Give thou a gift to me
From thy treasure-house, O sea!

Said a red-lipped laughing girl
While the summer yet was young;

And the sea laughed back and flung
At her feet a priceless pearl.

Give thou a gift to me
From thy treasure-house, O sea!

Said the maiden once again
On a night of wind and rain.

Like a ghost the moon above her
Stared through winding-sheets of cloud.

On the sand in sea-weed shroud,
Lay the pale corpse of her lover.

Which is better, gain or loss?
Which is nobler, crown or cross?

We shall know these things, maybe,
When the dead rise from the sea.

A Vision Splendid

Half waking and half dreaming,
While starry lamps hung low
I saw a vision splendid
Upon the darkness glow.

The Capital Australian,
With waving banners plumed -
A shining flower of marble -
Magnificently bloomed.

Beside a snow-fed river
'Twas built in fashion rare -
Upon a lofty mountain,
All in a valley fair.

The stately ships were sailing,
Like brides with flowing trains,
To seek its secret harbor
Amidst Australian plains.

And all around it flourished
Luxuriantly free,
The giant gum and mangrove,
The crimson desert-pea.

And I beheld a building
That made a stately show -
The National Australian
Head Poetry Bureau.

I gazed upon that Building
With trembling joy aghast;
The long-felt want of ages
Was filled (I thought) at last.

No more the Native Poet
Need wildly beat his head
For lofty lyric measures
To buy him beer and bed.

Now he would lodge right nobly
And sleep serene, secure,
All in a chamber filled with
Adhesive furniture.

For never foot of Bailiff
Should pass his threshold o'er,
And never knock of landlord
Sound direful on his door.

The State should also aid him
To build his lofty rhyme
On lordly eggs-and-bacon,
And sausages sublime.

And he should drink no longer
Cheap beer at common bar,
But royal wine of Wunghnu
At two-and-nine the jar.

It was a vision splendid,
And brighter still did grow
When I was made the Chief of
The Poetry Bureau.

They clad me all in purple,
They hung me with festoons,
My singing-robes were spangled
With aluminium moons.

And, as a sign of genius
Above the common kind,
A wreath of gilded laurel
Around my hat they twined.

They also gave me power to
The grain sift from the chaff,
And choose at my large pleasure
My own poetic staff.

Then straightaway I appointed
To chant by day and night,
The brilliant young Australian
Who sang 'The Land of Light.'

I also gave in fashion
Hilariously free,
The Girl and Horse Department
In charge of Ogilvie.

And on the roof-ridge Brady
Sang salt-junk chanties great
To cheer the stout sea-lawyers
Who sail the Ship of State.

And tender-hearted Lawson
Sang everybody's wrongs;
And Brennan, in the basement,
Crooned weird, symbolic songs.

And on the throne beside me,
Above the common din,
He sang his Songs of Beauty,
My friend, the poet Quinn.

Our own Australian artists
Made beautiful its halls -
The mighty steeds of Mahony
Pranced proudly on the walls.

Tom Roberts, he was there, too,
With painted portraits fine
Of men of light and leading -
Me, and some friends of mine.

And Souter's Leering Lady,
'Neath hat and over fan,
With Souter's cat was ogling
His check-clothed gentleman.

And Fischer, Ashton, Lister,
With beetling genius rife -
Pardieu! I was their Patron,
And set them up for life.

And from each dusky corner,
In petrified new birth,
Glared busts of Me and Barton,
By Nelson Illingworth.

And nine fair Muses dwelt there,
With board and lodging free;
Six by the States were chosen,
And I selected three.

And there we turned out blithely
Australian poems sound,
To sell in lengths like carpet,
And also by the pound.

For Paddy Quinn, the Statesman,
Had made a law which said
That native authors only
On pain of death be read.

O, brother bards, I grieve that
Good dreams do not come true;
You see how very nobly
I would have done to you!

But, ah! the vision vanished,
And took away in tow
The National Australian
Head Poetry Bureau.

THE old dead flowers of bygone summers,
The old sweet songs that are no more sung,
The rose-red dawns that were welcome comers
When you and I and the world were young,
Are lost, O love, to the light for ever,
And seen no more of the moon or sun,
For seas divide, and the seasons sever,
And twain are we that of old were one.

