Henry Kendall: Verses about Sea

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!

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!”

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!

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.

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!

Where Hornby, like a mighty fallen star,
Burns through the darkness with a splendid ring
Of tenfold light, and where the awful face
Of Sydney’s northern headland stares all night
O’er dark, determined waters from the east,
From year to year a wild, Titanic voice
Of fierce aggressive sea shoots up and makes, —
When storm sails high through drifts of driving sleet,
And in the days when limpid waters glass
December’s sunny hair and forest face, —
A roaring down by immemorial caves,
A thunder in the everlasting hills.
But calm and lucid as an English lake,
Beloved by beams and wooed by wind and wing,
Shut in from tempest-trampled wastes of wave,
And sheltered from white wraths of surge by walls —
Grand ramparts founded by the hand of God,
The lordly Harbour gleams. Yea, like a shield
Of marvellous gold dropped in his fiery flight
By some lost angel in the elder days,
When Satan faced and fought Omnipotence,
It shines amongst fair, flowering hills, and flows
By dells of glimmering greenness manifold.
And all day long, when soft-eyed Spring comes round
With gracious gifts of bird and leaf and grass —
And through the noon, when sumptuous Summer sleeps
By yellowing runnels under beetling cliffs,
This royal water blossoms far and wide
With ships from all the corners of the world.

And while sweet Autumn with her gipsy face
Stands in the gardens, splashed from heel to thigh
With spinning vine-blood — yea, and when the mild,
Wan face of our Australian Winter looks
Across the congregated southern fens,
Then low, melodious, shell-like songs are heard
Beneath proud hulls and pompous clouds of sail,
By yellow beaches under lisping leaves
And hidden nooks to Youth and Beauty dear,
And where the ear may catch the counter-voice
Of Ocean travelling over far, blue tracts.

Moreover, when the moon is gazing down
Upon her lovely reflex in the wave,
(What time she, sitting in the zenith, makes
A silver silence over stirless woods),
Then, where its echoes start at sudden bells,
And where its waters gleam with flying lights,
The haven lies, in all its beauty clad,
More lovely even than the golden lakes
The poet saw, while dreaming splendid dreams
Which showed his soul the far Hesperides.

Towards the hills of Jamberoo
Some few fantastic shadows haste,
Uplit with fires
Like castle spires
Outshining through a mirage waste.
Behold, a mournful glory sits
On feathered ferns and woven brakes,
Where sobbing wild like restless child
The gusty breeze of evening wakes!
Methinks I hear on every breath
A lofty tone go passing by,
That whispers -- "Weave,
Though wood winds grieve,
The fadeless blooms of Poesy!"

A spirit hand has been abroad --
An evil hand to pluck the flowers --
A world of wealth,
And blooming health
Has gone from fragrant seaside bowers.
The twilight waxeth dim and dark,
The sad waves mutter sounds of woe,
But the evergreen retains its sheen,
And happy hearts exist below;
But pleasure sparkles on the sward,
And voices utter words of bliss,
And while my bride
Sits by my side,
Oh, where's the scene surpassing this?

Kiama slumbers, robed with mist,
All glittering in the dewy light
That, brooding o'er
The shingly shore,
Lies resting in the arms of Night;
And foam-flecked crags with surges chill,
And rocks embraced of cold-lipped spray,
Are moaning loud where billows crowd
In angry numbers up the bay.
The holy stars come looking down
On windy heights and swarthy strand,
And Life and Love --
The cliffs above --
Are sitting fondly hand in hand.

I hear a music inwardly,
That floods my soul with thoughts of joy;
Within my heart
Emotions start
That Time may still but ne'er destroy.
An ancient Spring revives itself,
And days which made the past divine;
And rich warm gleams from golden dreams,
All glorious in their summer shine;
And songs of half forgotten hours,
And many a sweet melodious strain,
Which still shall rise
Beneath the skies
When all things else have died again.

A white sail glimmers out at sea --
A vessel walking in her sleep;
Some Power goes past
That bends the mast,
While frighted waves to leeward leap.
The moonshine veils the naked sand
And ripples upward with the tide,
As underground there rolls a sound
From where the caverned waters glide.
A face that bears affection's glow,
The soul that speaks from gentle eyes,
And joy which slips
From loving lips
Have made this spot my Paradise!

LIKE one who meets a staggering blow,
The stout old ship doth reel,
And waters vast go seething past—
But will it last, this fearful blast,
On straining shroud and groaning mast,
O sailor at the wheel?

His face is smitten with the wind,
His cheeks are chilled with rain;
And you were right, his hair is white,
But eyes are calm and heart is light
He does not fear the strife to-night,
He knows the roaring main.

Ho, Sailor! Will to-morrow bring
The hours of pleasant rest?
An answer low—“I do not know,
The thunders grow and far winds blow,
But storms may come and storms may go—
Our God, He judgeth best!”

Now you are right, brave mariner,
But we are not like you;
We, used to shore, our fates deplore,
And fear the more when waters roar;
So few amongst us look before,
Or stop to think that Heaven is o’er—
Ah! what you say is true.

And those who go abroad in ships,
Who seldom see the land,
But sail and stray so far away,
Should trust and pray, for are not they,
When Darkness blinds them on their way,
All guided by God’s hand?

But you are wrinkled, grey and worn;
’Tis time you dwelt in peace!
Your prime is past; we fail so fast;
You may not last through every blast,
And, oh, ’tis fearful to be cast
Amongst the smothering seas!

