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An Anthology of Australian Verse
Edited by Bertram Stevens
February, 1998 [Etext #1199]
The Project Gutenberg Etext of An Anthology of Australian Verse
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An Anthology of Australian Verse
Edited by Bertram Stevens
Dedicated to
DAVID SCOTT MITCHELL, Esq.
Sydney
Preface
The Editor has endeavoured to make this selection representative of the best short poems written by Australians or inspired by Australian scenery and conditions of life, — "Australian" in this connection being used to include New Zealand. The arrangement is as nearly as possible chronological; and the appendix contains brief biographical particulars of the authors, together with notes which may be useful to readers outside Australia.
The Editor thanks Messrs. H. H. Champion, Henry Gyles Turner,
E. B. Loughran, A. Brazier and Walter Murdoch (Melbourne),
Mr. Sydney Jephcott (Upper Murray, Vic.), Mr. Fred. Johns (Adelaide),
Mr. Thomas Cottle (Auckland), Mr. J. C. Andersen (Christchurch),
Messrs. David Scott Mitchell, Alfred Lee, A. W. Jose,
and J. Le Gay Brereton (Sydney), for their generous help.
Mr. Douglas Sladen's anthologies, Messrs. Turner and Sutherland's
"Development of Australian Literature", and `The Bulletin' have also furnished
much useful information.
Contents
Introduction
William Charles Wentworth.
Australasia
"Australasia: a Poem"
Charles Harpur.
Love
Words
A Coast View
"Poems"
William Forster.
`The Love in her Eyes lay Sleeping'
"Midas"
James Lionel Michael.
`Through Pleasant Paths'
"John Cumberland"
Personality
Periodical (Sydney, 1858)
Daniel Henry Deniehy.
Love in a Cottage
A Song for the Night
Periodical (Sydney, 1847)
Richard Rowe.
Superstites Rosae
Soul Ferry
"Peter 'Possum's Portfolio"
Sir Henry Parkes.
The Buried Chief
"Fragmentary Thoughts"
Thomas Alexander Browne (`Rolf Boldrewood').
Perdita
"Old Melbourne Memories"
Adam Lindsay Gordon.
A Dedication
"Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes"
Thora's Song
"Ashtaroth: A Dramatic Lyric"
The Sick Stock-rider
"Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes"
Henry Kendall.
Prefatory Sonnets
September in Australia
Rose Lorraine
"Leaves from Australian Forests"
To a Mountain
Araluen
After Many Years
Hy-Brasil
"Songs from the Mountains"
Outre Mer
"Poems"
Marcus Clarke.
The Song of Tigilau
"Austral Edition of the collected Works of Marcus Clarke"
Patrick Moloney.
Melbourne
"An Easter Omelette" (Melbourne, 1879)
Alfred Domett.
An Invitation
A Maori Girl's Song
"Ranolf and Amohia"
James Brunton Stephens.
The Dominion of Australia
The Dark Companion
Day
Night
"Convict Once"
Thomas Bracken.
Not Understood
Spirit of Song
"Musings in Maoriland"
Ada Cambridge.
What of the Night?
Good-bye
The Virgin Martyr
Honour
Despair
Faith
Manuscript
Alexander Bathgate.
The Clematis
"Far South Fancies"
Philip Joseph Holdsworth.
Quis Separabit?
Manuscript
My Queen of Dreams
"Station Hunting on the Warrego"
Mary Hannay Foott.
Where the Pelican Builds
New Country
No Message
Happy Days
"Morna Lee and other Poems"
Henry Lea Twisleton.
To a Cabbage Rose
"Poems"
Mrs. James Glenny Wilson.
Fairyland
A Winter Daybreak
The Lark's Song
"A Book of Verses"
Edward Booth Loughran.
Dead Leaves
Isolation
Ishmonie
"'Neath Austral Skies"
John Liddell Kelly.
Immortality
Heredity
"Heather and Fern"
Robert Richardson.
A Ballade of Wattle Blossom
A Song
"Willow and Wattle"
James Lister Cuthbertson.
Australia Federata
At Cape Schanck
"Barwon Ballads"
Wattle and Myrtle
Periodical (Melbourne)
The Australian Sunrise
Periodical (Geelong)
John Farrell.
Australia to England
Periodical (Sydney, 1897)
Arthur Patchett Martin.
Bushland
"The Withered Jester, and other Verses"
Douglas Brooke Wheelton Sladen.
Under the Wattle
Periodical (1888)
Victor James Daley.
Players
Periodical (Sydney, 1900)
Anna
Periodical (Sydney, 1902)
The Night Ride
Manuscript
Alice Werner.
Bannerman of the Dandenong
"A Time and Times"
Ethel Castilla.
An Australian Girl
A Song of Sydney
"The Australian Girl, and other Verses"
Francis William Lauderdale Adams.
