Twelve Sonnets—

     I

   A Mountain Spring

   Peace hath an altar there.  The sounding feet
    Of thunder and the 'wildering wings of rain
   Against fire-rifted summits flash and beat,
    And through grey upper gorges swoop and strain;
    But round that hallowed mountain-spring remain,
   Year after year, the days of tender heat,
   And gracious nights, whose lips with flowers are sweet,
    And filtered lights, and lutes of soft refrain.
   A still, bright pool.  To men I may not tell
    The secret that its heart of water knows,
    The story of a loved and lost repose;
   Yet this I say to cliff and close-leaved dell:
   A fitful spirit haunts yon limpid well,
    Whose likeness is the faithless face of Rose.

     II

   Laura

   If Laura—lady of the flower-soft face—
    Should light upon these verses, she may take
   The tenderest line, and through its pulses trace
    What man can suffer for a woman's sake.
    For in the nights that burn, the days that break,
   A thin pale figure stands in Passion's place,
   And peace comes not, nor yet the perished grace
    Of youth, to keep old faiths and fires awake.
   Ah! marvellous maid.  Life sobs, and sighing saith,
    "She left me, fleeting like a fluttered dove;
   But I would have a moment of her breath,
    So I might taste the sweetest sense thereof,
    And catch from blossoming, honeyed lips of love
   Some faint, some fair, some dim, delicious death."

     III

   By a River

   By red-ripe mouth and brown, luxurious eyes
    Of her I love, by all your sweetness shed
   In far, fair days, on one whose memory flies
    To faithless lights, and gracious speech gainsaid,
    I pray you, when yon river-path I tread,
   Make with the woodlands some soft compromise,
   Lest they should vex me into fruitless sighs
    With visions of a woman's gleaming head!
   For every green and golden-hearted thing
    That gathers beauty in that shining place,
   Beloved of beams and wooed by wind and wing,
    Is rife with glimpses of her marvellous face;
   And in the whispers of the lips of Spring
    The music of her lute-like voice I trace.

     IV

   Attila

   What though his feet were shod with sharp, fierce flame,
    And death and ruin were his daily squires,
   The Scythian, helped by Heaven's thunders, came:
    The time was ripe for God's avenging fires.
    Lo! loose, lewd trulls, and lean, luxurious liars
   Had brought the fair, fine face of Rome to shame,
   And made her one with sins beyond a name—
    That queenly daughter of imperial sires!
   The blood of elders like the blood of sheep,
    Was dashed across the circus.  Once while din
   And dust and lightnings, and a draggled heap
   Of beast-slain men made lords with laughter leap,
    Night fell, with rain.  The earth, so sick of sin,
   Had turned her face into the dark to weep.

     V

   A Reward

   Because a steadfast flame of clear intent
    Gave force and beauty to full-actioned life;
   Because his way was one of firm ascent,
    Whose stepping-stones were hewn of change and strife;
    Because as husband loveth noble wife
   He loved fair Truth; because the thing he meant
   To do, that thing he did, nor paused, nor bent
    In face of poor and pale conclusions; yea!
   Because of this, how fares the Leader dead?
    What kind of mourners weep for him to-day?
   What golden shroud is at his funeral spread?
    Upon his brow what leaves of laurel, say?
    About his breast is tied a sackcloth grey,
   And knots of thorns deface his lordly head.

     VI

   To——

   A handmaid to the genius of thy song
    Is sweet, fair Scholarship.  'Tis she supplies
    The fiery spirit of the passioned eyes
   With subtle syllables, whose notes belong
    To some chief source of perfect melodies;
   And glancing through a laurelled, lordly throng
    Of shining singers, lo! my vision flies
   To William Shakespeare!  He it is whose strong,
    Full, flute-like music haunts thy stately verse.
   A worthy Levite of his court thou art!
    One sent among us to defeat the curse
   That binds us to the Actual.  Yea, thy part,
   Oh, lute-voiced lover! is to lull the heart
    Of love repelled, its darkness to disperse.