O fair lost love, when the ship went sailing
Across the seas in the years agone,
And seaward-set were the eyes unquailing,
And landward-looking the faces wan,

My heart went back as a dove goes homeward
With wings aweary to seek its nest,
While fierce sea-eagles are flying foamward
And storm-winds whiten the surge’s crest;

And far inland for a farewell pardon
Flew on and on, while the ship went South—
The rose was red in the red-rose garden,
And red the rose of your laughing mouth.

But no word came on the wind in token
Of love that lasts till the end; and so
My heart returned to me bruised and broken,
From you, my love, of the long ago.

The green fields seemed in the distance growing
To silken squares on a weaver’s loom,
As oversea came the land-wind blowing
The faint sweet scent of the clover bloom.

A rarer odour to me it carried,
In subtle delicate way to tell
Of you, ere you and the world were married—
The lilac-odour you loved so well.

Again, I saw you beneath the blooms of
Those lilac-trees in the garden old.
Ah me! each tree is a mark for tombs of
Dead dreams and memories still and cold.

And Death comes there with his breath scent-laden,
And gathering gently the blossoms shed
(In guise of Autumn, the brown-browed maiden)
With your and my dead buries his dead.

O, fairer far than the fair ideal
Of him who imaged the foam-born Queen
In foam-white marble—a dream made real—
To me were you in those years, I ween.

Your lips were redder than night-shade berries
That burn in borders of hedgerowed lanes,
And sweeter far than the sweet wild cherries
The June sun flushes with crimson stains.

And gray your eyes as a gray dove’s wings were—
A gray soft-shadowing deeps profound,
Where thoughts that reached to the heart of things were,
And love lay dreaming though seeming drowned.

Twin-tulip-breasted like her the tread of
Whose feet made music in Paphos fair,
The world to me was not worth a thread of
Your brown, ambrosial, braided hair.

Mayhap you loved me at one time truly,
And I was jealous, and you were proud;
But mine the love of the king in Thule,
Till death; and yours—sleeps well in shroud.

So night came down like a sombre raven,
And southward ever the ship was borne,
Till glad green fields and lessening haven
Grew faint and faded like ghosts at morn.

As fields of Heaven eternal blooming,
Those flowerful fields of my mother-land
In midnight visions are still perfuming
All wild waste places and seas of sand.

And still in seasons of storm and thunder,
In strange lands under your land and mine,
And though our ways have been wide asunder,
In calm and tempest and shade and shine

Your face I see as I saw the last time—
As one borne space-ward on wings of light,
With eyes turned back to a sight of past time,
Beholds for ever that self-same sight.

But scorn has died on your lips, and through you
Shines out star-bright an immortal grace,
As though God then to His heaven drew you,
And sent an angel to take your place.

I plucked one rose from the tree you cherished,
My heart’s blood ebbing has kept it red,
And all my hopes with its scent have perished;
Why mourn them now—are the dead not dead?

And yet, God knows, as this rose I kiss, you
May feel the kisses across the sea;
And soul to soul for the larger issue
Your soul may stand with the soul of me,

Unknown to you—for the strings of Being
Are not so easily snapped or torn;
And we may journey with eyes unseeing
On paths that meet in the years unborn.

Farewell, dear heart. Warm sighs may sever
Ripe lips of love like a rose-leaf curled,
But you remain unto me for ever
The one fair woman in all the world.

The River Maiden

Her gown was simple woven wool,
But, in repayment,
Her body sweet made beautiful
The simplest raiment:
For all its fine, melodious curves
With life a-quiver
Were graceful as the bends and swerves
Of her own river.

Her round arms, from the shoulders down
To sweet hands slender,
The sun had kissed them amber-brown
With kisses tender.

For though she loved the secret shades
Where ferns grow stilly,
And wild vines droop their glossy braids,
And gleams the lily,

And Nature, with soft eyes that glow
In gloom that glistens,
Unto her own heart, beating slow,
In silence listens:

She loved no less the meadows fair,
And green, and spacious;
The river, and the azure air,
And sunlight gracious.

I saw her first when tender, wan,
Green light enframed her;
And, in my heart, the Flower of Dawn
I softly named her.

The bright sun, like a king in state,
With banners streaming,
Rode through the fair auroral gate
In mail gold-gleaming.

The witch-eyed stars before him paled—
So high his scorning!—
And round the hills the rose-clouds sailed,
And it was morning.

The light mimosas bended low
To do her honour,
As in that rosy morning glow
I gazed upon her.

My boat swung bowward to the stream
Where tall reeds shiver;
We floated onward, in a dream,
Far down the River.

