Daniel Henry Deniehy

   Take the harp, but very softly for our brother touch the strings:
   Wind and wood shall help to wail him, waves and mournful mountain-springs.
   Take the harp, but very softly, for the friend who grew so old
   Through the hours we would not hear of—nights we would not fain behold!
   Other voices, sweeter voices, shall lament him year by year,
   Though the morning finds us lonely, though we sit and marvel here:
   Marvel much while Summer cometh, trammelled with November wheat,
   Gold about her forehead gleaming, green and gold about her feet;
   Yea, and while the land is dark with plover, gull, and gloomy glede,
   Where the cold, swift songs of Winter fill the interlucent reed.

   Yet, my harp—and oh, my fathers! never look for Sorrow's lay,
   Making life a mighty darkness in the patient noon of day;
   Since he resteth whom we loved so, out beyond these fleeting seas,
   Blowing clouds and restless regions paved with old perplexities,
   In a land where thunder breaks not, in a place unknown of snow,
   Where the rain is mute for ever, where the wild winds never go:
   Home of far-forgotten phantoms—genii of our peaceful prime,
   Shining by perpetual waters past the ways of Change and Time:
   Haven of the harried spirit, where it folds its wearied wings,
   Turns its face and sleeps a sleep with deep forgetfulness of things.

   His should be a grave by mountains, in a cool and thick-mossed lea,
   With the lone creek falling past it—falling ever to the sea.
   His should be a grave by waters, by a bright and broad lagoon,
   Making steadfast splendours hallowed of the quiet, shining moon.
   There the elves of many forests—wandering winds and flying lights—
   Born of green, of happy mornings, dear to yellow summer nights,
   Full of dole for him that loved them, then might halt and then might go,
   Finding fathers of the people to their children speaking low—
   Speaking low of one who, failing, suffered all the poet's pain,
   Dying with the dead leaves round him—hopes which never grow again.

Merope

   Far in the ways of the hyaline wastes—in the face of the splendid
   Six of the sisters—the star-dowered sisters ineffably bright,
   Merope sitteth, the shadow-like wife of a monarch unfriended
   Of Ades—of Orcus, the fierce, the implacable god of the night.
   Merope—fugitive Merope! lost to thyself and thy lover,
   Cast, like a dream, out of thought,
     with the moons which have passed into sleep,
   What shall avail thee?  Alcyone's tears, or the sight to discover
   Of Sisyphus pallid for thee by the blue, bitter lights of the deep—
   Pallid, but patient for sorrow?  Oh, thou of the fire and the water,
   Half with the flame of the sunset, and kin to the streams of the sea,
   Hast thou the songs of old times for desire of thy dark-featured daughter,
   Sweet with the lips of thy yearning, O Aethra! with tokens of thee—
   Songs that would lull her, like kisses forgotten of silence where speech was
   Less than the silence that bound it as passion is bound by a ban;
   Seeing we know of thee, Mother, we turning and hearing how each was
   Wrapt in the other ere Merope faltered and fell for a man?
   Mortal she clave to, forgetting her birthright, forgetting the lordlike
   Sons of the many-winged Father, and chiefs of the plume and the star,
   Therefore, because that her sin was the grief of the grand and the godlike,
   Sitteth thy child than a morning-moon bleaker, the faded, and far.
   Ringed with the flower-like Six of the Seven, arrayed and anointed
   Ever with beautiful pity, she watches, she weeps, and she wanes,
   Blind as a flame on the hills of the Winter in hours appointed
   For the life of the foam and the thunder—
     the strength of the imminent rains.
   Who hath a portion, Alcyone, like her?  Asterope, fairer
   Than sunset on snow, and beloved of all brightness, say what is there left
   Sadder and paler than Pleione's daughter, disconsolate bearer
   Of trouble that smites like a sword of the gods to the break of the heft?
   Demeter, and Dryope, known to the forests, the falls, and the fountains,
   Yearly, because of their walking and wailing and wringing of hands,
   Are they as one with this woman?—of Hyrie, wild in the mountains,
   Breaking her heart in the frosts and the fires of the uttermost lands?
   These have their bitterness.  This, for Persephone, that for Oechalian
   Homes, and the lights of a kindness blown out with the stress of her shame:
   One for her child, and one for her sin; but thou above all art an alien,
   Girt with the halos that vex thee, and wrapt in a grief beyond name.
   Yet sayeth Sisyphus—Sisyphus, stricken and chained of the minioned
   Kings of great darkness, and trodden in dust by the feet of the Fates—
   "Sweet are the ways of thy watching, and pallid and perished and pinioned,
   Moon amongst maidens, I leap for thy love like a god at the gates—
   Leap for the dreams of a rose of the heavens, and beat at the portals
   Paved with the pain of unsatisfied pleadings for thee and for thine!
   But Zeus is immutable Master, and these are the walls the immortals
   Build for our sighing, and who may set lips at the lords and repine?
   Therefore," he saith, "I am sick for thee, Merope, faint for the tender
   Touch of thy mouth, and the eyes like the lights of an altar to me;
   But, lo, thou art far; and thy face is a still and a sorrowful splendour!
   And the storm is abroad with the rain on the perilous straits of the sea."

