Mary Hannay Foott: Verses about Time

With supple boughs and new-born leaflets crowned,
Rejoicing in fresh verdure stands the tree,
Though weather-scarred and scooped by fire may be
Its ancient trunk. So may our lives be found
(God leaving still our roots within His ground.)
Where gaps of loss and waste show brokenly
May each new year that comes to greet us see
Branches, and foliage, and flowers abound.
Where Fortune, spoiling wayfarer, hath left
Unsightly rents, may garlands spring apace.
And if, perchance, some pitiless wind hath reft
Away what newer green shall ne'er replace,
May heaven-light come the closer for the cleft
O'er which no tender fronds shall interlace.

The rushes are black by the river bed,
And the sheep and the cattle stand
Wistful-eyed, where the waters were,
In a waste of gravel and sand;
Or pass o'er their dying and dead to slake
Their thirst at the slimy pool.
Shall they pine and perish in pangs of drought
While Thy river, O God, is full.

The fields are furrowed, the seed is sown,
But no dews from the heavens are shed;
And where shall the grain for the harvest be?
And how shall the poor be fed?
In waterless gullies they winnow the earth,
New-turned by the miner's tool;
And the way-farer faints 'neath his lightened load,1
Yet the river of God is full.

For us, O Father, from tropic seas,
Let the clouds be filled that shed
Rough rains upon Andes' eastward slope,
Soft snows on Himàleh's head.
Freight for us as for others thy dark-winged fleet,
That soon by the waters cool,
We may say with gladness, “Our need was great,
But the river of God was full!”

Midnight, musical and splendid,
And the Old Year's life is ended,
And the New, “born in the purple,” babe yet crowned, among us dwells;
While Creation's welcome swells,
Starlight all the heavens pervading,
And the whole world serenading
Him, at birth, with all its bells!

Round the cradle of the tender
Flows the music, shines the splendor;
It is early yet for counsel, but bethink how Hermes gave,
(While the Myths were bright and brave),
Thwarted Phoebus no small battle,
Seeking back his lifted cattle,
Hour-old Hermes, in his cave!

New Year, if thy youth should blind us
Thy swift feet, perchance, may find us
Sleeping in the dark, unguarded, as the sun-god's herds were found!
Lest, unready, on his round
We be hurried, World, take warning
That already it is morning
And a giant is unbound!

Idle-handed yet, but willing,
Let us ponder ere the filling
Of his empty eager fingers with our heedless hot behest.
Be our failures frank-confessed,
'Mid the gush of gladsome greeting
Requiem in our hearts repeating
For the years that died unblest.

How they came to us, so precious!
How abode with us, so gracious!
Blindly doing all our bidding; stronger, swifter than we thought.
Like the sprites by magic brought;
Shaping dream to action for us;
Till we stood, beset with sorrows,
Wondering what ourselves had wrought!

Ere the tightening of the tether
Bind THIS YEAR and us together,
Let us pause awhile and ponder, “Whither tend we side by side,
He who gallops, we who guide?
Once we start, like lost LENORE,
Sung in B?rger's ballad-story,
Fast as ODIN'S Hunt, we ride!

The coup d'etat is blotted out
With fresher blood, with blacker crime,
As midnight horrors put to rout
The vaguer ghosts of twilight-time.

“Greeting from those who are to die!
Hail Caesar!” Draw the curtains round.
In vain! That mournful mocking cry
Pierces the purple with its sound.

And they who raise it enter too,
With spectral looks and noiseless tread,
Unbidden, hold their dread review,
Beside the Emperor's very bed.

They sought in his deserted tent;
They found him in the German camp.
They tarry till the oil be spent
That feeds his life's poor flickering lamp.

The hope of France, the “gilded youth,”
So answering the trumpet's peal
As if revealing how, in sooth,
The gilding oft o'erlies the steel.

Soldiers Algeria's sun has spared;
Heroes from Russia's fire and frost;
Grey veterans, scarred and scanty-haired,
Who wept at word of eagles lost.

Workmen, who leave the rattling looms
To ply, perforce, a deadlier trade;
Students, who quit their cloudy rooms
To step within a heavier shade.