Something
Gordon's Grave
To A. L. Gordon
"Poetical Works"
Love and Death
Manuscript
Thomas William Heney.
Absence
"In Middle Harbour, and other Verse"
A Riverina Road
Periodical (Sydney, 1891)
Patrick Edward Quinn.
A Girl's Grave
Periodical (Sydney, 1889)
John Sandes.
`With Death's Prophetic Ear'
"Ballads of Battle"
Inez K. Hyland.
To a Wave
Bread and Wine
"In Sunshine and in Shadow"
George Essex Evans.
An Australian Symphony
A Nocturne
A Pastoral
"Loraine, and other Verses"
The Women of the West
Periodical (Melbourne)
Mary Colborne-Veel.
`What Look hath She?'
Saturday Night
`Resurgam'
"The Fairest of the Angels, and other Verse"
Distant Authors
Periodical (London)
John Bernard O'Hara.
Happy Creek
A Country Village
Flinders
"Lyrics of Nature"
M. A. Sinclair.
The Chatelaine
Periodical (Dunedin, N.Z.)
Sydney Jephcott.
Chaucer
White Paper
Splitting
"The Secrets of the South"
Home-woe
A Ballad of the last King of Thule
A Fragment
Manuscript
Andrew Barton Paterson (`Banjo').
The Daylight is Dying
Clancy of the Overflow
Black Swans
The Travelling Post Office
"The Man from Snowy River"
The Old Australian Ways
By the Grey Gulf-Water
"Rio Grande's Last Race, and other Verses"
Jessie Mackay.
The Grey Company
A Folk Song
Dunedin in the Gloaming
The Burial of Sir John Mackenzie
Periodical (Dunedin, N.Z.)
Henry Lawson.
Andy's gone with Cattle
Out Back
The Star of Australasia
Middleton's Rouseabout
The Vagabond
The Sliprails and the Spur
"In the Days when the World was Wide, and other Verses"
Arthur Albert Dawson Bayldon.
Sunset
The Sea
To Poesy
"The Western Track, and other Verses"
Jennings Carmichael.
An Old Bush Road
A Woman's Mood
"Poems"
Agnes L. Storrie.
Twenty Gallons of Sleep
A Confession
"Poems"
Martha M. Simpson.
To an Old Grammar
Periodical (Sydney)
William Gay.
Primroses
"Christ on Olympus, and other Poems"
To M.
Vestigia Nulla Retrorsum
"Sonnets"
Edward Dyson.
The Old Whim Horse
"Rhymes from the Mines, and other Lines"
Dowell O'Reilly.
The Sea-Maiden
Periodical (Sydney, 1895)
David MacDonald Ross.
Love's Treasure House
The Sea to the Shell
The Silent Tide
The Watch on Deck
Autumn
"The After Glow"
Mary Gilmore.
A Little Ghost
Periodical (Orange, N.S.W.)
Good-Night
Periodical (Brisbane)
Bernard O'Dowd.
Love's Substitute
Our Duty
Manuscript
Edwin James Brady.
The Wardens of the Seas
Manuscript
Will. H. Ogilvie.
Queensland Opal
Periodical (London)
Wind o' the Autumn
Periodical (London)
Daffodils
Periodical (Edinburgh)
A Queen of Yore
Periodical (Sydney)
Drought
Periodical (London)
The Shadow on the Blind
Periodical (London)
Roderic Quinn.
The House of the Commonwealth
Periodical (Sydney)
The Lotus-Flower
Manuscript
David McKee Wright.
An Old Colonist's Reverie
"Station Ballads, and other Verses"
Christopher John Brennan.
Romance
"XXI Poems: Towards the Source"
Poppies
Manuscript
John Le Gay Brereton.
The Sea Maid
"Oithona"
Home
"Sea and
Wilfred
Periodical (Sydney)
Arthur H. Adams.
Bayswater, W.
Manuscript
Bond Street
Periodical (London)
Ethel Turner.
A Trembling Star
`Oh, if that Rainbow up there!'
"Gum Leaves"
Johannes Carl Andersen.
Soft, Low and Sweet
"Songs Unsung"
Maui Victor
Periodical (Dunedin, N.Z.)
Dora Wilcox.
In London
"Verses from Maoriland"
Ernest Currie.
Laudabunt Alii
Periodical (Timaru, N.Z.)
George Charles Whitney.
Sunset
Manuscript
James Lister Cuthbertson. [reprise]
Ode to Apollo
Periodical (Melbourne)
Notes on the Poems
Biographical Notes
—————————————————
An Anthology of Australian Verse
—————————————————
Introduction
As the literature of a country is, in certain respects, a reflex of its character, it may be advisable to introduce this Anthology with some account of the main circumstances which have affected the production of Australian poetry.