Is there no absent face to love
That you must live alone?
If faith did fade, if friends betrayed,
And turned, and staid resolves you’d made,
Ah, still ’tis pleasant to be laid
Where you at least are known.

The answer slides betwixt our words—
“The season shines and glooms
On ship and strand, on sea and land,
But life must go and Time is spanned,
As well you know when out you stand
With Death amongst the tombs!

“It matters not to one so old
Who mourns when Fate comes round,
And one may sleep down in the deep
As well as those beneath the heap
That fifty stormy years will sweep
And trample to the ground.”

Your speech is wise, brave mariner,
And we would let you be;
You speak with truth, you strive to soothe;
But, oh, the wrecks of Love and Truth,
What say you to our tears for Youth
And Beauty drowned at sea?

“Oh, talk not of the Beauty lost,
Since first these decks I trod
The hopeless stare on faces fair,
The streaming, bare, dishevelled hair,
The wild despair, the sinking—where,
Oh where, oh where?— My God!”

In a far-away glen of the hills,
Where the bird of the night is at rest,
Shut in from the thunder that fills
The fog-hidden caves of the west—
In a sound of the leaf, and the lute
Of the wind on the quiet lagoon,
I stand, like a worshipper, mute
In the flow of a marvellous tune!
And the song that is sweet to my sense
Is, “Nearer, my God, unto Thee”;
But it carries me sorrowing hence,
To a grave by the cliffs of the sea.
So many have gone that I loved—
So few of the fathers remain,
That where in old seasons I moved
I could never be happy again.
In the breaks of this beautiful psalm,
With its deep, its devotional tone,
And hints of ineffable calm,
I feel like a stranger, alone.
No wonder my eyes are so dim—
Your trouble is heavy on me,
O widow and daughter of him
Who sleeps in the grave by the sea!

The years have been hard that have pressed
On a head full of premature grey,
Since Stenhouse went down to his rest,
And Harpur was taken away.
In the soft yellow evening-ends,
The wind of the water is faint
By the home of the last of my friends—
The shrine of the father and saint.
The tenderness touching—the grace
Of Ridley no more is for me;
And flowers have hidden the face
Of the brother who sleeps by the sea.

The vehement voice of the South
Is loud where the journalist lies;
But calm hath encompassed his mouth,
And sweet is the peace in his eyes.
Called hence by the Power who knows
When the work of a hero is done,
He turned at the message, and rose
With the harness of diligence on.
In the midst of magnificent toil,
He bowed at the holy decree;
And green is the grass on the soil
Of the grave by the cliffs of the sea.

I knew him, indeed; and I knew,
Having suffered so much in his day,
What a beautiful nature and true
In Bennett was hidden away.
In the folds of a shame without end,
When the lips of the scorner were curled,
I found in this brother a friend—
The last that was left in the world.
Ah! under the surface austere
Compassion was native to thee;
I send from my solitude here
This rose for the grave by the sea.

To the high, the heroic intent
Of a life that was never at rest,
He held, with a courage unspent,
Through the worst of his days and the best.
Far back in the years that are dead
He knew of the bitterness cold
That saddens with silver the head
And makes a man suddenly old.
The dignity gracing his grief
Was ever a lesson to me;
He lies under blossom and leaf
In a grave by the cliffs of the sea.

Above him the wandering face
Of the moon is a loveliness now,
And anthems encompass the place
From lutes of the luminous bough.
The forelands are fiery with foam
Where often and often he roved;
He sleeps in the sight of the home
That he built by the waters he loved.
The wave is his fellow at night,
And the sun, shining over the lea,
Sheds out an unspeakable light
On this grave by the cliffs of the sea.

Let me talk of years evanished, let me harp upon the time
When we trod these sands together, in our boyhood's golden prime;
Let me lift again the curtain, while I gaze upon the past,
As the sailor glances homewards, watching from the topmost mast.
Here we rested on the grasses, in the glorious summer hours,
When the waters hurried seaward, fringed with ferns and forest flowers;
When our youthful eyes, rejoicing, saw the sunlight round the spray
In a rainbow-wreath of splendour, glittering underneath the day;
Sunlight flashing past the billows, falling cliffs and crags among,
Clothing hopeful friendship basking on the shores of Wollongong.

Echoes of departed voices, whispers from forgotten dreams,
Come across my spirit, like the murmurs of melodious streams.
Here we both have wandered nightly, when the moonshine cold and pale
Shimmer'd on the cone of Keira, sloping down the sleeping vale;
When the mournful waves came sobbing, sobbing on the furrowed shore,
Like to lone hearts weeping over loved ones they shall see no more;
While the silver ripples, stealing past the shells and slimy stones,
Broke beneath the caverns, dying, one by one, in muffled moans;
As the fragrant wood-winds roaming, with a fitful cadence sung
'Mid the ghostly branches belting round the shores of Wollongong.

Lovely faces flit before us, friendly forms around us stand;
Gleams of well-remembered gladness trip along the yellow sand.
Here the gold-green waters glistened underneath our dreaming gaze,
As the lights of Heaven slanted down the pallid ether haze;
Here the mossy rock-pool, like to one that stirs himself in sleep,
Trembled every moment at the roaring of the restless deep;
While the stately vessels swooping to the breezes fair and free,
Passed away like sheeted spectres, fading down the distant sea;
And our wakened fancies sparkled, and our soul-born thoughts we strung
Into joyous lyrics, singing with the waves of Wollongong.