The River that full oft has told
To Ocean hoary
A many-coloured, sweet, and old
Unending story:

The story of the tall, young trees,
For ever sighing
To sail some day the rolling seas
’Neath banners flying.

The Ocean hears, and through his caves
Roars gusty laughter;
And takes the River, with his waves
To roll thereafter.

But Love deep waters cannot drown;
To its old fountains
The stream returns in clouds that crown
Its parent mountains.

The River was to her so dear
She seemed its daughter;
Her deep translucent eyes were clear
As sunlit water;

And in her bright veins seemed to run,
Pulsating, glowing,
The music of the wind and sun,
And waters flowing.

The secrets of the trees she knew:
Their growth, their gladness,
And, when their time of death was due,
Their stately sadness.

Gray gums, like old men warped by time,
She knew their story;
And theirs that laughed in pride of prime
And leafy glory;

And theirs that, where clear waters run,
Drooped dreaming, dreaming;
And theirs that shook against the sun
Their green plumes gleaming.

All things of gladness that exist
Did seem to woo her,
And well that woodland satirist,
The lyre-bird, knew her.

And there were hidden mossy dells
That she knew only,
Where Beauty born of silence dwells
Mysterious, lonely.

No sounds of toil their stillness taunt,
No hearth-smoke sullies
The air: the Mountain Muses haunt
Those lone, green gullies.

And there they weave a song of Fate
That never slumbers:
A song some bard shall yet translate
In golden numbers.

A blue haze veiled the hills’ huge shapes
A misty lustre—
Like rime upon the purple grapes,
When ripe they cluster:

’Twas noon, and all the Vale was gold—
An El Dorado:
The damask river seaward rolled,
Through shine and shadow.

And, gazing on its changing glow,
I saw, half-sighing,
The wondrous Fairyland below
Its surface lying.

There all things shone with paler sheen:
More softly shimmered
The fern-fronds, and with softer green
The myrtles glimmered:

And—like that Fisher gazing in
The sea-depths, pining
For days gone by, who saw Julin
Beneath him shining,

With many a wave-washed corridor,
And sea-filled portal,
And plunged below, and nevermore
Was seen of mortal—

So I, long gazing at the gleam
Of fern and flower,
Felt drawn down to that World of Dream
By magic power:

For there, I knew, in silence sat,
With breasts slow-heaving,
Illusion’s Queen Rabesquerat,
Her web a-weaving.

But when the moon shone, large and low,
Against Orion,
Then, as from some pale portico
Might issue Dian,

She came through tall tree-pillars pale,
A silver vision,
A nymph strayed out of Ida’s vale
Or fields Elysian.

White stars shone out with mystic gleams
The woods illuming:
It seemed as if the trees in dreams
Once more were blooming.

And all beneath those starry blooms,
By bends and beaches,
We floated on through glassy glooms,
Down moonlit reaches.

Ah, that was in the glad years when
Joys ne’er were sifted,
But I on wilder floods since then
Have darkly drifted.

Yet, River of Romance, for me
With pictures glowing,
Through dim, green fields of Memory
Thou still art flowing.

And still I hear, thy shores along,
All faintly ringing,
The notes of ghosts of birds that long
Have ceased their singing.

Was she, who then my heart did use
To touch so purely,
A mortal maiden—or a Muse?
I know not, surely.

But still in dreams I see her stand,
A fairer Flora,
Serene, immortal, by the strand
Of clear Narora.

The Cruise Of The 'In Memoriam'

The wan light of a stormy dawn
Gleamed on a tossing ship:
It was the In Memoriam
Upon a mourning trip.
Wild waves were on the windward bow,
And breakers on the lee;
And through her sides the women heard
The seething of the sea.

“O Captain!” cried a widow fair,
Her plump white hands clasped she,
“Thinkst thou, if drowned in this dread storm,
That savèd we shall be?”

“You speak in riddles, lady dear,
How savèd can we be
If we are drowned?” “Alas, I mean
In Paradise!” said she.

“O I’ve sailed North, and I’ve sailed South”
(He was a godless wight),
“But boy or man, since my days began,
That shore I ne’er did sight!”

The Captain told the First Mate bold
What that fair lady said;
The First Mate sneered in his black beard—
His eyes burned in his head.

“Full forty souls are here aboard,
A-sailing on the wave—
Without the crew, and, ’twixt us two,
I think they’ve none to save—

“Full forty souls, and each one is
A mourner, as you know.
They weep the scuppers full; the ship
Is waterlogged with woe.”