Australia was first settled by the British a little more than a century ago, so that we are still a young community. The present population, including that of New Zealand, is a little under five millions, or about the same as that of London; it is chiefly scattered along the coast and the few permanent waterways, and a vast central region is but sparsely inhabited as yet. All climates, from tropical to frigid, are included within the continent, but the want of satisfactory watersheds renders it peculiarly liable to long droughts and sudden floods. The absence of those broad, outward signs of the changing seasons which mark the pageant of the year in the old world is probably a greater disadvantage than we are apt to suspect. Here, too, have existed hardly any of the conditions which obtained in older communities where great literature arose. There is no glamour of old Romance about our early history, no shading off from the actual into a dim region of myth and fable; our beginnings are clearly defined and of an eminently prosaic character. The early settlers were engaged in a hand-to-hand struggle with nature, and in the establishment of the primitive industries. Their strenuous pioneering days were followed by the feverish excitement of the gold period and a consequent rapid expansion of all industries. Business and politics have afforded ready roads to success, and have absorbed the energies of the best intellects. There has been no leisured class of cultured people to provide the atmosphere in which literature is best developed as an art; and, until recently, we have been content to look to the mother country for our artistic standards and supplies. The principal literary productions of our first century came from writers who had been born elsewhere, and naturally brought with them the traditions and sentiments of their home country.
We have not yet had time to settle down and form any decided racial characteristics; nor has any great crisis occurred to fuse our common sympathies and create a national sentiment. Australia has produced no great poet, nor has any remarkable innovation in verse forms been successfully attempted. But the old forms have been so coloured by the strange conditions of a new country, and so charged with the thoughts and feelings of a vigorous, restless democracy now just out of its adolescence, that they have an interest and a value beyond that of perhaps technically better minor poetry produced under English skies.
The first verses actually written and published in Australia seem to have been the Royal Birthday Odes of Michael Robinson, which were printed as broadsides from 1810 to 1821. Their publication in book form was announced in `The Hobart Town Gazette' of 23rd March, 1822, but no copy of such a volume is at present known to exist. The famous "Prologue", said to have been recited at the first dramatic performance in Australia, on January 16th, 1796 (when Dr. Young's tragedy "The Revenge" and "The Hotel" were played in a temporary theatre at Sydney), was for a long time attributed to the notorious George Barrington, and ranked as the first verse produced in Australia. There is, however, no evidence to support this claim. The lines first appeared in a volume called "Original Poems and Translations" chiefly by Susannah Watts, published in London in 1802, a few months before the appearance of the "History of New South Wales" (1803) — known as George Barrington's — which also, in all probability, was not written by Barrington. In Susannah Watts' book the Prologue is stated to be written by "A Gentleman", but there is no clue to the name of the author. Mr. Barron Field, Judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, printed in Sydney in 1819 his "First Fruits of Australian Poetry", for private circulation. Field was a friend of Charles Lamb, who addressed to him the letter printed in "The Essays of Elia" under the title of "Distant Correspondents". Lamb reviewed the "First Fruits" in `The Examiner', and one wishes for his sake that the verses were more worthy.
The first poem of any importance by an Australian is William Charles Wentworth's "Australasia", written in 1823 at Cambridge University in competition for the Chancellor's medal. There were twenty-seven competitors, and the prize was awarded to W. Mackworth Praed, Wentworth being second on the list. Wentworth's poem was printed in London in the same year, and shortly afterwards in `The Sydney Gazette', the first Australian newspaper. In 1826 there was printed at the Albion Press, Sydney, "Wild Notes from the Lyre of a Native Minstrel" by Charles Tompson, Junior, the first verse of an Australian-born writer published in this country. There was also published in Sydney in 1826 a book of verses by Dr. John Dunmore Lang, called "Aurora Australis". Both Lang and Wentworth afterwards conducted newspapers and wrote histories of New South Wales, but their names are more famous in the political than in the literary annals of the country. At Hobart Town in 1827 appeared "The Van Diemen's Land Warriors, or the Heroes of Cornwall" by "Pindar Juvenal", the first book of verse published in Tasmania. During the next ten years various poetical effusions were printed in the colonies, which are of bibliographical interest but of hardly any intrinsic value. Newspapers had been established at an early date, but until the end of this period they were little better than news-sheets or official gazettes, giving no opportunities for literature. The proportion of well-educated persons was small, the majority of the free settlers being members of the working classes, as very few representatives of British culture came willingly to this country until after the discovery of gold.
