but you should hear it calling, calling when the haggard sky
Takes the darks and damps of Winter with the mournful marsh-fowl’s cry;
Even while the strong, swift torrents from the rainy ridges come
Leaping down and breaking backwards—million-coloured shapes of foam!
Then, and then, the sea out yonder chiefly looketh for the boon
Portioned to the pleasant valleys and the grave sweet summer moon:
Boon of Peace, the still, the saintly spirit of the dew-dells deep—
Yellow dells and hollows haunted by the soft, dim dreams of sleep.

All night long the flying water breaks upon the stubborn rocks—
Ooze-filled forelands burnt and blackened, smit and scarred with lightning shocks;
But above the tender sea-thrift, but beyond the flowering fern,
Runs a little pathway westward—pathway quaint with turn on turn—
Westward trending, thus it leads to shelving shores and slopes of mist:
Sleeping shores, and glassy bays of green and gold and amethyst!
There tread gently—gently, pilgrim; there with thoughtful eyes look round;
Cross thy breast and bless the silence: lo, the place is holy ground!
Holy ground for ever, stranger! All the quiet silver lights
Dropping from the starry heavens through the soft Australian nights—
Dropping on those lone grave-grasses—come serene, unbroken, clear,
Like the love of God the Father, falling, falling, year by year!
Yea, and like a Voice supernal, there the daily wind doth blow
In the leaves above the sailor buried ninety years ago.

Turn from the ways of this Woman! Campaspe we call her by name -
She is fairer than flowers of the fire -
she is brighter than brightness of flame.
As a song that strikes swift to the heart
with the beat of the blood of the South,
And a light and a leap and a smart, is the play of her perilous mouth.
Her eyes are as splendours that break in the rain at the set of the sun,
But turn from the steps of Campaspe - a Woman to look at and shun!

Dost thou know of the cunning of Beauty? Take heed to thyself and beware
Of the trap in the droop in the raiment - the snare in the folds of the hair!
She is fulgent in flashes of pearl, the breeze with her breathing is sweet,
But fly from the face of the girl - there is death in the fall of her feet!
Is she maiden or marvel of marble? Oh, rather a tigress at wait
To pounce on thy soul for her pastime - a leopard for love or for hate.

Woman of shadow and furnace! She biteth her lips to restrain
Speech that springs out when she sleepeth,
by the stirs and the starts of her pain.
As music half-shapen of sorrow, with its wants and its infinite wail,
Is the voice of Campaspe, the beauty at bay with her passion dead-pale.
Go out from the courts of her loving, nor tempt the fierce dance of desire
Where thy life would be shrivelled like stubble
in the stress and the fervour of fire!

I know of one, gentle as moonlight - she is sad as the shine of the moon,
But touching the ways of her eyes are: she comes to my soul like a tune -
Like a tune that is filled with faint voices
of the loved and the lost and the lone,
Doth this stranger abide with my silence: like a tune with a tremulous tone.
The leopard, we call her, Campaspe! I pluck at a rose and I stir
To think of this sweet-hearted maiden - what name is too tender for her?

THE SONG of the water
Doomed ever to roam,
A beautiful exile,
Afar from its home.

The cliffs on the mountain,
The grand and the gray,
They took the bright creature
And hurled it away!

I heard the wild downfall,
And knew it must spill
A passionate heart out
All over the hill.

Oh! was it a daughter
Of sorrow and sin,
That they threw it so madly
Down into the lynn?
. . . . .
And listen, my Sister,
For this is the song
The Waterfall taught me
The ridges among:—

“Oh where are the shadows
So cool and so sweet
And the rocks,” saith the water,
“With the moss on their feet?

“Oh, where are my playmates
The wind and the flowers—
The golden and purple—
Of honey-sweet bowers,

“Mine eyes have been blinded
Because of the sun;
And moaning and moaning
I listlessly run.

“These hills are so flinty!—
Ah! tell me, dark Earth,
What valley leads back to
The place of my birth?—

“What valley leads up to
The haunts where a child
Of the caverns I sported,
The free and the wild?

“There lift me,”—it crieth,
“I faint from the heat;
With a sob for the shadows
So cool and so sweet.”

Ye rocks, that look over
With never a tear,
I yearn for one half of
The wasted love here!

My sister so wistful,
You know I believe,
Like a child for the mountains
This water doth grieve.

Ah! you with the blue eyes
And golden-brown hair,
Come closer and closer
And truly declare:—

Supposing a darling
Once happened to sin,
In a passionate space,
Would you carry her in—

If your fathers and mothers,
The grand and the gray,
Had taken the weak one
And hurled her away?

LOW as a lute, my love, beneath the call
Of storm, I hear a melancholy wind;
The memorably mournful wind of yore
Which is the very brother of the one
That wanders, like a hermit, by the mound
Of Death, in lone Annatanam. A song
Was shaped for this, what time we heard outside
The gentle falling of the faded leaf
In quiet noons: a song whose theme doth turn
On gaps of Ruin and the gay-green clifts
Beneath the summits haunted by the moon.
Yea, much it travels to the dens of dole;
And in the midst of this strange rhyme, my lords,
Our Desolation like a phantom sits
With wasted cheeks and eyes that cannot weep
And fastened lips crampt up in marvellous pain.

A song in whose voice is the voice of the foam
And the rhyme of the wintering wave,
And the tongue of the things that eternally roam
In forest, in fell or in cave;
But mostly ’tis like to the Wind without home
In the glen of a desolate grave—
Of a deep and desolate grave.

The torrent flies over the thunder-struck clift
With many and many a call;
The leaves are swept down, and a dolorous drift
Is hurried away with the fall.
But mostly ’tis like the Wind without home
In the glen of a desolate grave—
Of a deep and desolate grave.