Again he sneered in his black beard:
“The cruise is not so brief,
But, ere we land on earthly strand,
All will have found relief.”

“Nay, nay,” the Captain said, “First Mate,
You have forgotten one
With eyes of blue; the tears are true
From those dear eyes that run!

“She mourns her sweetheart drowned last year,
A seaman he, forsooth!
I would not drown for Christ his crown
If she were mine, Fair Ruth!”

“Brave words! but words,” the First Mate cried,
“Are wind! Behold in me
The warmest lover and the last!
Mine shall the maiden be.”

. . . . .
Fair Ruth stood by the taffrail high,
A cross dropped in the sea,
If you lie here, my sweetheart dear,
By this remember me!”
Fair Ruth stood by the taffrail high,
A ring dropped in the sea:
“Marry him not, ye false mermaids,
Married he’s now to me!”

The heavens flashed flame; a black cloud came,
Its wings the sky did span,
And hovered above the fated ship
Like death o’er a dying man.

Bended the spars and shrieked the shrouds,
The sails flew from the mast,
And, like a soul by fiends pursued,
The ship fled through the blast.

“More sail! more sail!” the First Mate cried
(The Captain stood aghast),
“More sail! more sail!” and he laughed in scorn,
All by the mizen mast.

“O brethren dear, there’s nought to fear,
The steward told me so!”
’Twas the parson meek who thus did speak,
Just come up from below:

“And were there,” he said, with upraised head,
And hands clasped piously,
“I have a sainted spouse in Heaven—
I trow she waits for me.”

Then grimly laughed the false First Mate
“Good parson, let her be!
I’ve a wife in every port but that—
And that we shall not see.”

“Oh, pardon seek!” cried the parson meek,
“And pray, if pray you can,
For much I fear, by your scornful sneer,
That you are a sinful man.”

Then louder laughed the false First Mate,
Louder and louder still,
And the wicked crew laughed loudly too,
As wicked seamen will.

“O Captain!” whispered a gentle dame,
“When shall we see the land?”
The Captain answered never a word,
But clasped her by the hand.

. . . . .
Day after day, night after night,
On, on the ship did reel:
The Captain drank with the second mate,
The First Mate held the wheel.
Down came a black cloud on the ship,
And wrapped her like a pall,
And horror of awful darkness fell
Upon them one and all.

The night had swallowed them utterly,
None could his fellow see,
But ghostly voices up and down
Went whispering fearsomely.

No faint ray shone from moon or sun,
The light of Heaven was gone,
But ever the First Mate held the wheel,
And ever the ship rushed on.

. . . . .
Fair Ruth knelt down in that grim gloom,
She prayed beneath her breath:
“God carry me o’er this dread sea
That seems the Sea of Death!”
She ceased—and lo! a lurid glow
O’er that dark water spread,
And in the blackness burned, afar,
A line of bloody red.

“What lights are yon?” the Captain said.
The First Mate answered then:
“No lights that ever shone upon
The world of living men.”

“Down on your knees!” the parson cried;
“Thank God, for all is well!”
The First Mate laughed: “Those lights, they are
The harbour lights of Hell.”

On flew the ship; to every lip
An ashen pallor came,
For all might see that suddenly
The sea had turned to flame.

The lights were near; the Sea of Fear,
Amid the silence dire,
On that dread shore broke evermore
In soundless foam of fire.

“Oh, what are yon gray ghosts and wan!”
The parson cried, “who seem
With coloured strings of beads to play,
As in a dreadful dream?”

“Damned souls;” the First Mate said; “they sit
And count, through endless years,
The moments of Eternity
On beads of burning tears.”

Then, “Who are you,” the parson said,
“That talk so free of Hell?”
“My name is Satan,” he replied,
“Have I not steered you well?”

“Back—back the yards!” the Captain cried
Then quoth the false First Mate:
“Like many more who sight this shore,
You back your yards too late.”

“There are the dear deceased you mourned
With such exceeding zest;
They call you—whoso freely goes
E’en yet may save the rest.”

One pale ghost waved the vessel back
With gestures sad and dumb—
Fair Ruth has plunged into the sea,
“My love, my love, I come!”

. . . . .
All in a moment shone the sun,
Blue gleamed the sky and sea,
The brave old ship upon the waves
Was dancing merrily.
And merrily to sound of bells
To her old port full soon
The In Memoriam that went forth
Returned the Honeymoon.

There o’er their grog sea-captains still
Her wondrous story tell,
And how her Captain backed his yards
A biscuit-throw from Hell.