It was not until 1845 that the first genuine, though crude, Australian poetry appeared, in the form of a small volume of sonnets by Charles Harpur, who was born at Windsor, N.S.W., in 1817. He passed his best years in the lonely bush, and wrote largely under the influence of Wordsworth and Shelley. He had some imagination and poetic faculty of the contemplative order, but the disadvantages of his life were many. Harpur's best work is in his longer poems, from which extracts cannot conveniently be given here. The year 1842 had seen the publication of Henry Parkes' "Stolen Moments", the first of a number of volumes of verse which that statesman bravely issued, the last
With the discovery of gold a new era began for Australia. That event induced the flow of a large stream of immigration, and gave an enormous impetus to the development of the colonies. Among the ardent spirits attracted here were J. Lionel Michael, Robert Sealy, R. H. Horne, the Howitts, Henry Kingsley and Adam Lindsay Gordon. Michael was a friend of Millais, and an early champion of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Soon after his arrival in Sydney he abandoned the idea of digging for gold, and began to practise again as a solicitor. Later on he removed to Grafton on the Clarence River; there in 1857 Henry Kendall, a boy of 16, found work in his office, and Michael, discerning his promise, encouraged him to write. Most of the boy's earliest verses were sent from Michael's office to Parkes, who printed them in his paper `The Empire'. When Kendall left Grafton, Michael gave him a letter of introduction to Stenhouse, which brought him in touch with the small literary group in Sydney; and his first volume, "Poems and Songs", was published in Sydney in 1862. It was not long before he recognised the extreme weakness of most of its contents, and did what he could to suppress the book. He sent specimens of his best work to the London `Athenaeum', and wrote a pathetic letter to the Editor, which was printed in the issue of 27th September, 1862, together with some of the poems and a most kindly comment. Kendall soon wrote again, sending more poems, and received encouraging notices in `The Athenaeum' on 19th September, 1863, 27th February, 1864, and 17th February, 1866. These form the first favourable pronouncement upon Australian poetry by an English critical journal of importance. Their stimulating effect upon Kendall was very great. From the indifference of the many and the carping criticisms of some of the magnates here, he had appealed to one of the highest literary authorities in England, and received praise beyond his wildest expectations.
Meanwhile the colony of Victoria, which began its independent career in 1851, had been advancing even more rapidly than New South Wales. `The Argus' newspaper had been in existence since 1846, and other periodicals sprang up in Melbourne which gave further scope to letters. `The Australasian' was established in 1854, and soon became the most important literary journal in Australia. Adam Lindsay Gordon, who had landed in Adelaide in the same year as Henry Kingsley — 1853 — published a little book of verse in 1864 at Mt. Gambier, S.A., and began to contribute verses to a Melbourne sporting paper in 1866. These were printed anonymously, and attracted some attention; but a collection of his ballads — "Sea Spray and Smoke Drift" — brought very little praise and no profit. Marcus Clarke came to Melbourne in 1864, and soon afterwards began to write for `The Argus' and other papers. About the same time the presence of R. H. Horne, the distinguished author of "Orion", in Melbourne lent a lustre to that city, which was for the time the literary centre of Australia. Horne corresponded with Kendall, and contributed to a paper edited by Deniehy in Sydney — `The Southern Cross' (1859-60). He was the presiding genius of the literary gatherings at Dwight's book-shop in Melbourne, and no doubt exercised a beneficial influence upon the writers around him.
In 1870, after a series of crushing disappointments, Gordon committed suicide. His dramatic end awakened sympathy and gave an additional interest to his writings. It was soon found that in the city and the bush many of his spirited racing ballads were well known. The virile, athletic tone of his verse, which taught
"How a man should uphold the sports of his land
And strike his best with a strong right hand
And take his strokes in return" —
and the practical philosophy, summed up in the well-known quatrain —
"Life is mostly froth and bubble,
Two things stand like stone;
Kindness in another's trouble,
Courage in your own" —
appeal strongly to Australians. Gordon's work cannot be considered as peculiarly Australian in character; but much of it is concerned with the horse, and all of it is a-throb with the manly, reckless personality of the writer. Horses and horse-racing are especially interesting to Australians, the Swinburnian rush of Gordon's ballads charms their ear, and in many respects he embodies their ideal of a man. There are few Australians who do not know some of his poems, even if they know no others, and his influence upon subsequent writers has been very great.
Brunton Stephens, who came to Queensland in 1866, wrote there a long poem called "Convict Once" which, when published in London in 1871, gained high praise from competent critics, and gave the author an academic reputation. A little book of humorous verses issued in Melbourne in 1873 almost immediately became popular, and a later volume of "Miscellaneous Poems" (1880), containing some fine patriotic utterances as well as many in lighter vein, established him as one of our chief singers.
The first important poem from New Zealand — Domett's "Ranolf and Amohia" — was published in London in 1872. Domett spent thirty years in New Zealand. He wrote a good deal of verse before leaving England and after his return, but "Ranolf and Amohia" is the only poem showing traces of Australian influence. It is a miscellany in verse rather than an epic, and contains some fine descriptions of New Zealand scenery.