Low-breathed strains of sweetest music float about my raptured ears;
Angel-eyes are glancing at me hopeful smiles and happy tears.
Merry feet go scaling up the old and thunder-shattered steeps,
And the billows clamber after, and the surge to ocean leaps,
Scattered into fruitless showers, falling where the breakers roll,
Baffled like the aspirations of a proud ambitious soul.
Far off sounds of silvery laughter through the hollow caverns ring,
While my heart leaps up to catch reviving pleasure on the wing;
And the years come trooping backward, and we both again are young,
Walking side by side upon the lovely shores of Wollongong.

Fleeting dreams and idle fancies! Lo, the gloomy after Age
Creepeth, like an angry shadow, over life's eventful stage!
Joy is but a mocking phantom, throwing out its glitter brief -
Short-lived as the western sunbeam dying from the cedar leaf.
Here we linger, lonely-hearted, musing over visions fled,
While the sickly twilight withers from the arches overhead.
Semblance of a bliss delusive are those dull, receding rays;
Semblance of the faint reflection left to us of other days;
Days of vernal hope and gladness, hours when the blossoms sprung
Round the feet of blithesome ramblers by the shores of Wollongong.

Gaul whose keel in far, dim ages ploughed wan widths of polar sea—
Gray old sailor of Massilia, who hath woven wreath for thee?
Who amongst the world’s high singers ever breathed the tale sublime
Of the man who coasted England in the misty dawn of time?
Leaves of laurel, lights of music—these and these have never shed
Glory on the name unheard of, lustre on the vanished head.
Lords of song, and these are many, never yet have raised the lay
For the white, wind-beaten seaman of a wild, forgotten day.
Harp of shining son of Godhead still is as a voice august;
But the man who first saw Britain sleeps beneath unnoticed dust.
From the fair, calm bays Hellenic, from the crescents and the bends,
Round the wall of crystal Athens, glowing in gold evening-ends,
Sailed abroad the grand, strong father, with his face towards the snow
Of the awful northern mountains, twenty centuries ago.
On the seas that none had heard of, by the shores where none had furled
Wing of canvas, passed this elder to the limits of the world.
Lurid limits, loud with thunder and the roar of flaming cone,
Ghastly tracts of ice and whirlwind lying in a dim, blind zone,
Bitter belts of naked region, girt about by cliffs of fear,
Where the Spirit of the Darkness dwells in heaven half the year.

Yea, against the wild, weird Thule, steered the stranger through the gates
Opened by a fire eternal, into tempest-trampled straits—
Thule, lying like a nightmare on the borders of the Pole:
Neither land, nor air, nor water, but a mixture of the whole!
Dumb, dead chaos, grey as spectre, now a mist and now a cloud,
Where the winds cry out for ever, and the wave is always loud.
Here the lord of many waters, in the great exalted years,
Saw the sight that no man knows of—heard the sound that no man hears—
Felt that God was in the Shadow ere he turned his prow and sped
To the sweet green fields of England with the sunshine overhead.

In the day when pallid Persia fled before the Thracian steel,
By the land that now is London passed the strange Hellenic keel.
Up the bends of quiet river, hard by banks of grove and flower,
Sailed the father through a silence in the old majestic hour.
Not a sound of fin or feather, not a note of wave or breeze,
Vext the face of sleeping streamlets, broke the rest of stirless trees.
Not a foot was in the forest, not a voice was in the wood,
When the elder from Massilia over English waters stood.
All was new, and hushed, and holy—all was pure untrodden space,
When the lord of many oceans turned to it a reverent face.

Man who knew resplendent Athens, set and framed in silver sea,
Did not dream a dream of England—England of the years to be!
Friend of fathers like to Plato—bards august and hallowed seers—
Did not see that tenfold glory, Britain of the future years!
Spirit filled with Grecian music, songs that charm the dark away,
On that large, supreme occasion, did not note diviner lay—
Did not hear the voice of Shakespeare—all the mighty life was still,
Down the slopes that dipped to seaward, on the shoulders of the hill;
But the gold and green were brighter than the bloom of Thracian springs,
And a strange, surpassing beauty shone upon the face of things.

In a grave that no man thinks of—back from far-forgotten bays—
Sleeps the grey, wind-beaten sailor of the old exalted days.
He that coasted Wales and Dover, he that first saw Sussex plains,
Passed away with head unlaurelled in the wild Thessalian rains.
In a space by hand untended, by a fen of vapours blind,
Lies the king of many waters—out of sight and out of mind!
No one brings the yearly blossom—no one culls the flower of grace,
For the shell of mighty father buried in that lonely place;
But the winds are low and holy, and the songs of sweetness flow,
Where he fell asleep for ever, twenty centuries ago.

DOWN in the South, by the waste without sail on it—
Far from the zone of the blossom and tree—
Lieth, with winter and whirlwind and wail on it,
Ghost of a land by the ghost of a sea.
Weird is the mist from the summit to base of it;
Sun of its heaven is wizened and grey;
Phantom of light is the light on the face of it—
Never is night on it, never is day!
Here is the shore without flower or bird on it;
Here is no litany sweet of the springs—
Only the haughty, harsh thunder is heard on it,
Only the storm, with a roar in its wings!

Shadow of moon is the moon in the sky of it—
Wan as the face of a wizard, and far!
Never there shines from the firmament high of it
Grace of the planet or glory of star.
All the year round, in the place of white days on it—
All the year round where there never is night—
Lies a great sinister, bitter, blind haze on it:
Growth that is neither of darkness nor light!
Wild is the cry of the sea in the caves by it—
Sea that is smitten by spears of the snow;
Desolate songs are the songs of the waves by it—
Down in the South, where the ships never go.