After the Hunt

   Underneath the windy mountain walls
    Forth we rode, an eager band,
   By the surges and the verges and the gorges,
    Till the night was on the land—
    On the hazy, mazy land!
   Far away the bounding prey
    Leapt across the ruts and logs,
   But we galloped, galloped, galloped on,
    Till we heard the yapping of the dogs—
    The yapping and the yelping of the dogs.

   Oh, it was a madly merry day
    We shall not so soon forget,
   And the edges and the ledges and the ridges
    Haunt us with their echoes yet—
    Echoes, echoes, echoes yet!
   While the moon is on the hill
    Gleaming through the streaming fogs,
    Don't you hear the yapping of the dogs—
    The yapping and the yelping of the dogs?

Rose Lorraine

   Sweet water-moons, blown into lights
    Of flying gold on pool and creek,
   And many sounds and many sights
    Of younger days are back this week.
   I cannot say I sought to face
    Or greatly cared to cross again
   The subtle spirit of the place
    Whose life is mixed with Rose Lorraine.

   What though her voice rings clearly through
    A nightly dream I gladly keep,
   No wish have I to start anew
    Heart fountains that have ceased to leap.
   Here, face to face with different days,
    And later things that plead for love,
   It would be worse than wrong to raise
    A phantom far too fain to move.

   But, Rose Lorraine—ah! Rose Lorraine,
    I'll whisper now, where no one hears—
   If you should chance to meet again
    The man you kissed in soft, dead years,
   Just say for once "He suffered much,"
    And add to this "His fate was worst
   Because of me, my voice, my touch."
    There is no passion like the first!

   If I that breathe your slow sweet name,
    As one breathes low notes on a flute,
   Have vext your peace with word of blame,
    The phrase is dead—the lips are mute.
   Yet when I turn towards the wall,
    In stormy nights, in times of rain,
   I often wish you could recall
    Your tender speeches, Rose Lorraine.

   Because, you see, I thought them true,
    And did not count you self-deceived,
   And gave myself in all to you,
    And looked on Love as Life achieved.
   Then came the bitter, sudden change,
    The fastened lips, the dumb despair.
   The first few weeks were very strange,
    And long, and sad, and hard to bear.

   No woman lives with power to burst
    My passion's bonds, and set me free;
   For Rose is last where Rose was first,
    And only Rose is fair to me.
   The faintest memory of her face,
    The wilful face that hurt me so,
   Is followed by a fiery trace
    That Rose Lorraine must never know.

   I keep a faded ribbon string
    You used to wear about your throat;
   And of this pale, this perished thing,
    I think I know the threads by rote.
   God help such love!  To touch your hand,
    To loiter where your feet might fall,
   You marvellous girl, my soul would stand
    The worst of hell—its fires and all!

[End of Leaves from Australian Forests.]