The death of Kendall in Sydney in 1882 closed what may be regarded as the second literary period. He had published his finest work in "Songs from the Mountains" (1880), and had the satisfaction of knowing that it was a success, financially and otherwise. Kendall's audience is not so large as Gordon's, but it is a steadily growing one; and many readers who have been affected by his musical verse hold the ill-fated singer in more tender regard than any other. He lived at a time when Australians had not learned to think it possible that any good thing in art could come out of Australia, and were too fully occupied with things of the market-place to concern themselves much about literature.
Several attempts have been made to maintain magazines and reviews in Sydney and Melbourne, but none of them could compete successfully with the imported English periodicals. `The Colonial Monthly', `The Melbourne Review', `The Sydney Quarterly', and `The Centennial Magazine' were the most important of these. They cost more to produce than their English models, and the fact that their contents were Australian was not sufficient in itself to obtain for them adequate support. Newspapers have played a far more important part in our literary world. `The Australasian', `Sydney Mail' and `Queenslander' have done a good deal to encourage local writers, but the most powerful influence has been that of `The Bulletin', started in Sydney in
Australia has now come of age, and is becoming conscious of its strength and its possibilities. Its writers to-day are, as a rule, self-reliant and hopeful. They have faith in their own country; they write of it as they see it, and of their work and their joys and fears, in simple, direct language. It may be that none of it is poetry in the grand manner, and that some of it is lacking in technical finish; but it is a vivid and faithful portrayal of Australia, and its ruggedness is in character. It is hoped that this selection from the verse that has been written up to the present time will be found a not unworthy contribution to the great literature of the English-speaking peoples.
William Charles Wentworth.
Australasia
Celestial poesy! whose genial sway
Earth's furthest habitable shores obey;
Whose inspirations shed their sacred light,
Far as the regions of the Arctic night,
And to the Laplander his Boreal gleam
Endear not less than Phoebus' brighter beam, —
Descend thou also on my native land,
And on some mountain-summit take thy stand;
Thence issuing soon a purer font be seen
Than charmed Castalia or famed Hippocrene;
And there a richer, nobler fane arise,
Than on Parnassus met the adoring eyes.
And tho', bright goddess, on the far blue hills,
That pour their thousand swift pellucid rills
Where Warragamba's rage has rent in twain
Opposing mountains, thundering to the plain,
No child of song has yet invoked thy aid
'Neath their primeval solitary shade, —
Still, gracious Pow'r, some kindling soul inspire,
To wake to life my country's unknown lyre,
That from creation's date has slumbering lain,
Or only breathed some savage uncouth strain;
And grant that yet an Austral Milton's song
Pactolus-like flow deep and rich along, —
An Austral Shakespeare rise, whose living page
To nature true may charm in ev'ry age; —
And that an Austral Pindar daring soar,
Where not the Theban eagle reach'd before.
And, O Britannia! shouldst thou cease to ride
Despotic Empress of old Ocean's tide; —
Should thy tamed Lion — spent his former might, —
No longer roar the terror of the fight; —
Should e'er arrive that dark disastrous hour,
When bow'd by luxury, thou yield'st to pow'r; —
When thou, no longer freest of the free,
To some proud victor bend'st the vanquish'd knee; —
May all thy glories in another sphere
Relume, and shine more brightly still than here;
May this, thy last-born infant, then arise,
To glad thy heart and greet thy parent eyes;
And Australasia float, with flag unfurl'd,
A new Britannia in another world.
Charles Harpur.
Love
She loves me! From her own bliss-breathing lips
The live confession came, like rich perfume
From crimson petals bursting into bloom!
And still my heart at the remembrance skips
Like a young lion, and my tongue, too, trips
As drunk with joy! while every object seen
In life's diurnal round wears in its mien
A clear assurance that no doubts eclipse.
And if the common things of nature now
Are like old faces flushed with new delight,
Much more the consciousness of that rich vow
Deepens the beauteous, and refines the bright,
While throned I seem on love's divinest height
'Mid all the glories glowing round its brow.
Words
Words are deeds. The words we hear
May revolutionize or rear
A mighty state. The words we read
May be a spiritual deed
Excelling any fleshly one,
As much as the celestial sun
Transcends a bonfire, made to throw
A light upon some raree-show.
A simple proverb tagged with rhyme
May colour half the course of time;
The pregnant saying of a sage
May influence every coming age;
A song in its effects may be
More glorious than Thermopylae,
And many a lay that schoolboys scan
A nobler feat than Inkerman.