Storm from the Pole is the singer that sings to it
Hymns of the land at the planet’s grey verge.
Thunder discloses dark, wonderful things to it—
Thunder, and rain, and the dolorous surge.
Hills with no hope of a wing or a leaf on them,
Scarred with the chronicles written by flame,
Stare through the gloom of inscrutable grief on them,
Down on the horns of the gulfs without name.
Cliffs with the records of fierce flying fires on them—
Loom over perilous pits of eclipse;
Alps, with anathema stamped in the spires on them—
Out by the wave with a curse on its lips.

Never is sign of soft, beautiful green on it—
Never the colour, the glory of rose!
Neither the fountain nor river is seen on it,
Naked its crags are, and barren its snows!
Blue as the face of the drowned is the shore of it—
Shore, with the capes of indefinite cave.
Strange is the voice of its wind, and the roar of it
Startles the mountain and hushes the wave.
Out to the South and away to the north of it,
Spectral and sad are the spaces untold!
All the year round a great cry goeth forth of it—
Sob of this leper of lands in the cold.

No man hath stood, all its bleak, bitter years on it—
Fall of a foot on its wastes is unknown:
Only the sound of the hurricane’s spears on it
Breaks with the shout from the uttermost zone.
Blind are its bays with the shadow of bale on them;
Storms of the nadir their rocks have uphurled;
Earthquake hath registered deeply its tale on them—
Tale of distress from the dawn of the world!
There are the gaps, with the surges that seethe in them—
Gaps in whose jaws is a menace that glares!
There the wan reefs, with the merciless teeth in them,
Gleam on a chaos that startles and scares!

Back in the dawn of this beautiful sphere, on it—
Land of the dolorous, desolate face—
Beamed the blue day; and the bountiful year on it
Fostered the leaf and the blossom of grace.
Grand were the lights of its midsummer noon on it—
Mornings of majesty shone on its seas:
Glitter of star and the glory of moon on it
Fell, in the march of the musical breeze.
Valleys and hills, with the whisper of wing in them,
Dells of the daffodil—spaces impearled,
Flowered and flashed with the splendour of Spring in them—
Back in the morn of this wonderful world.

Soft were the words that the thunder then said to it—
Said to this lustre of emerald plain;
Sun brought the yellow, the green, and the red to it—
Sweet were the songs of its silvery rain.
Voices of water and wind in the bays of it
Lingered, and lulled like the psalm of a dream.
Fair were the nights and effulgent the days of it—
Moon was in shadow and shade in the beam.
Summer’s chief throne was the marvellous coast of it,
Home of the Spring was its luminous lea:
Garden of glitter! but only the ghost of it
Moans in the South by the ghost of a sea.

The Sun o’er the waters was throwing
In the freshness of morning its beams;
And the breast of the ocean seemed glowing
With glittering silvery streams:
A bark in the distance was bounding
Away for the land on her lee;
And the boatswain’s shrill whistle resounding
Came over and over the sea.
The breezes blew fair and were guiding
Her swiftly along on her track,
And the billows successively passing,
Were lost in the distance aback.
The sailors seemed busy preparing
For anchor to drop ere the night;
The red rusted cables in fathoms
Were haul’d from their prisons to light.
Each rope and each brace was attended
By stout-hearted sons of the main,
Whose voices, in unison blended,
Sang many a merry-toned strain.
Forgotten their care and their sorrow,
If of such they had ever known aught,
Each soul was wrapped up in the morrow—
The morrow which greeted them not;
A sunshiny hope was inspiring
And filling their hearts with a glow
Like that on the billows around them,
Like the silvery ocean below.
As they looked on the haven before them,
Already high looming and near,
What else but a joy could invade them,
Or what could they feel but a cheer?


The eve on the waters was clouded,
And gloomy and dark grew the sky;
The ocean in blackness was shrouded,
And wails of a tempest flew by;
The bark o’er the billows high surging
’Mid showers of the foam-crested spray,
Now sinking, now slowly emerging,
Held onward her dangerous way.
The gale in the distance was veering
To a point that would drift her on land,
And fearfully he that was steering
Look’d round on the cliff-girdled strand.
He thought of the home now before him
And muttered sincerely a prayer
That morning might safely restore him
To friends and to kind faces there.
He knew that if once at the mercy
Of the winds and those mountain-like waves
The sun would rise over the waters—
The day would return on their graves.


Still blacker the heavens were scowling,
Still nearer the rock-skirted shore;
Yet fiercer the tempest was howling
And louder the wild waters roar.
The cold rain in torrents came pouring
On deck thro’ the rigging and shrouds,
And the deep, pitchy dark was illumined
Each moment with gleams from the clouds
Of forky-shap’d lightning as, darting,
It made a wide pathway on high,
And the sound of the thunder incessant
Re-echoed the breadth of the sky.
The light-hearted tars of the morning
Now gloomily watching the storm
Were silent, the glare from the flashes
Revealing each weather-beat form,
Their airy-built castles all vanished
When they heard the wild conflict ahead;
Their hopes of the morning were banished,
And terror seemed ruling instead.
They gazed on the heavens above them
And then on the waters beneath,
And shrunk as foreboding those billows
Might shroud them ere morrow in death.