SONGS FROM THE MOUNTAINS

To a Mountain

   To thee, O father of the stately peaks,
   Above me in the loftier light—to thee,
   Imperial brother of those awful hills
   Whose feet are set in splendid spheres of flame,
   Whose heads are where the gods are, and whose sides
   Of strength are belted round with all the zones
   Of all the world, I dedicate these songs.
   And if, within the compass of this book,
   There lives and glows one verse in which there beats
   The pulse of wind and torrent—if one line
   Is here that like a running water sounds,
   And seems an echo from the lands of leaf,
   Be sure that line is thine.  Here, in this home,
   Away from men and books and all the schools,
   I take thee for my Teacher.  In thy voice
   Of deathless majesty, I, kneeling, hear
   God's grand authentic Gospel!  Year by year,
   The great sublime cantata of thy storm
   Strikes through my spirit—fills it with a life
   Of startling beauty!  Thou my Bible art,
   With holy leaves of rock, and flower, and tree,
   And moss, and shining runnel.  From each page
   That helps to make thy awful volume, I
   Have learned a noble lesson.  In the psalm
   Of thy grave winds, and in the liturgy
   Of singing waters, lo! my soul has heard
   The higher worship; and from thee, indeed,
   The broad foundations of a finer hope
   Were gathered in; and thou hast lifted up
   The blind horizon for a larger faith!
   Moreover, walking in exalted woods
   Of naked glory, in the green and gold
   Of forest sunshine, I have paused like one
   With all the life transfigured; and a flood
   Of light ineffable has made me feel
   As felt the grand old prophets caught away
   By flames of inspiration; but the words
   Sufficient for the story of my Dream
   Are far too splendid for poor human lips.
   But thou, to whom I turn with reverent eyes—
   O stately Father, whose majestic face
   Shines far above the zone of wind and cloud,
   Where high dominion of the morning is—
   Thou hast the Song complete of which my songs
   Are pallid adumbrations!  Certain sounds
   Of strong authentic sorrow in this book
   May have the sob of upland torrents—these,
   And only these, may touch the great World's heart;
   For, lo! they are the issues of that grief
   Which makes a man more human, and his life
   More like that frank, exalted life of thine.
   But in these pages there are other tones
   In which thy large, superior voice is not—
   Through which no beauty that resembles thine
   Has ever shone.  These are the broken words
   Of blind occasions, when the World has come
   Between me and my Dream.  No song is here
   Of mighty compass; for my singing robes
   I've worn in stolen moments.  All my days
   Have been the days of a laborious life,
   And ever on my struggling soul has burned
   The fierce heat of this hurried sphere.  But thou,
   To whose fair majesty I dedicate
   My book of rhymes—thou hast the perfect rest
   Which makes the heaven of the highest gods!
   To thee the noises of this violent time
   Are far, faint whispers; and, from age to age,
   Within the world and yet apart from it,
   Thou standest!  Round thy lordly capes the sea
   Rolls on with a superb indifference
   For ever; in thy deep, green, gracious glens
   The silver fountains sing for ever.  Far
   Above dim ghosts of waters in the caves,
   The royal robe of morning on thy head
   Abides for ever.  Evermore the wind
   Is thy august companion; and thy peers
   Are cloud, and thunder, and the face sublime
   Of blue mid-heaven!  On thy awful brow
   Is Deity; and in that voice of thine
   There is the great imperial utterance
   Of God for ever; and thy feet are set
   Where evermore, through all the days and years,
   There rolls the grand hymn of the deathless wave.

Mary Rivers

   Path beside the silver waters, flashing in October's sun—
   Walk, by green and golden margins where the sister streamlets run—
   Twenty shining springs have vanished, full of flower, and leaf, and bird,
   Since the step of Mary Rivers in your lawny dell was heard!
   Twenty white-haired Junes have left us—
     grey with frost and bleak with gale—
   Since the hand of her we loved so plucked the blossoms in your dale.
   Twenty summers, twenty autumns, from the grand old hills have passed,
   With their robes of royal colour, since we saw the darling last.

   Morning comes—the blessed morning! and the slow song of the sea,
   Like a psalm from radiant altars, floats across a rose-red lea;
   Then the fair, strong noonday blossoms, and the reaper seeks the cool
   Valley of the moss and myrtle, and the glimmering water-pool.
   Noonday flames and evening follows; and the lordly mountains rest
   Heads arrayed with tenfold splendour on the rich heart of the West.
   Evening walks with moon and music where the higher life has been;
   But the face of Mary Rivers there will nevermore be seen.

   Ah! when autumn dells are dewy, and the wave is very still,
   And that grey ghost called the Twilight passes from the distant hill—
   Even in the hallowed nightfall, when the fathers sit and dream,
   And the splendid rose of heaven sees a sister in the stream—
   Often do I watch the waters gleaming in a starry bay,
   Thinking of a bygone beauty, and a season far away;
   Musing on the grace that left us in a time of singing rain,
   On the lady who will never walk amongst these heaths again.

   Four there were, but two were taken; and this darling we deplore,
   She was sweetest of the circle—she was dearest of the four!
   In the daytime and the dewtime comes the phantom of her face:
   None will ever sit where she did—none will ever fill her place.
   With the passing of our Mary, like a sunset out of sight,
   Passed away our pure first passion—all its life and all its light!
   All that made the world a dreamland—all the glory and the glow
   Of the fine, fresh, morning feeling vanished twenty years ago.