     VII

   The Stanza of Childe Harold

   Who framed the stanza of Childe Harold?  He
    It was who, halting on a stormy shore,
    Knew well the lofty voice which evermore,
   In grand distress, doth haunt the sleepless sea
    With solemn sounds.  And as each wave did roll
    Till one came up, the mightiest of the whole,
   To sweep and surge across the vacant lea,
   Wild words were wedded to wild melody.
    This poet must have had a speechless sense
    Of some dead summer's boundless affluence;
   Else, whither can we trace the passioned lore
   Of Beauty, steeping to the very core
    His royal verse, and that rare light which lies
    About it, like a sunset in the skies?

     VIII

   A Living Poet

   He knows the sweet vexation in the strife
    Of Love with Time, this bard who fain would stray
   To fairer place beyond the storms of life,
    With astral faces near him day by day.
   In deep-mossed dells the mellow waters flow
   Which best he loves; for there the echoes, rife
   With rich suggestions of his long ago,
    Astarte, pass with thee!  And, far away,
   Dear southern seasons haunt the dreamy eye:
    Spring, flower-zoned, and Summer, warbling low
    In tasselled corn, alternate come and go,
   While gypsy Autumn, splashed from heel to thigh
   With vine-blood, treads the leaves; and, halting nigh,
    Wild Winter bends across a beard of snow.

     IX

   Dante and Virgil

   When lost Francesca sobbed her broken tale
    Of love and sin and boundless agony,
   While that wan spirit by her side did wail
    And bite his lips for utter misery—
    The grief which could not speak, nor hear, nor see—
   So tender grew the superhuman face
   Of one who listened, that a mighty trace
    Of superhuman woe gave way, and pale
   The sudden light up-struggled to its place;
    While all his limbs began to faint and fail
   With such excess of pity.  But, behind,
    The Roman Virgil stood—the calm, the wise—
    With not a shadow in his regal eyes,
   A stately type of all his stately kind.

     X

   Rest

   Sometimes we feel so spent for want of rest,
    We have no thought beyond.  I know to-day,
    When tired of bitter lips and dull delay
   With faithless words, I cast mine eyes upon
   The shadows of a distant mountain-crest,
   And said "That hill must hide within its breast
   Some secret glen secluded from the sun.
   Oh, mother Nature! would that I could run
   Outside to thee; and, like a wearied guest,
    Half blind with lamps, and sick of feasting, lay
   An aching head on thee.  Then down the streams
    The moon might swim, and I should feel her grace,
    While soft winds blew the sorrows from my face,
   So quiet in the fellowship of dreams."

     XI

   After Parting

   I cannot tell what change hath come to you
    To vex your splendid hair.  I only know
   One grief.  The passion left betwixt us two,
    Like some forsaken watchfire, burneth low.
    'Tis sad to turn and find it dying so,
   Without a hope of resurrection!  Yet,
    O radiant face that found me tired and lone!
   I shall not for the dear, dead past forget
    The sweetest looks of all the summers gone.
   Ah! time hath made familiar wild regret;
    For now the leaves are white in last year's bowers,
   And now doth sob along the ruined leas
   The homeless storm from saddened southern seas,
    While March sits weeping over withered flowers.

     XII

   Alfred Tennyson

   The silvery dimness of a happy dream
    I've known of late.  Methought where Byron moans,
    Like some wild gulf in melancholy zones,
   I passed tear-blinded.  Once a lurid gleam
    Of stormy sunset loitered on the sea,
   While, travelling troubled like a straitened stream,
    The voice of Shelley died away from me.
    Still sore at heart, I reached a lake-lit lea.
   And then the green-mossed glades with many a grove,
   Where lies the calm which Wordsworth used to love,
    And, lastly, Locksley Hall, from whence did rise
   A haunting song that blew and breathed and blew
   With rare delights.  'Twas there I woke and knew
    The sumptuous comfort left in drowsy eyes.