Hark! A voice o’er the tempest came ringing,
A wild cry of bitter despair
Re-echoed by all in the vessel,
And filling the wind-ridden air.
The breakers and rocks were before them
Discovered too plain to their eyes,
And the heart-bursting shrieks of the hopeless
Ascending were lost in the skies.
Then a crash, then a moan from the dying
Went on, on the wings of the gale,
Soon hush’d in the roar of the waters
And the tempest’s continuing wail.
The “Storm Power” loudly was sounding
Their funeral dirge as they passed,
And the white-crested waters around them
Re-echoed the voice of the blast.
The surges will show to the morrow
A fearful and heartrending sight,
And bereaved ones will weep in their sorrow
When they think of that terrible night.


The day on the ocean returning
Saw still’d to a slumber the deep—
Not a zephyr disturbing its bosom,
The winds and the breezes asleep.
Again the warm sunshine was gleaming
Refulgently fringing the sea,
Its rays to the horizon beaming
And clothing the land on the lee.
The billows were silently gliding
O’er the graves of the sailors beneath,
The waves round the vessel yet pointing
The scene of their anguish and death.
They seemed to the fancy bewailing
The sudden and terrible doom
Of those who were yesterday singing
And laughing in sight of their tomb.


’Tis thus on the sea of existence—
The morning begins without care,
Hope cheerfully points to the distance,
The Future beams sunny and fair;
And we—as the bark o’er the billows,
Admiring the beauty of day,
With Fortune all smiling around us—
Glide onward our silvery way.
We know not nor fear for a sorrow
Ever crossing our pathway in life;
We judge from to-day the to-morrow
And dream not of meeting with strife.
This world seems to us as an Eden
And we wonder when hearing around
The cries of stern pain and affliction
How such an existence is found.
But we find to our cost when misfortune
Comes mantling our sun in its night,
That the Earth was not made to be Heaven,
Not always our life can be bright.
In turn we see each of our day-dreams
Dissolve into air and decay,
And learn that the hopes that are brightest
Fade soonest—far soonest away.

Ill fares it with the man whose lips are set
To bitter themes and words that spite the gods;
For, seeing how the son of Saturn sways
With eyes and ears for all, this one shall halt
As on hard, hurtful hills; his days shall know
The plaintive front of sorrow; level looks
With cries ill-favoured shall be dealt to him;
And ~this~ shall be that he may think of peace
As one might think of alienated lips
Of sweetness touched for once in kind, warm dreams.
Yea, fathers of the high and holy face,
This soul thus sinning shall have cause to sob
'Ah, ah,' for sleep, and space enough to learn
The wan, wild Hyrie's aggregated song
That starts the dwellers in distorted heights,
With all the meaning of perpetual sighs
Heard in the mountain deserts of the world,
And where the green-haired waters glide between
The thin, lank weeds and mallows of the marsh.
But thou to whom these things are like to shapes
That come of darkness - thou whose life slips past
Regarding rather these with mute fast mouth -
Hear none the less how fleet Telegonus,
The brass-clad hunter, first took oar and smote
Swift eastward-going seas, with face direct
For narrowing channels and the twofold coasts
Past Colchis and the fierce Symplegades,
And utmost islands, washed by streams unknown.

For in a time when Phasis whitened wide
And drove with violent waters blown of wind
Against the bare, salt limits of the land,
It came to pass that, joined with Cytheraea,
The black-browed Ares, chafing for the wrong
Ulysses did him on the plains of Troy,
Set heart against the king; and when the storms
Sang high in thunder and the Thracian rain,
The god bethought him of a pale-mouthed priest
Of Thebae, kin to ancient Chariclo,
And of an omen which the prophet gave
That touched on death and grief to Ithaca;
Then, knowing how a heavy-handed fate
Had laid itself on Circe's brass-clad son,
He pricked the hunter with a lust that turned
All thoughts to travel and the seas remote;
But chiefly now he stirred Telegonus
To longings for his father's exiled face,
And dreams of rest and honey-hearted love
And quiet death with much of funeral flame
Far in the mountains of a favoured land
Beyond the wars and wailings of the waves.

So, past the ridges where the coast abrupt
Dips greyly westward, Circe's strong-armed son
Swept down the foam of sharp-divided straits
And faced the stress of opening seas. Sheer out
The vessel drave; but three long moons the gale
Moaned round; and swift, strong streams of fire revealed
The labouring rowers and the lightening surf,
Pale watchers deafened of sonorous storm,
And dipping decks and rents of ruined sails.
Yea, when the hollow ocean-driven ship
Wheeled sideways, like a chariot cloven through
In hard hot battle, and the night came up
Against strange headlands lying east and north,
Behold a black, wild wind with death to all
Ran shoreward, charged with flame and thunder-smoke,
Which blew the waters into wastes of white,
And broke the bark, as lightning breaks the pine;
Whereat the sea in fearful circles showed
Unpitied faces turned from Zeus and light -
Wan swimmers wasted with their agony,
And hopeless eyes and moaning mouths of men.
But one held by the fragments of the wreck,
And Ares knew him for Telegonus,
Whom heavy-handed Fate had chained to deeds
Of dreadful note with sin beyond a name.
So, seeing this, the black-browed lord of war,
Arrayed about by Jove's authentic light,
Shot down amongst the shattered clouds and called
With mighty strain, betwixt the gaps of storm
'Oceanus! Oceanus!' Whereat
The surf sprang white, as when a keel divides
The gleaming centre of a gathered wave;
And, ringed with flakes of splendid fire of foam,
The son of Terra rose half-way and blew
The triple trumpet of the water-gods,
At which great winds fell back and all the sea
Grew dumb, as on the land a war-feast breaks
When deep sleep falls upon the souls of men.
Then Ares of the night-like brow made known
The brass-clad hunter of the facile feet,
Hard clinging to the slippery logs of pine,
And told the omen to the hoary god
That touched on death and grief to Ithaca;
Wherefore Oceanus, with help of hand,
Bore by the chin the warrior of the North,
A moaning mass, across the shallowing surge,
And cast him on the rocks of alien shores
Against a wintry morning shot with storm.