Slow-breaking hearts that suffer long,
Blinded and chilled 'neath love's eclipse;
Singing no more the happy song
By horror frozen on their lips.

From castled cities battle-proof,
They press to the accusing ranks,
From cottage walls, from canvas roof,
Ere passing to the Stygian banks.

The thousands famine yet shall waste,
The holocaust disease will claim,
As to God's Judgment-Bar they haste,
They gaze on him who is to blame.

“Hail Caesar!” While Napoleon's star
From yon horizon beams “Farewell!”
Setting in exile, where, afar,
The children of St. Louis dwell.

Come from the past, once-dreaded ghosts,
Whose number and whose names he knew!
The future plants, at countless posts,
Sentries more terrible than you!

I. Thanksgiving.

Star, on thy Heaven-returning way,
Our message of thanksgiving bear;
To Him who answered with thy ray
The priestless Gentiles' trembling prayer.

When songs of revel shook the roof,
God, Thou didst cheer the joyless course,
Where we, like Vashti, walked aloof,
Braving the world's unjust divorce.

How rate we now all griefs and scorn
That filled our youth with bitterness!
We had not known the Christ is born
But that we sought for One to bless!

II. Prayer.

Fence Thou Thy Child, O Merciful,
When hate shall cavil at His worth;
When underlings like Haman rule
Hold Thou the golden sceptre forth.

When envy round Thy Precious One
Its tongues of scorching flame hath curled,
Unwasted let His virtue run
From the sore furnace of the world

To fill a new Colossus-mould.
When tireless unbelief hath sent;
Thy truest Image to the cold
Pure mountain-tops of banishment,

Give then, O God, Thy light, to break
Through all earth's valleys cramped and dim,
That after-times may see, and take
Their heroes' measurement from Him!

III. Farewell.

A new horizon's dim blue ring
Around our watch-fire shall be cast,
New stars replace the vanishing,
To-morrow's homeward travel past.

Word-bringer, now thine embassy
Is closed, thou stayest not to fill
A lowlier office. Thou shalt be
Soon 'mid the angels, shining still!

One priceless pearl of upper sea,
One matchless gem of heaven's rich mine;
Within the place once held by thee
God send no after-light to shine!

Yet, foremost of the host of gold,
Long-followed, thou wast never sent,
A glimpse of what the Heavens enfold,
To darken earth with discontent!

Star of the Promised! Streaming on
Through Time's long night, though thou must set,
Thy light shall spread, when thou art gone,
O'er sunless lands we see not yet!

Sing us the Land of the Southern Sea,
The land we have called our own;
Tell us what harvest there shall be
From the seed that we have sown.

We love the legends of olden days,
The songs of the wind and wave;
And border ballads and minstrel lays,
And the poems Shakespeare gave,

The fireside carols and battle rhymes,
And romaunt of the knightly ring;
And the chant with hint of cathedral chimes,
Of him “made blind to sing.”

The tears they tell of our brethren wept,
Their praise is our fathers' fame;
They sing of the seas our navies swept,
Of the shrines that lent us flame.

But the Past is past, with all its pride,
And its ways are not our ways.
We watch the flow of a fresher tide
And the dawn of newer days.

Sing us the Isle of the Southern Sea,
The land we have called our own;
Tell us what harvest there shall be
From the seed that we have sown.

I see the Child we are tending now
To a queenly stature grown;
The jewels of empire on her brow,
And the purple round her thrown.

She feeds her household plenteously
From the granaries we have filled;
Her vintage is gathered in with glee
From the fields our toil has tilled.

The Old World's outcast starvelings feast,
Ungrudged, on her corn and wine;
The gleaners are welcome, from west and east,
Where her autumn sickles shine.

She clothes her people in silk and wool,
Whose warp and whose woof we spun;
And sons and daughters are hers to rule;
And of slaves, she has not one!

There are herds of hers on a thousand hills!
There are fleecy flocks untold?
No foreign conquest her coffer fills,
She has streams whose sands are gold!

She shall not scramble for falling crowns,
No theft her soul shall soil,
So rich in rivers, so dowered with downs,
She shall have no need of spoil!

But if, wronged or menaced, she shall stand
Where the battle-surges swell,
Be a sword from Heaven in her swarthy hand
Like the sword of La Pucelle!

