Henry Kendall: Verses about World

A MIGHTY theatre of snow and fire,
Girt with perpetual Winter, and sublime
By reason of that lordly solitude
Which dwells for ever at the world’s white ends;
And in that weird-faced wilderness of ice,
There is no human foot, nor any paw
Or hoof of beast, but where the shrill winds drive
The famished birds of storm across the tracts
Whose centre is the dim mysterious Pole.
Beyond—yea far beyond the homes of man,
By water never dark with coming ships,
Near seas that know not feather, scale, or fin,
The grand volcano, like a weird Isaiah,
Set in that utmost region of the Earth,
Doth thunder forth the awful utterance,
Whose syllables are flame; and when the fierce
Antarctic Night doth hold dominionship
Within her fastnessess, then round the cone
Of Erebus a crown of tenfold light
Appears; and shafts of marvellous splendour shoot
Far out to east and west and south and north,
Whereat a gorgeous dome of glory roofs
Wild leagues of mountain and transfigured waves,
And lends all things a beauty terrible.

Far-reaching lands, whereon the hand of Change
Hath never rested since the world began,
Lie here in fearful fellowship with cold
And rain and tempest. Here colossal horns
Of hill start up and take the polar fogs
Shot through with flying stars of fire; and here,
Above the dead-grey crescents topped with spires
Of thunder-smoke, one half the heaven flames
With that supremest light whose glittering life
Is yet a marvel unto all but One—
The Entity Almighty, whom we feel
Is nearest us when we are face to face
With Nature’s features aboriginal,
And in the hearing of her primal speech
And in the thraldom of her primal power.

While like the old Chaldean king who waxed
Insane with pride, we human beings grow
To think we are the mightiest of the world,
And lords of all terrestrial things, behold
The sea rolls in with a superb disdain
Upon our peopled shores, omnipotent;
And while we set up things of clay and call
Our idols gods; and while we boast or fume
About the petty honours, or the poor,
Pale disappointments of our meagre lives,
Lo, changeless as Eternity itself,
The grand Antarctic mountain looms outside
All breathing life; and, with its awful speech,
Is as an emblem of the Power Supreme,
Whose thunders shake the boundless Universe,
Whose lightnings make a terror of all Space.

I

Brothers from far-away lands,
Sons of the fathers of fame,
Here are our hearts and our hands—
This is our song of acclaim.
Lords from magnificent zones,
Shores of superlative sway,
Awful with lustre of thrones,
This is our greeting to-day.
Europe and Asia are here—
Shining they enter our ports!
She that is half of the sphere
Beams like a sun in our courts.
Children of elders whose day
Shone to the planet’s white ends,
Meet, in the noble old way,
Sons of your forefather’s friends.



II

Dressed is the beautiful city—the spires of it
Burn in the firmament stately and still;
Forest has vanished—the wood and the lyres of it,
Lutes of the sea-wind and harps of the hill.
This is the region, and here is the bay by it,
Collins, the deathless, beheld in a dream:
Flinders and Fawkner, our forefathers grey, by it
Paused in the hush of a season supreme.
Here, on the waters of majesty near to us,
Lingered the leaders by towers of flame:
Elders who turn from the lordly old year to us
Crowned with the lights of ineffable fame.



III

Nine and seventy years ago,
Up the blaze of yonder bay,
On a great exalted day,
Came from seas august with snow—
Waters where the whirlwinds blow—
First of England’s sons who stood
By the deep green, bygone wood
Where the wild song used to flow
Nine and seventy years ago.

Five and forty years ago,
On a grand auspicious morn
When the South Wind blew his horn,
Where the splendid mountains glow—
Peaks that God and Sunrise know—
Came the fearless, famous band,
Founders of our radiant land,
From the lawns where roses grow,
Five and forty years ago.



IV

By gracious slopes of fair green hills,
In shadows cool and deep,
Where floats the psalm of many rills,
The noble elders sleep.
But while their children’s children last,
While seed from seedling springs,
The print and perfume of their past
Will be as deathless things.

Their voices are with vanished years,
With other days and hours;
Their homes are sanctified by tears—
They sleep amongst the flowers.
They do not walk by street or stream,
Or tread by grove or shore,
But, in the nation’s highest dream,
They shine for evermore.



V

By lawny slope and lucent strand
Are singing flags of every land;
On streams of splendour—bays impearled—
The keels are here of all the world.
With lutes of light and cymbals clear
We waft goodwill to every sphere.
The links of love to-day are thrown
From sea to sea—from zone to zone;
And, lo! we greet, in glory drest,
The lords that come from east and west,
And march like noble children forth
To meet our fathers from the North!



VI

To Thee be the glory, All-Bountiful Giver!
The song that we sing is an anthem to Thee,
Whose blessing is shed on Thy people for ever,
Whose love is like beautiful light on the sea.
Behold, with high sense of Thy mercy unsleeping,
We come to Thee, kneel to Thee, praise Thee, and pray,
O Lord, in whose hand is the strength that is keeping
The storm from the wave and the night from the day!

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.