Hear also, thou, how mighty gods sustain
The men set out to work the ends of Fate
Which fill the world with tales of many tears
And vex the sad face of humanity:
Six days and nights the brass-clad chief abode
Pent up in caverns by the straitening seas
And fed on ferns and limpets; but the dawn,
Before the strong sun of the seventh, brought
A fume of fire and smells of savoury meat
And much rejoicing, as from neighbouring feasts;
At which the hunter, seized with sudden lust,
Sprang up the crags, and, like a dream of fear,
Leapt, shouting, at a huddled host of hinds
Amongst the fragments of their steaming food;
And as the hoarse wood-wind in autumn sweeps
To every zone the hissing latter leaves,
So fleet Telegonus, by dint of spear
And strain of thunderous voice, did scatter these
East, south, and north. 'Twas then the chief had rest,
Hard by the outer coast of Ithaca,
Unknown to him who ate the spoil and slept.
Nor stayed he hand thereafter; but when noon
Burned dead on misty hills of stunted fir,
This man shook slumber from his limbs and sped
Against hoar beaches and the kindled cliffs
Of falling waters. These he waded through,
Beholding, past the forests of the West,
A break of light and homes of many men,
And shining corn, and flowers, and fruits of flowers.
Yea, seeing these, the facile-footed chief
Grasped by the knot the huge Aeaean lance
And fell upon the farmers; wherefore they
Left hoe and plough, and crouched in heights remote,
Companioned with the grey-winged fogs; but he
Made waste their fields and throve upon their toil -
As throve the boar, the fierce four-footed curse
Which Artemis did raise in Calydon
To make stern mouths wax white with foreign fear,
All in the wild beginning of the world.

So one went down and told Laertes' son
Of what the brass-clad stranger from the straits
Had worked in Ithaca; whereat the King
Rose, like a god, and called his mighty heir,
Telemachus, the wisest of the wise;
And these two, having counsel, strode without,
And armed them with the arms of warlike days -
The helm, the javelin, and the sun-like shield,
And glancing greaves and quivering stars of steel.
Yea, stern Ulysses, rusted not with rest,
But dread as Ares, gleaming on his car
Gave out the reins; and straightway all the lands
Were struck by noise of steed and shouts of men,
And furious dust, and splendid wheels of flame.
Meanwhile the hunter (starting from a sleep
In which the pieces of a broken dream
Had shown him Circe with most tearful face),
Caught at his spear, and stood like one at bay
When Summer brings about Arcadian horns
And headlong horses mixt with maddened hounds;
Then huge Ulysses, like a fire of fight,
Sprang sideways on the flying car, and drave
Full at the brass-clad warrior of the North
His massive spear; but fleet Telegonus
Stooped from the death, but heard the speedy lance
Sing like a thin wind through the steaming air;
Yet he, dismayed not by the dreadful foe -
Unknown to him - dealt out his strength, and aimed
A strenuous stroke at great Laertes' son,
Which missed the shield, but bit through flesh and bone,
And drank the blood, and dragged the soul from thence.
So fell the King! And one cried 'Ithaca!
Ah, Ithaca!' and turned his face and wept.
Then came another - wise Telemachus -
Who knelt beside the man of many days
And pored upon the face; but lo, the life
Was like bright water spilt in sands of thirst,
A wasted splendour swiftly drawn away.
Yet held he by the dead: he heeded not
The moaning warrior who had learnt his sin -
Who waited now, like one in lairs of pain,
Apart with darkness, hungry for his fate;
For had not wise Telemachus the lore
Which makes the pale-mouthed seer content to sleep
Amidst the desolations of the world?
So therefore he, who knew Telegonus,
The child of Circe by Laertes' son,
Was set to be a scourge of Zeus, smote not,
But rather sat with moody eyes, and mused,
And watched the dead. For who may brave the gods?

Yet, O my fathers, when the people came,
And brought the holy oils and perfect fire,
And built the pile, and sang the tales of Troy -
Of desperate travels in the olden time,
By shadowy mountains and the roaring sea,
Near windy sands and past the Thracian snows -
The man who crossed them all to see his sire,
And had a loyal heart to give the king,
Instead of blows - this man did little more
Than moan outside the fume of funeral rites,
All in a rushing twilight full of rain,
And clap his palms for sharper pains than swords.
Yea, when the night broke out against the flame,
And lonely noises loitered in the fens,
This man nor stirred nor slept, but lay at wait,
With fastened mouth. For who may brave the gods?