If there be ever so base a foe
As to speak of a time-cleansed stain,
To say, “She was cradled long ago,
'Mid clank of the convict's chain.”

Ask, as the taunt in his teeth is hurled,
“What lineage sprang SHE from
Who was Empress, once, of the Pagan World
And the Queen of Christendom?”

When the toilsome years of her youth are o'er,
And her children round her throng;
They shall learn from her of the sage's lore,
And her lips shall teach them song.

Then of those in the dust who dwell,
May there kindly mention be,
When the birds that build in the branches tell
Of the planting of the tree

A little way farther to guide thee I go
Where the footing is firm and the waters are low;
Then we part, O my King, thou once more to thy throne,
I to dwell, in the house of my fathers, alone.

Yet think not, O David, one pang of regret
Would tempt the recall of the youth I have set
In thy presence; the strong-armed, the true-hearted one,
Last gift of my loyalty, even my son.

Ere my hand to the husbandman's toil had been trained,
Or my foot to the slow-moving flocks had been chained,
I, too, would have marched in the long line of spears,
With the youthful, the courtly, the brave for my peers.

The days when I dreamt but of battle! The lamp
Which all night I kept burning, that if from the camp
One straggler should come, I might, hang up his sword
And hearken how prospered the cause of the Lord!

How my heart used to beat; how my veins used to thrill
From freezing to fever, from fever to chill,
When the voice of the Philistine rang through our coasts,
Defying, unanswered, the Lord God of Hosts.

How I prayed day and night, ay, with many a tear,
“Lord, shorten the time till Thy champion appear!”
And if fearing or hoping myself to change blows
With the giant, God bidden, I know; and God knows!

Ah, it was not for gain, and it was not for fear,
That I wore not the warrior's glittering gear:
My father, my mother! the heart-strife was done!
For Saul had his thousands and they had but one.

I am old, but King David, I cannot forget
My hot-hearted youth; so my boy shall not fret
'Mid the safety and sameness of flocks and of fields
While the soldiers of Israel burnish their shields.

The Lord be thy keeper, henceforth and for aye,
My son whom I love! And when I am away
Be thy spirit as now, pure and lofty, and bold,
Thy strength still unwasted; thy heart never cold.

When thy soul with the minions of darkness must fight,
The Great King lend thee weapons and armour of light.
No hindrance are they, like the harness of Saul
To the boy from the folds. May'st thou bear them through all!

All blessings be thine which the promise foretells!
And, oh, when the heart of thy eldest born swells
At thy stories of many a soldierly deed,
Tell how one, not a soldier, served Israel in need.

The men are fast forming again into rank;
The river is forded; we part on the bank.
Haste where welcome awaiteth thee, David, this day,
For the joy of the people ill beareth delay!

The Lord give thy children the love-guarded crown,
When the King and his servant in dust have lain down!
Till the hope of the nations thy lineage shall close,
God's arrows be sharp in the hearts of thy foes!

Argument.

I. - The House being ready, Victoria prepares to receive the nations whom she has invited. They approach the various countries of Europe, Asia, Africa, of the American continent, the Australian colonies, and those of Polynesia, some of them greater than any which ever paid tribute to Rome, or did homage to a mediaeval monarch, and their products superior to those which in olden times were fit gifts from one king to another.

II. - Victoria salutes the other Australian colonies, and asks them to unite with her in greeting her other guests. They then welcome the various countries of Asia, Africa (Egypt to Caffraria, &c.), America (the South American Republics, Empire of Brazil, Dominion of Canada, and the United States of North America); then France, Spain, and Portugal; Italy, Greece, Russia, Switzerland; then Holland and Belgium, Denmark, Austria, Germany, Norway, and Sweden; then Britain.

III. - The triumphs of Peace and of Toil.

IV. - Aspirations for the future of Australia, that she may be happy, a generous friend, but, if need be, a formidable enemy.

I.