   Girl, whose strange, unearthly beauty haunts us ever in our sleep,
   Many griefs have worn our hearts out—we are now too tired to weep!
   Time has tried us, years have changed us; but the sweetness shed by you
   Falls upon our spirits daily, like divine, immortal dew.
   Shining are our thoughts about you—of the blossoms past recall,
   You are still the rose of lustre—still the fairest of them all;
   In the sleep that brings the garland gathered from the bygone hours,
   You are still our Mary Rivers—still the queen of all the flowers.

   Let me ask, where none can hear me—When you passed into the shine,
   And you heard a great love calling, did you know that it was mine?
   In your life of light and music, tell me did you ever see,
   Shining in a holy silence, what was as a flame in me?
   Ah, my darling! no one saw it.  Purer than untrodden dew
   Was that first unhappy passion buried in the grave with you.
   Bird and leaf will keep the secret—wind and wood will never tell
   Men the thing that I have whispered.  Mary Rivers, fare you well!

Kingsborough

   A waving of hats and of hands,
    The voices of thousands in one,
   A shout from the ring and the stands,
    And a glitter of heads in the sun!
   "They are off—they are off!" is the roar,
    As the cracks settle down to the race,
   With the "yellow and black" to the fore,
    And the Panic blood forcing the pace.

   At the back of the course, and away
    Where the running-ground home again wheels,
   Grubb travels in front on the bay,
    With a feather-weight hard at his heels.
   But Yeomans, you see, is about,
    And the wily New Zealander waits,
   Though the high-blooded flyer is out,
    Whose rider and colours are Tait's.

   Look!  Ashworth comes on with a run
    To the head of the Levity colt;
   And the fleet—the magnificent son
    Of Panic is shooting his bolt.
   Hurrah for the Weatherbit strain!
    A Fireworks is first in the straight;
   And "A Kelpie will win it again!"
    Is the roar from the ring to the gate.

   The leader must have it—but no!
    For see, full of running, behind
   A beautiful, wonderful foe
    With the speed of the thunder and wind!
   A flashing of whips, and a cry,
    And Ashworth sits down on his horse,
   With Kingsborough's head at his thigh
    And the "field" scattered over the course!

   In a clamour of calls and acclaim
    The pair race away from the ruck:
   The horse to the last of it game—
    A marvel of muscle and pluck!
   But the foot of the Sappho is there,
    And Kingston's invincible strength;
   And the numbers go up in the air—
    The colt is the first by a length!

   The first, and the favourite too!
    The terror that came from his stall,
   With the spirit of fire and of dew,
    To show the road home to them all;
   From the back of the field to the straight
    He has come, as is ever his wont,
   And carried his welter-like weight,
    Like a tradesman, right through to the front.

   Nor wonder at cheering a wit,
    For this is the popular horse,
   That never was beaten when "fit"
    By any four hoofs on the course;
   To starter for Leger or Cup,
    Has he ever shown feather of fear
   When saddle and rider were up
    And the case to be argued was clear?

   No! rather the questionless pluck
    Of the blood unaccustomed to yield,
   Preferred to spread-eagle the ruck,
    And make a long tail of the "field".
   Bear witness, ye lovers of sport,
    To races of which he can boast,
   When flyer by flyer was caught,
    And beaten by lengths on the post!

   Lo! this is the beautiful bay—
    Of many, the marvellous one
   Who showed us last season the way
    That a Leger should always be won.
   There was something to look at and learn,
    Ye shrewd irreproachable "touts",
   When the Panic colt tired at the turn,
    And the thing was all over—but shouts!

   Aye, that was the spin, when the twain
    Came locked by the bend of the course,
   The Zealander pulling his rein,
    And the veteran hard on his horse!
   When Ashworth was "riding" 'twas late
    For his friends to applaud on the stands,
   And the Sappho colt entered the straight
    With the race of the year in his hands.

   Just look at his withers, his thighs!
    And the way that he carries his head!
   Has Richmond more wonderful eyes,
    Or Melbourne that spring in his tread?
   The grand, the intelligent glance
    From a spirit that fathoms and feels,
   Makes the heart of a horse-lover dance
    Till the warm-blooded life in him reels.

   What care have I ever to know
    His owner by sight or by name?
   The horse that I glory in so
    Is still the magnificent same.
   I own I am proud of the pluck
    Of the sportsman that never was bought;
   But the nag that spread-eagled the ruck
    Is bound to be first in my thought.

   For who that has masculine flame,
    Or who that is thorough at all,
   Can help feeling joy in the fame
    Of this king of the kings of the stall?
   What odds if assumption has sealed
    His soulless hereafter abode,
   So long as he shows to his "field"
    The gleam of his hoofs, and the road?