Now, while Orion, flaming south, doth set
A shining foot on hills of wind and wet—
Far haughty hills beyond the fountains cold
And dells of glimmering greenness manifold—
While August sings the advent of the Spring,
And in the calm is heard September’s wing,
The lordly voice of song I ask of thee,
High, deathless radiance—crowned Calliope!
What though we never hear the great god’s lays
Which made all music the Hellenic days—
What though the face of thy fair heaven beams
Still only on the crystal Grecian streams—
What though a sky of new, strange beauty shines
Where no white Dryad sings within the pines:
Here is a land whose large, imperial grace
Must tempt thee, goddess, in thine holy place!
Here are the dells of peace and plenilune,
The hills of morning and the slopes of noon;
Here are the waters dear to days of blue,
And dark-green hollows of the noontide dew;
Here lies the harp, by fragrant wood-winds fanned,
That waits the coming of thy quickening hand!
And shall Australia, framed and set in sea,
August with glory, wait in vain for thee?
Shall more than Tempe’s beauty be unsung
Because its shine is strange—its colours young?
No! by the full, live light which puts to shame
The far, fair splendours of Thessalian flame—
By yonder forest psalm which sinks and swells
Like that of Phocis, grave with oracles—
By deep prophetic winds that come and go
Where whispering springs of pondering mountains flow—
By lute-like leaves and many-languaged caves,
Where sounds the strong hosanna of the waves,
This great new majesty shall not remain
Unhonoured by the high immortal strain!
Soon, soon, the music of the southern lyre
Shall start and blossom with a speech like fire!
Soon, soon, shall flower and flow in flame divine
Thy songs, Apollo, and Euterpe, thine!
Strong, shining sons of Delphicus shall rise
With all their father’s glory in their eyes;
And then shall beam on yonder slopes and springs
The light that swims upon the light of things.
And therefore, lingering in a land of lawn,
I, standing here, a singer of the dawn,
With gaze upturned to where wan summits lie
Against the morning flowing up the sky—
Whose eyes in dreams of many colours see
A glittering vision of the years to be—
Do ask of thee, Calliope, one hour
Of life pre-eminent with perfect power,
That I may leave a song whose lonely rays
May shine hereafter from these songless days.

For now there breaks across the faint grey range
The rose-red dawning of a radiant change.
A soft, sweet voice is in the valleys deep,
Where darkness droops and sings itself to sleep.
The grave, mute woods, that yet the silence hold
Of dim, dead ages, gleam with hints of gold.
Yon eastern cape that meets the straitened wave—
A twofold tower above the whistling cave—
Whose strength in thunder shields the gentle lea,
And makes a white wrath of a league of sea,
Now wears the face of peace; and in the bay
The weak, spent voice of Winter dies away.
In every dell there is a whispering wing,
On every lawn a glimmer of the Spring;
By every hill are growths of tender green—
On every slope a fair, new life is seen;
And lo! beneath the morning’s blossoming fires,
The shining city of a hundred spires,
In mists of gold, by countless havens furled,
And glad with all the flags of all the world!

These are the shores, where, in a dream of fear,
Cathay saw darkness dwelling half the year!
These are the coasts that old fallacious tales
Chained down with ice and ringed with sleepless gales!
This is the land that, in the hour of awe,
From Indian peaks the rapt Venetian saw!
Here is the long grey line of strange sea wall
That checked the prow of the audacious Gaul,
What time he steered towards the southern snow,
From zone to zone, four hundred years ago!
By yonder gulf, whose marching waters meet
The wine-dark currents from the isles of heat,
Strong sons of Europe, in a far dim year,
Faced ghastly foes, and felt the alien spear!
There, in a later dawn, by shipless waves,
The tender grasses found forgotten graves.
Far in the west, beyond those hills sublime,
Dirk Hartog anchored in the olden time;
There, by a wild-faced bay, and in a cleft,
His shining name the fair-haired Northman left;
And, on those broad imperial waters, far
Beneath the lordly occidental star,
Sailed Tasman down a great and glowing space
Whose softer lights were like his lady’s face.
In dreams of her he roved from zone to zone,
And gave her lovely name to coasts unknown
And saw, in streaming sunset everywhere,
The curious beauty of her golden hair,
By flaming tracts of tropic afternoon,
Where in low heavens hangs a fourfold moon.
Here, on the tides of a resplendent year,
By capes of jasper, came the buccaneer.
Then, then, the wild men, flying from the beach,
First heard the clear, bold sounds of English speech;
And then first fell across a Southern plain
The broad, strong shadows of a Saxon train.
Near yonder wall of stately cliff, that braves
The arrogance of congregated waves,
The daring son of grey old Yorkshire stood
And dreamed in a majestic solitude,
What time a gentle April shed its showers,
Aflame with sunset, on the Bay of Flowers.
The noble seaman who withheld the hand,
And spared the Hector of his native land—
The single savage, yelling on the beach
The dark, strange curses of barbaric speech.
Exalted sailor! whose benignant phrase
Shines full of beauty in these latter days;
Who met the naked tribes of fiery skies
With great, divine compassion in his eyes;
Who died, like Him of hoary Nazareth,
That death august—the radiant martyr’s death;
Who in the last hour showed the Christian face
Whose crumbling beauty shamed the alien race.
In peace he sleeps where deep eternal calms
Lie round the land of heavy-fruited palms.
Lo! in that dell, behind a singing bar,
Where deep, pure pools of glittering waters are,
Beyond a mossy, yellow, gleaming glade,
The last of Forby Sutherland was laid—
The blue-eyed Saxon from the hills of snow
Who fell asleep a hundred years ago.
In flowerful shades, where gold and green are rife,
Still rests the shell of his forgotten life.
Far, far away, beneath some northern sky
The fathers of his humble household lie;
But by his lonely grave are sapphire streams,
And gracious woodlands, where the fire-fly gleams;
And ever comes across a silver lea
The hymn sublime of the eternal sea.