Ceased is the sound of the chisel, and hushed is the hammer's ring,
And the echoes that haunted the empty halls for a while have taken wing;
And the doors are open, and overhead are a thousand flags unfurled,
While with music and song to the House she has built Victoria welcomes the world.
For the nations she bade with friendly voice have hearkened to her behest,
And treasure-laden, o'er land and sea, comes many an honoured guest,
Daughters of cultured Europe, deigning her day to grace,
Children of antique Asia, Africa's dusky race,
America's mighty offspring and they of Australia's line,
And they of the Thousands Islands set where Pacific waters shine.
Oh, never a Roman triumph, nor court of mightiest Suzerain
Hath gathered such as have sailed to her. Nor gifts like to theirs have lain
At the feet of Wisdom's favoured one, when the Princes came from far,
And the swarthy Queen to the Great Sea steered by the light of the still pole star.

II.

Welcome, O fair five Sisters unto your Sister's side!
Greet we this day together them who come from far and wide.
Come ye, aflame with jewels, and each with veilèd face
Whence bright eyes beam upon us like stars from cloud-swept space,
We wonder o'er the labours your slender hands have done
In ancient Asian cities, brown daughters of the sun!

And thou who once wast Pharoah's, and thou whose palm-thatched kraals
For centuries made marvel of bold De Gama's sails,
And all that dwell betwixt you, whate'er your race and name,
Who seek our shores in kindness, we thank you that you came.

And them who claim the treasures erewhile Pizarro's prize.
And her who crowned Braganza the worthy and the wise,
And Canada we welcome; the loyal and the free,
And thee, O great republic, with rule from sea to sea,
Who bravedst for our lost ones the fatal frozen main,
Thou who hast fed our famished and wept above our slain.

Fair France, we greet thee fondly as our Crusader sires
Thy knightly sons saluted by Acre's stubborn spires!
O brave in war! none brighter in peaceful arts doth shine!
Arachne's fairy fingers are not more deft than thine!

And ye, the Goth's twin-daughters, of stately mien and speech,
Spain and her queenly neighbour, a loving hand to each?
Long may thy sons be worthy the Cid's illustrious name;
And thine another Lusiad write on the rolls of fame!

Italia! as we greet thee, our hearts are all aglow,
What centuries of glory thou knowst and shalt know!
Thine are the Roman eagles, the lilies Florentine,
The sea-wed city's lion, the Church's Conquering Sign!

And Greece, we do thee reverence, who on Olympian seat
Art goddess yet; earth's greatest but learners at thy feet!

Now gladly we receive thee, within unguarded gate,
O upward-toiling Russia, whose lamp, though lit but late,
Already cheered thy children. What berg-blocked sea is thine!
God grant thee open water beyond its Arctic line!

And welcome here, Helvetia, from heights where peace abides
Beyond the wreck-strewn floodmark of battle's crimson tides:
Thou pliest, busy-fingered, each harmless handicraft,
Yet, ready in thy quiver there rests the patriot shaft.

And ye whom frugal Flanders has dowered with all her store,
Her old cathedral cities, her freedom won of yore,
When by the hands that raised them, her dykes asunder torn,
Swift poured the burghers' vengeance for Egmont and for Horn;
And thou whose peerless Princess, pure as thy Baltic foam,
Is dear in ancient Windsor as in her Danish home,
(For where thy raven reached not, thy dove hath found her rest,
And in the heart of England hath made herself a nest!)
Thou, dweller by the Danube, thou, keeper of the Rhine;
Thou, blue-eyed Scandinavia, with fragrant crown of pine;
All, all who followed Odin, the leader and the priest,
From bondage and from darkness in some forgotten East,
And tilled the trackless forest, and tamed the wild North Sea,
Account us as your kindred, for kin, in truth, are we!

And now to her we hasten, with daughterly embrace,
To whom young isles do homage, and empires old give place,
And every zone pays tribute of wealth, and earth, and wave,
The refuge of the alien, the champion of the slave!
On triple throne unshaken as adamantine wall,
Long may'st thou sit, Britannia, dear mother of us all!

III.

Mighty ones, who have hither borne your trophies manifold,
We honour them who have earned you these, as we honour your great of old,
Every worker with brain or hand, the artist, the artisan,
Whether he ride at an army's head, or march in the nameless van.
For bright is the ruddy shield of Mars, and sweet is the Sungod's lyre;
But Labour beareth the world aloft on shoulders that will not tire.