Sutherland's Grave

  —
   * Sutherland:  Forby Sutherland, one of Captain Cook's seamen,
     who died shortly after the Endeavour anchored in Botany Bay, 1770.
     He was the first Englishman buried in Australia.
  —

   All night long the sea out yonder—all night long the wailful sea,
   Vext of winds and many thunders, seeketh rest unceasingly!
   Seeketh rest in dens of tempest, where, like one distraught with pain,
   Shouts the wild-eyed sprite, Confusion—seeketh rest, and moans in vain:
   Ah! but you should hear it calling, calling when the haggard sky
   Takes the darks and damps of Winter with the mournful marsh-fowl's cry;
   Even while the strong, swift torrents from the rainy ridges come
   Leaping down and breaking backwards—million-coloured shapes of foam!
   Then, and then, the sea out yonder chiefly looketh for the boon
   Portioned to the pleasant valleys and the grave sweet summer moon:
   Boon of Peace, the still, the saintly spirit of the dew-dells deep—
   Yellow dells and hollows haunted by the soft, dim dreams of sleep.

   All night long the flying water breaks upon the stubborn rocks—
   Ooze-filled forelands burnt and blackened,
     smit and scarred with lightning shocks;
   But above the tender sea-thrift, but beyond the flowering fern,
   Runs a little pathway westward—pathway quaint with turn on turn—
   Westward trending, thus it leads to shelving shores and slopes of mist:
   Sleeping shores, and glassy bays of green and gold and amethyst!
   There tread gently—gently, pilgrim;
     there with thoughtful eyes look round;
   Cross thy breast and bless the silence:  lo, the place is holy ground!
   Holy ground for ever, stranger!  All the quiet silver lights
   Dropping from the starry heavens through the soft Australian nights—
   Dropping on those lone grave-grasses—come serene, unbroken, clear,
   Like the love of God the Father, falling, falling, year by year!
   Yea, and like a Voice supernal, there the daily wind doth blow
   In the leaves above the sailor buried ninety years ago.

Syrinx

   A heap of low, dark, rocky coast,
    Unknown to foot or feather!
   A sea-voice moaning like a ghost;
    And fits of fiery weather!

   The flying Syrinx turned and sped
    By dim, mysterious hollows,
   Where night is black, and day is red,
    And frost the fire-wind follows.

   Strong, heavy footfalls in the wake
    Came up with flights of water:
   The gods were mournful for the sake
    Of Ladon's lovely daughter.

   For when she came to spike and spine,
    Where reef and river gather,
   Her feet were sore with shell and chine;
    She could not travel farther.

   Across a naked strait of land
    Blown sleet and surge were humming;
   But trammelled with the shifting sand,
    She heard the monster coming!

   A thing of hoofs and horns and lust:
    A gaunt, goat-footed stranger!
   She bowed her body in the dust
    And called on Zeus to change her;

   And called on Hermes, fair and fleet,
    And her of hounds and quiver,
   To hide her in the thickets sweet
    That sighed above the river.

   So he that sits on flaming wheels,
    And rules the sea and thunder,
   Caught up the satyr by the heels
    And tore his skirts asunder.

   While Arcas, of the glittering plumes,
    Took Ladon's daughter lightly,
   And set her in the gracious glooms
    That mix with moon-mist nightly;

   And touched her lips with wild-flower wine,
    And changed her body slowly,
   Till, in soft reeds of song and shine,
    Her life was hidden wholly.

On the Paroo

  —
   * The name of a watercourse, often dry, which in flood-time
     reaches the river Darling.
  —

   As when the strong stream of a wintering sea
   Rolls round our coast, with bodeful breaks of storm,
   And swift salt rain, and bitter wind that saith
   Wild things and woeful of the White South Land
   Alone with God and silence in the cold—
   As when this cometh, men from dripping doors
   Look forth, and shudder for the mariners
   Abroad, so we for absent brothers looked
   In days of drought, and when the flying floods
   Swept boundless; roaring down the bald, black plains
   Beyond the farthest spur of western hills.

   For where the Barwon cuts a rotten land,
   Or lies unshaken, like a great blind creek,
   Between hot mouldering banks, it came to this,
   All in a time of short and thirsty sighs,
   That thirty rainless months had left the pools
   And grass as dry as ashes:  then it was
   Our kinsmen started for the lone Paroo,
   From point to point, with patient strivings, sheer
   Across the horrors of the windless downs,
   Blue gleaming like a sea of molten steel.