On that bold hill, against a broad blue stream,
Stood Arthur Phillip in a day of dream:
What time the mists of morning westward rolled,
And heaven flowered on a bay of gold!
Here, in the hour that shines and sounds afar,
Flamed first old England’s banner like a star;
Here, in a time august with prayer and praise,
Was born the nation of these splendid days;
And here this land’s majestic yesterday
Of immemorial silence died away.
Where are the woods that, ninety summers back,
Stood hoar with ages by the water-track?
Where are the valleys of the flashing wing,
The dim green margins and the glimmering spring?
Where now the warrior of the forest race,
His glaring war-paint and his fearless face?
The banks of April and the groves of bird,
The glades of silence and the pools unstirred,
The gleaming savage and the whistling spear,
Passed with the passing of a wild old year!
A single torrent singing by the wave,
A shadowy relic in a mountain cave,
A ghost of fire in immemorial hills,
The whittled tree by folded wayside rills,
The call of bird that hides in hollows far,
Where feet of thunder, wings of winter are—
Of all that Past, these wrecks of wind and rain,
These touching memories—these alone remain!

What sun is this that beams and broadens west?
What wonder this, in deathless glory dressed?
What strange, sweet harp of highest god took flame
And gave this Troy its life, its light, its name?
What awful lyre of marvellous power and range
Upraised this Ilion—wrought this dazzling change?
No shining singer of Hellenic dreams
Set yonder splendour by the morning streams!
No god who glimmers in a doubtful sphere
Shed glory there—created beauty here!
This is the city that our fathers framed—
These are the crescents by the elders named!
The human hands of strong, heroic men
Broke down the mountain, filled the gaping glen,
Ran streets through swamp, built banks against the foam,
And bent the arch and raised the lordly dome!
Here are the towers that the founders made!
Here are the temples where these Romans prayed!
Here stand the courts in which their leaders met!
Here are their homes, and here their altars yet!
Here sleep the grand old men whose lives sublime
Of thought and action shine and sound through time!
Who worked in darkness—onward fought their ways
To bring about these large majestic days—
Who left their sons the hearts and high desires
Which built this city of the hundred spires!

A stately Morning rises on the wing,
The hills take colour, and the valleys sing.
A strong September flames beyond the lea—
A silver vision on a silver sea.
A new Age, “cast in a diviner mould”,
Comes crowned with lustre, zoned and shod with gold!
What dream is this on lawny spaces set?
What miracle of dome and minaret?
What great mute majesty is this that takes
The first of morning ere the song-bird wakes?
Lo, this was built to honour gathering lands
By Celtic, Saxon, Australasian hands!
These are the halls where all the flags unfurled
Break into speech that welcomes all the world.
And lo, our friends are here from every zone—
From isles we dream of and from tracts unknown!
Here are the fathers from the stately space
Where Ireland is and England’s sacred face!
Here are the Norsemen from their strong sea-wall,
The grave, grand Teuton and the brilliant Gaul!
From green, sweet groves the dark-eyed Lusians sail,
And proud Iberia leaves the grape-flushed vale.
Here are the lords whose starry banner shines
From fierce Magellan to the Arctic pines.
Here come the strangers from the gates of day—
From hills of sunrise and from white Cathay.
The spicy islands send their swarthy sons,
The lofty North its mailed and mighty ones.
Venetian keels are floating on our sea;
Our eyes are glad with radiant Italy!
Yea, North and South, and glowing West and East,
Are gathering here to grace our splendid feast!
The chiefs from peaks august with Asian snow,
The elders born where regal roses grow,
Come hither, with the flower of that fair land
That blooms beyond the fiery tracts of sand
Where Syrian suns their angry lustres fling
Across blind channels of the bygone spring.
And on this great, auspicious day, the flowers
Of labour glorify majestic hours.

The singing angel from the starry sphere
Of dazzling Science shows his wonders here;
And Art, the dream-clad spirit, starts, and brings
From Fairyland her strange, sweet, glittering things.
Here are the works man did, what time his face
Was touched by God in some exalted place;
Here glows the splendour—here the marvel wrought
When Heaven flashed upon the maker’s thought!
Yea, here are all the miracles sublime—
The lights of Genius and the stars of Time!
And, being lifted by this noble noon,
Australia broadens like a tropic moon.
Her white, pure lustre beams across the zones;
The nations greet her from their awful thrones.
From hence the morning beauty of her name
Will shine afar, like an exceeding flame.
Her place will be with mighty lords, whose sway
Controls the thunder and the marching day.
Her crown will shine beside the crowns of kings
Who shape the seasons, rule the course of things,
The fame of her across the years to be
Will spread like light on a surpassing sea;
And graced with glory, girt with power august,
Her life will last till all things turn to dust.

To Thee the face of song is lifted now,
O Lord! to whom the awful mountains bow;
Whose hands, unseen, the tenfold storms control;
Whose thunders shake the spheres from pole to pole;
Who from Thy highest heaven lookest down,
The sea Thy footstool, and the sun Thy crown;
Around whose throne the deathless planets sing
Hosannas to their high, eternal King.
To Thee the soul of prayer this morning turns,
With faith that glitters, and with hope that burns!
And, in the moments of majestic calm
That fill the heart in pauses of the psalm,
She asks Thy blessing for this fair young land
That flowers within the hollow of Thine hand!
She seeks of Thee that boon, that gift sublime,
The Christian radiance, for this hope of Time!
And Thou wilt listen! and Thy face will bend
To smile upon us—Master, Father, Friend!
The Christ to whom pure pleading heart hath crept
Was human once, and in the darkness wept;
The gracious love that helped us long ago
Will on us like a summer sunrise flow,
And be a light to guide the nation’s feet
On holy paths—on sacred ways and sweet