IV.

Thou, who givest the eye to see, and the ready hand to do,
And a nation's place in the earth's fair space, give us Thy blessing, too!
We hear the cool Antarctic winds in the golden wheatfields pipe,
And the chant the swart Kanaka sings where the rustling cane grows ripe,
And we ask of Thee, who hast dowered our land with the kindly sun and soil
Which fill with fruitage of farthest climes the hopeful hands of toil,
That ever in love we may nurture, too, the people which dwelt apart,
When they seek new life from our Younger World and a home within her heart.
And if, perchance, from the eaves of peace and the sheltering olive bough,
Our sons shall sail to a stormy sea and the shock of the mail-clad prow,
May they show that not in vain they have borne the stress of the tropic day,
Or lain, toil-spent, in the miner's tent, or made in the wilds a way.

'Twas brave De Quiros bent the knee before the King of Spain,
And “sire,” he said, “I bring thy ships in safety home again
From seas unsailed of mariner in all the days of yore,
Where reefs and islets, insect-built, arise from ocean's floor.
And, sire, the land we sought is found, its coasts lay full in view
When homeward bound, perforce, I sailed, at the bidding of my crew.
Terra Australis1 called I it; and linked therewith the name
Of Him who guideth, as of old, in cloud and starry flame.
And grant me ships again,” he said, “and southward let me go,
A new Peru may wait thee there, another Mexico.”

A threadbare suitor, year by year, “There is a land,” said he;
While King and Court grew weary of this old man of the sea;
For there were heretics to burn, and Holland to subdue,
And England to be humbled, (which this day remains to do,)
O land he named, but never saw, his memory revere!
The gallant disappointed heart, let him be honoured here!

Meanwhile the hardy Dutchmen came, as ancient charts attest,
Hartog, and Nuyts, and Carpenter, and Tasman, and the rest,
But found not forests rich in spice, nor market for their wares,
Nor servile tribes to toil o'ertasked 'mid pestilential airs,
And deemed it scarce worth while to claim so poor a continent,
But with their slumberous tropic isles thenceforward were content.

And then came Dampier, who, erewhile, upon the Spanish Main
For silver-laden galleons lurked, and great was his disdain,
Good ships, beside, from France were sent, good ships and gallant crews,
With Marion and D'Entrecasteaux and the far-famed La Perouse.
And still, of all who sought or saw, the voyages were vain,
Australia ne'er was farm for boers nor mission-field for Spain,
Nor fleur-de-lys nor tricolor was ever planted here,
And Britain's flag to hoist was not for hands of buccaneer.

But to our lovely Eastern coast, led by auspicious stars,
Came Cook, in the Endeavour, with his little band of tars,
Who straight on shores of Botany old England's ensign reared,
With mighty dim of musketry and noise of them that cheered.
And none of all his noble fleets who sixty years was king
A prize so goodly ever brought as that small ship did bring!

And who was he, the FIRST to find Australia passing fair?
One who aforetime well had served his country otherwhere:
Who to the heights of Abraham up the swift St. Lawrence led,
When on the moonless battle-eve the midnight oarsmen sped.
No worthier captain British deck before or since hath trod,
He “never feared the face of man,” but feared alway his God.
His crew he cherished tenderly, and kept his honour bright,
For with the helpless blacks he dealt as if they had been white.

A boy, erewhile, of lowly birth, self-taught, a poor man's son,
But a hero and a gentleman, if ever there was one!
And when at last, by savage hands, on wild Owyhee slain,
He left a deathless memory, a name without a stain!

'Tis but a hundred years ago, as nearly as may be,
Since good King George's vessel first anchored in Botany.
A hundred years! Yet, oh, how many changes there have been!
Unclasp thy volume, History, and say what thou hast seen.

“Old England and her colonies stand face to face as foes,
And now their orators inveigh, and now their armies close.”
In vain, our mother-land, for once thy sword is drawn in vain,
Allies and enemies alike, thy children are the slain.
Though, save as victor, never 'twas thy wont to quit the field,
Relenting filled thy valiant heart and thou wast fain to yield.
Ah, well for loss of those fair States might King and Commons mourn!
There lay, in south, a goodly bough from England's rose-tree torn!
But now how deep its roots have struck, how stately stands the stem,
How lovely on its branches leaf and flower and dewy gem!
New life from that sore severance to our sister-scion came,
God speed thee, young America, we glory in thy fame!