A Coast View
High 'mid the shelves of a grey cliff, that yet
Riseth in Babylonian mass above,
In a benched cleft, as in the mouldered chair
Of grey-beard Time himself, I sit alone,
And gaze with a keen wondering happiness
Out o'er the sea. Unto the circling bend
That verges Heaven, a vast luminous plain
It stretches, changeful as a lover's dream —
Into great spaces mapped by light and shade
In constant interchange — either 'neath clouds
The billows darken, or they shimmer bright
In sunny scopes of measureless expanse.
'Tis Ocean dreamless of a stormy hour,
Calm, or but gently heaving; — yet, O God!
What a blind fate-like mightiness lies coiled
In slumber, under that wide-shining face!
While o'er the watery gleam — there where its edge
Banks the dim vacancy, the topmost sails
Of some tall ship, whose hull is yet unseen,
Hang as if clinging to a cloud that still
Comes rising with them from the void beyond,
Like to a heavenly net, drawn from the deep
And carried upward by ethereal hands.
William Forster.
`The Love in her Eyes lay Sleeping'
The love in her eyes lay sleeping,
As stars that unconscious shine,
Till, under the pink lids peeping,
I wakened it up with mine;
And we pledged our troth to a brimming oath
In a bumper of blood-red wine.
Alas! too well I know
That it happened long ago;
Those memories yet remain,
And sting, like throbs of pain,
And I'm alone below,
But still the red wine warms, and the rosy goblets glow;
If love be the heart's enslaver,
'Tis wine that subdues the head.
But which has the fairest flavour,
And whose is the soonest shed?
Wine waxes in power in that desolate hour
When the glory of love is dead.
Love lives on beauty's ray,
But night comes after day,
And when the exhausted sun
His high career has run,
The stars behind him stay,
And then the light that lasts consoles our darkening way.
When beauty and love are over,
And passion has spent its rage,
And the spectres of memory hover,
And glare on life's lonely stage,
'Tis wine that remains to kindle the veins
And strengthen the steps of age.
Love takes the taint of years,
And beauty disappears,
But wine in worth matures
The longer it endures,
And
And ripens with the suns and mellows with the spheres.
James Lionel Michael.
`Through Pleasant Paths'
Through pleasant paths, through dainty ways,
Love leads my feet;
Where beauty shines with living rays,
Soft, gentle, sweet;
The placid heart at random strays,
And sings, and smiles, and laughs and plays,
And gathers from the summer days
Their light and heat,
That in its chambers burn and blaze
And beam and beat.
I throw myself among the ferns
Under the shade,
And watch the summer sun that burns
On dell and glade;
To thee, my dear, my fancy turns,
In thee its Paradise discerns,
For thee it sighs, for thee it yearns,
My chosen maid;
And that still depth of passion learns
Which cannot fade.
The wind that whispers in the night,
Subtle and free,
The gorgeous noonday's blinding light,
On hill and tree,
All lovely things that meet my sight,
All shifting lovelinesses bright,
Speak to my heart with calm delight,
Seeming to be
Cloth'd with enchantment, robed in white,
To sing of thee.
The ways of life are hard and cold
To one alone;
Bitter the strife for place and gold —
We weep and groan:
But when love warms the heart grows bold;
And when our arms the prize enfold,
Dearest! the heart can hardly hold
The bliss unknown,
Unspoken, never to be told —
My own, my own!
Personality
"Death is to us change, not consummation."
Heart of Midlothian.
A change! no, surely, not a change,
The change must be before we die;
Death may confer a wider range,
From pole to pole, from sea to sky,
It cannot make me new or strange
To mine own Personality!
For what am I? — this mortal flesh,
These shrinking nerves, this feeble frame,
For ever racked with ailments fresh
And scarce from day to day the same —
A fly within the spider's mesh,
A moth that plays around the flame!
THIS is not I — within such coil
The immortal spirit rests awhile:
When this shall lie beneath the soil,
Which its mere mortal parts defile,
THAT shall for ever live and foil
Mortality, and pain, and guile.
Whatever Time may make of me
Eternity must see me still
Clear from the dross of earth, and free
From every stain of every ill;
Yet still, where-e'er — what-e'er I be,
Time's work Eternity must fill.
When all the worlds have ceased to roll,
When the long light has ceased to quiver
When we have reached our final goal
And stand beside the Living River,
This vital spark — this loving soul,
Must last for ever and for ever.
To choose what I must be is mine,
Mine in these few and fleeting days,
I may be if I will, divine,
Standing before God's throne in praise, —
Through all Eternity to shine
In yonder Heaven's sapphire blaze.
Father, the soul that counts it gain
To love Thee and Thy law on earth,
Unchanged but free from mortal stain,
Increased in knowledge and in worth,
And purified from this world's pain,
Shall find through Thee a second birth.
A change! no surely not a change!
The change must be before we die;
Death may confer a wider range
From world to world, from sky to sky,
It cannot make me new or strange
To mine own Personality!
Daniel Henry Deniehy.