   But never drought had broke them:  never flood
   Had quenched them:  they with mighty youth and health,
   And thews and sinews knotted like the trees—
   They, like the children of the native woods,
   Could stem the strenuous waters, or outlive
   The crimson days and dull, dead nights of thirst
   Like camels:  yet of what avail was strength
   Alone to them—though it was like the rocks
   On stormy mountains—in the bloody time
   When fierce sleep caught them in the camps at rest,
   And violent darkness gripped the life in them
   And whelmed them, as an eagle unawares
   Is whelmed and slaughtered in a sudden snare.

   All murdered by the blacks; smit while they lay
   In silver dreams, and with the far, faint fall
   Of many waters breaking on their sleep!
   Yea, in the tracts unknown of any man
   Save savages—the dim-discovered ways
   Of footless silence or unhappy winds—
   The wild men came upon them, like a fire
   Of desert thunder; and the fine, firm lips
   That touched a mother's lips a year before,
   And hands that knew a dearer hand than life,
   Were hewn—a sacrifice before the stars,
   And left with hooting owls and blowing clouds,
   And falling leaves and solitary wings!

   Aye, you may see their graves—you who have toiled
   And tripped and thirsted, like these men of ours;
   For, verily, I say that not so deep
   Their bones are that the scattered drift and dust
   Of gusty days will never leave them bare.
   O dear, dead, bleaching bones!  I know of those
   Who have the wild, strong will to go and sit
   Outside all things with you, and keep the ways
   Aloof from bats, and snakes, and trampling feet
   That smite your peace and theirs—who have the heart,
   Without the lusty limbs, to face the fire
   And moonless midnights, and to be, indeed,
   For very sorrow, like a moaning wind
   In wintry forests with perpetual rain.

   Because of this—because of sisters left
   With desperate purpose and dishevelled hair,
   And broken breath, and sweetness quenched in tears—
   Because of swifter silver for the head,
   And furrows for the face—because of these
   That should have come with age, that come with pain—
   O Master!  Father! sitting where our eyes
   Are tired of looking, say for once are we—
   Are we to set our lips with weary smiles
   Before the bitterness of Life and Death,
   And call it honey, while we bear away
   A taste like wormwood?

                           Turn thyself, and sing—
   Sing, Son of Sorrow!  Is there any gain
   For breaking of the loins, for melting eyes,
   And knees as weak as water?—any peace,
   Or hope for casual breath and labouring lips,
   For clapping of the palms, and sharper sighs
   Than frost; or any light to come for those
   Who stand and mumble in the alien streets
   With heads as grey as Winter?—any balm
   For pleading women, and the love that knows
   Of nothing left to love?

                             They sleep a sleep
   Unknown of dreams, these darling friends of ours.
   And we who taste the core of many tales
   Of tribulation—we whose lives are salt
   With tears indeed—we therefore hide our eyes
   And weep in secret, lest our grief should risk
   The rest that hath no hurt from daily racks
   Of fiery clouds and immemorial rains.

Faith in God

   Have faith in God.  For whosoever lists
    To calm conviction in these days of strife,
   Will learn that in this steadfast stand exists
    The scholarship severe of human life.

   This face to face with doubt!  I know how strong
    His thews must be who fights and falls and bears,
   By sleepless nights and vigils lone and long,
    And many a woeful wraith of wrestling prayers.

   Yet trust in Him!  Not in an old man throned
    With thunders on an everlasting cloud,
   But in that awful Entity enzoned
    By no wild wraths nor bitter homage loud.

   When from the summit of some sudden steep
    Of speculation you have strength to turn
   To things too boundless for the broken sweep
    Of finer comprehension, wait and learn

   That God hath been "His own interpreter"
    From first to last.  So you will understand
   The tribe who best succeed, when men most err,
    To suck through fogs the fatness of the land.

   One thing is surer than the autumn tints
    We saw last week in yonder river bend—
   That all our poor expression helps and hints,
    However vaguely, to the solemn end

   That God is truth; and if our dim ideal
    Fall short of fact—so short that we must weep—
   Why shape specific sorrows, though the real
    Be not the song which erewhile made us sleep?

   Remember, truth draws upward.  This to us
    Of steady happiness should be a cause
   Beyond the differential calculus
    Or Kant's dull dogmas and mechanic laws.

   A man is manliest when he wisely knows
    How vain it is to halt and pule and pine;
   Whilst under every mystery haply flows
    The finest issue of a love divine.