“The storm that shook the Western World now eastward breaks anew,
And, oh, how black the tempest is which blotteth out the blue!
And over thee, ill-fortuned France, what floods resistless roll,
A tidal wave of blood no pitying planet may control!

“Like Samson toiling blind and bound to furnish food for those
Who light withheld and liberty, and mocked at all his woes,
So have thy people held their peace, so laboured, so have borne
The burden serfdom ever bears, the sorrow and the scorn.
But as with groping giant-hands he seized the pillars twain
And made Philistia's land one house of mourning for the slain,
So rise they, frenzied, at the last, by centuries of wrong,
And wreak a vengeance dreadful as their sufferings have been long,
The vile Bastille is overthrown, the Monarchy lies low,
The fetters of the Feudal Age are broken at a blow!

“Of Poland parted for a prey dire Nemesis shall tell
When o'er the dead in Cracow's vault shall ring Oppression's knell!
Now Erin from her Sister-Isle awhile was fain to part,
For Strongbow's arrow rankled long within her wounded heart;
And long by desecrated fane and fireless hearth she wailed,
Where brutal Ireton's Herod-host their murderous pikes had trailed.
Here shine the names she holdeth dear; and prize them well she may,
Past soldiers of a Frankish prince, or peers of Castlereagh;
The gifted ones who pled for her 'gainst bigotry and pride,
The gallant ones who died for her when young Fitzgerald died!”

Enough, enough, forbear to trace the record of the age,
Where elder nations are inscribed, through each distressful page:

But hearken how, for once, at least, without an army's aid,
A people's lines the lines of her who holds the South, were laid!

Five thousand leagues of ocean 'twixt the old home and the new,
And lodging strait and scanty fare the weary voyage through.
And toil and hardship safely past, and crossed the perilous main,
Never to tread on English ground 'mid English friends again!
Yet men were found to dare it all, men, ay, and women too,
(Not only those exiled perforce, who oftimes rose anew,
Out-cast upon new earth, with hope, and heart, and vigour given,
By fresh surroundings, and His grace who bids the lost to Heaven),
The brave, the fair, the gently-born, and Labour's life-long thrall,
Within those circling seas of ours there was a place for all.

For patient hands the woods to fell, the new-formed fields to till,
The huts to build, the scanty flocks and herds to guard from ill.
For bolder spirits, to forsake the sea-board settlement,
And learn the secret of the land where never white man went,
Through mountain-pass, and forest dark, and wide unsheltered plain,
Through fiery heat of summer, and through frost, and flood, and rain,
Unheeding thirst, or hunger, or the shower of savage spears,
What soldiers e'er were braver than Australian pioneers?
What though it was by axe, and plough, and miner's oft-edged tool,
And tending sheep and kine through weary years, of hardship full,
The only victories we boast were by our fathers won?
The men who won them had prevailed where feats of arms were done!
Three generations born of her our Country now can tell,
And son, and sire, and grandsire, all in turn have served her well;
Not only with the sinewy arm, the hardened hand of toil,
That wrest their wealth from rifted rock and forest-cumbered soil,
By love of order and of law; by proferred boon to all
Of learning, in the township school and in the college hall;
By liberal leisure, well-bestowed, for sports of land and wave;
And by the faith preserved to us God to the Elders gave!

And now Britannia's household send her, greetings from beside
The icy streams of Canada, and islands scattered wide
Betwixt the two Americas, from Africa's sea-marge,
And where the race of Aurungzebe held empire rich and large,
And where amid New Zealand fern the English skylarks build,
And rosy children's sun-burnt hands with English flowers are filled,
And from our own Australia too, and all unite to say,
“Bind us to thee with stronger bonds than those we own today,
Give to our sons a place with thine, for each to each is peer,
And let them share thy councils, and the dangers that endear,
And what the Olden Realm has been the Newer Realm shall be,
With a place in every freeman's heart and a port in every sea!”