Love in a Cottage
A cottage small be mine, with porch
Enwreathed with ivy green,
And brightsome flowers with dew-filled bells,
'Mid brown old wattles seen.
And one to wait at shut of eve,
With eyes as fountain clear,
And braided hair, and simple dress,
My homeward step to hear.
On summer eves to sing old songs,
And talk o'er early vows,
While stars look down like angels' eyes
Amid the leafy boughs.
When Spring flowers peep from flossy cells,
And bright-winged parrots call,
In forest paths be ours to rove
Till purple evenings fall.
The curtains closed, by taper clear
To read some page divine,
On winter nights, the hearth beside,
Her soft, warm hand in mine.
And so to glide through busy life,
Like some small brook alone,
That winds its way 'mid grassy knolls,
Its music all its own.
A Song for the Night
O the Night, the Night, the solemn Night,
When Earth is bound with her silent zone,
And the spangled sky seems a temple wide,
Where the star-tribes kneel at the Godhead's throne;
O the Night, the Night, the wizard Night,
When the garish reign of day is o'er,
And the myriad barques of the dream-elves come
In a brightsome fleet from Slumber's shore!
O the Night for me,
When blithe and free,
Go the zephyr-hounds on their airy chase;
When the moon is high
In the dewy sky,
And the air is sweet as a bride's embrace!
O the Night, the Night, the charming Night!
From the fountain side in the myrtle shade,
All softly creep on the slumbrous air
The waking notes of the serenade;
While bright eyes shine 'mid the lattice-vines,
And white arms droop o'er the sculptured sills,
And accents fall to the knights below,
Like the babblings soft of mountain rills.
Love in their eyes,
Love in their sighs,
Love in the heave of each lily-bright bosom;
In words so clear,
Lest the listening ear
And the waiting heart may lose them.
O the silent Night, when the student dreams
Of kneeling crowds round a sage's tomb;
And the mother's eyes o'er the cradle rain
Tears for her baby's fading bloom;
O the peaceful Night, when stilled and o'er
Is the charger's tramp on the battle plain,
And the bugle's sound and the sabre's flash,
While the moon looks sad over heaps of slain;
And tears bespeak
On the iron cheek
Of the sentinel lonely pacing,
Thoughts which roll
Through his fearless soul,
Day's sterner mood replacing.
O the sacred Night, when memory comes
With an aspect mild and sweet to me,
But her tones are sad as a ballad air
In childhood heard on a nurse's knee;
And round her throng fair forms long fled,
With brows of snow and hair of gold,
And eyes with the light of summer skies,
And lips that speak of the days of old.
Wide is your flight,
O spirits of Night,
By strath, and stream, and grove,
But most in the gloom
Of the Poet's room
Ye choose, fair
Richard Rowe.
Superstites Rosae
The grass is green upon her grave,
The west wind whispers low;
"The corn is changed, come forth, come forth,
Ere all the blossoms go!"
In vain. Her laughing eyes are sealed,
And cold her sunny brow;
Last year she smiled upon the flowers —
They smile above her now!
Soul Ferry
High and dry upon the shingle lies the fisher's boat to-night;
From his roof-beam dankly drooping, raying phosphorescent light,
Spectral in its pale-blue splendour, hangs his heap of scaly nets,
And the fisher, lapt in slumber, surge and seine alike forgets.
Hark! there comes a sudden knocking, and the fisher starts from sleep,
As a hollow voice and ghostly bids him once more seek the deep;
Wearily across his shoulder flingeth he the ashen oar,
And upon the beach descending finds a skiff beside the shore.
'Tis not his, but he must enter — rocking on the waters dim,
Awful in their hidden presence, who are they that wait for him?
Who are they that sit so silent, as he pulleth from the land —
Nothing heard save rumbling rowlock, wave soft-breaking on the sand?
Chill adown the tossing channel blows the wailing, wand'ring breeze,
Lonely in the murky midnight, mutt'ring mournful memories, —
Summer lands where once it brooded, wrecks that widows' hearts have wrung —
Swift the dreary boat flies onwards, spray, like rain, around it flung.
On a pebbled strand it grateth, ghastly cliffs around it loom,
Thin and melancholy voices faintly murmur through the gloom;
Voices only, lipless voices, and the fisherman turns pale,
As the mother greets her children, sisters landing brothers hail.
Lightened of its unseen burden, cork-like rides the rocking bark,
Fast the fisherman flies homewards o'er the billows deep and dark;
THAT boat needs no mortal's mooring — sad at heart he seeks his bed,
For his life henceforth is clouded — he hath piloted the Dead!
Sir Henry Parkes.
The Buried Chief
(November 6th, 1886)
With speechless lips and solemn tread
They brought the Lawyer-Statesman home:
They laid him with the gather'd dead,
Where rich and poor like brothers come.