Whoever goes thither by night or by day
Must mutter, O Father, to Thee,
For the shadows that startle, the sounds that waylay
Are heavy to hear and to see;
And a step and a moan and a whisper for aye
Have made it a sorrow to be—
A sorrow of sorrows to be.

Oh! cover your faces and shudder, and turn
And hide in the dark of your hair,
Nor look to the Glen in the Mountains, to learn
Of the mystery mouldering there;
But rather sit low in the ashes and urn
Dead hopes in your mighty despair—
In the depths of your mighty despair.

Gloomy cliffs, so worn and wasted with the washing of the waves,
Are ye not like giant tombstones round those lonely ocean graves?
Are ye not the sad memorials, telling of a mighty grief —
Dark with records ground and lettered into caverned rock and reef?
Oh! ye show them, and I know them, and my thoughts in mourning go
Down amongst your sunless chasms, deep into the surf below!
Oh! ye bear them, and declare them, and o’er every cleft and scar,
I have wept for dear dead brothers perished in the lost Dunbar!
Ye smitten — ye battered,
And splintered and shattered
Cliffs of the Sea!
Restless waves, so dim with dreams of sudden storms and gusty surge,
Roaring like a gathered whirlwind reeling round a mountain verge,
Were ye not like loosened maniacs, in the night when Beauty pale
Called upon her God, beseeching through the uproar of the gale?
Were ye not like maddened demons while young children faint with fear
Cried and cried and cried for succour, and no helping hand was near?
Oh, the sorrow of the morrow! — lamentations near and far! —
Oh, the sobs for dear dead sisters perished in the lost Dunbar! —
Ye ruthless, unsated,
And hateful, and hated
Waves of the Sea!

Ay, we stooped and moaned in darkness —
eyes might strain and hearts might plead,
For their darlings crying wildly, they would never rise nor heed!
Ay, we yearned into their faces looking for the life in vain,
Wailing like to children blinded with a mist of sudden pain!
Dear hands clenched, and dear eyes rigid in a stern and stony stare,
Dear lips white from past affliction, dead to all our mad despair,
Ah, the groaning and the moaning — ah, the thoughts which rise in tears
When we turn to all those loved ones, looking backward five long years!
The fathers and mothers,
The sisters and brothers
Drowned at Sea!

Dim dreams it hath of singing ways,
Of far-off woodland water-heads,
And shining ends of April days
Amongst the yellow runnel-beds.

Stoop closer to the ruined wall,
Whereon the wilful wilding sleeps,
As if its home were waterfall
By dripping clefts and shadowy steeps.

A little waif, whose beauty takes
A touching tone because it dwells
So far away from mountain lakes,
And lily leaves, and lightening fells.

Deep hidden in delicious floss
It nestles, sister, from the heat -
A gracious growth of tender moss
Whose nights are soft, whose days are sweet.

Swift gleams across its petals run
With winds that hum a pleasant tune,
Serene surprises of the sun,
And whispers from the lips of noon.

The evening-coloured apple-trees
Are faint with July's frosty breath.
But lo! this stranger getteth ease,
And shines amidst the strays of Death.

And at the turning of the year,
When August wanders in the cold,
The raiment of the nursling here
Is rich with green and glad with gold.

Oh, friend of mine, to one whose eyes
Are vexed because of alien things,
For ever in the wall moss lies
The peace of hills and hidden springs.

From faithless lips and fickle lights
The tired pilgrim sets his face,
And thinketh here of sounds and sights
In many a lovely forest-place.

And when by sudden fits and starts
The sunset on the moss doth burn,
He often dreams, and, lo! the marts
And streets are changed to dells of fern.

For, let me say, the wilding placed
By hands unseen amongst these stones,
Restores a Past by Time effaced,
Lost loves and long-forgotten tones!

As sometimes songs and scenes of old
Come faintly unto you and me,
When winds are wailing in the cold,
And rains are sobbing on the sea.

Euroka, go over the tops of the hill,
For the ~Death-clouds~ have passed us to-day,
And we'll cry in the dark for the foot-falls still,
And the tracks which are fading away!
Let them yell to their lubras, the Bulginbah dogs,
And say how our brothers were slain,
We shall wipe out our grief in the blood of their chief,
And twenty more dead on the plain -
On the blood-spattered spurs of the plain!
But the low winds sigh,
And the dead leaves fly,
Where our warriors lie,
In the dingoes' den - in the white-cedar glen
On the banks of the gloomy Urara!
Urara! Urara!
On the banks of the gloomy Urara!

The Wallaroos grope through the tufts of the grass,
And crawl to their coverts for fear;
But we'll sit in the ashes and let them pass
Where the boomerangs sleep with the spear!
Oh! our hearts will be lonely and low to-night
When we think of the hunts of yore;
And the foes that we sought, and the fights which we fought,
With those who will battle no more -
Who will go to the battle no more!
For the dull winds sigh,
And the dead leaves fly,
Where our warriors lie,
In the dingoes' den - in the white-cedar glen
On the banks of the gloomy Urara!
Urara! Urara!
On the banks of the gloomy Urara!

Oh! the gorges and gullies are black with crows,
And they feast on the flesh of the brave;
But the forest is loud with the howls of our foes
For those whom they never can save!
Let us crouch with our faces down to our knees,
And hide in the dark of our hair;
For we will not return where the camp-fires burn,
And see what is smouldering there -
What is smouldering, mouldering there!
Where the sad winds sigh -
The dead leaves fly,
And our warriors lie;
In the dingoes' den - in the white-cedar glen
On the banks of the gloomy Urara!
Urara! Urara!
On the banks of the gloomy Urara!