How bravely did the stripling climb,
From step to step the rugged hill:
His gaze thro' that benighted time
Fix'd on the far-off beacon still.
He faced the storm that o'er him burst,
With pride to match the proudest born:
He bore unblench'd Detraction's worst, —
Paid blow for blow, and scorn for scorn.
He scaled the summit while the sun
Yet shone upon his conquer'd track:
Nor falter'd till the goal was won,
Nor struggling upward, once look'd back.
But what avails the "pride of place",
Or winged chariot rolling past?
He heeds not now who wins the race,
Alike to him the first or last.
Thomas Alexander Browne (`Rolf Boldrewood').
Perdita
She is beautiful yet, with her wondrous hair
And eyes that are stormy with fitful light,
The delicate hues of brow and cheek
Are unmarred all, rose-clear and bright;
That matchless frame yet holds at bay
The crouching bloodhounds, Remorse, Decay.
There is no fear in her great dark eyes —
No hope, no love, no care,
Stately and proud she looks around
With a fierce, defiant stare;
Wild words deform her reckless speech,
Her laugh has a sadness tears never reach.
Whom should she fear on earth? Can Fate
One direr torment lend
To her few little years of glitter and gloom
With the sad old story to end
When the spectres of Loneliness, Want and Pain
Shall arise one night with Death in their train?
. . . . .
I see in a vision a woman like her
Trip down an orchard slope,
With rosy prattlers that shout a name
In tones of rapture and hope;
While the yeoman, gazing at children and wife,
Thanks God for the pride and joy of his life.
. . . . .
Whose conscience is heavy with this dark guilt?
Who pays at the final day
For a wasted body, a murdered soul,
And how shall he answer, I say,
For her outlawed years, her early doom,
And despair — despair — beyond the tomb?
Adam Lindsay Gordon.
A Dedication
They are rhymes rudely strung with intent less
Of sound than of words,
In lands where bright blossoms are scentless,
And songless bright birds;
Where, with fire and fierce drought on her tresses,
Insatiable summer oppresses
Sere woodlands and sad wildernesses,
And faint flocks and herds.
Where in dreariest days, when all dews end,
And all winds are warm,
Wild Winter's large flood-gates are loosen'd,
And floods, freed from storm,
From broken-up fountain heads, dash on
Dry deserts with long pent up passion —
Here rhyme was first framed without fashion —
Song shaped without form.
Whence gather'd? — The locust's glad chirrup
May furnish a stave;
The ring of a rowel and stirrup,
The wash of a wave;
The chaunt of the marsh frog in rushes,
That chimes through the pauses and hushes
Of nightfall, the torrent that gushes,
The tempests that rave;
In the deep'ning of dawn, when it dapples
The dusk of the sky,
With streaks like the redd'ning of apples,
The ripening of rye.
To eastward, when cluster by cluster,
Dim stars and dull planets, that muster,
Wax wan in a world of white lustre
That spreads far and high;
In the gathering of night gloom o'erhead, in
The still silent change,
All fire-flush'd when forest trees redden
On slopes of the range.
When the gnarl'd, knotted trunks Eucalyptian
Seem carved, like weird columns Egyptian,
With curious device, quaint inscription,
And hieroglyph strange;
In the Spring, when the wattle gold trembles
'Twixt shadow and shine,
When each dew-laden air draught resembles
A long draught of wine;
When the sky-line's blue burnish'd resistance
Makes deeper the dreamiest distance,
Some song in all hearts hath existence, —
Such songs have been mine.
Thora's Song
We severed in Autumn early,
Ere the earth was torn by the plough;
The wheat and the oats and the barley
Are ripe for the harvest now.
We sunder'd one misty morning
Ere the hills were dimm'd by the rain;
Through the flowers those hills adorning —
Thou comest not back again.
With the weight of a weary soul;
The mid-day glare grows dreary,
And dreary the midnight scroll.
The corn-stalks sigh for the sickle,
'Neath the load of their golden grain;
I sigh for a mate more fickle —
Thou comest not back again.
The warm sun riseth and setteth,
The night bringeth moistening dew,
But the soul that longeth forgetteth
The warmth and the moisture too.
In the hot sun rising and setting
There is naught save feverish pain;
There are tears in the night-dews wetting —
Thou comest not back again.
Thy voice in my ear still mingles
With the voices of whisp'ring trees,
Thy kiss on my cheek still tingles
At each kiss of the summer breeze.
While dreams of the past are thronging
For substance of shades in vain,
I am waiting, watching and longing —
Thou comest not back again.
Waiting and watching ever,
Longing and lingering yet;
Leaves rustle and corn-stalks quiver,
Winds murmur and waters fret.
No answer they bring, no greeting,
No speech, save that sad refrain,
Nor voice, save an echo repeating —
He cometh not back again.