Persia

   I am writing this song at the close
    Of a beautiful day of the spring
   In a dell where the daffodil grows
    By a grove of the glimmering wing;
   From glades where a musical word
    Comes ever from luminous fall,
   I send you the song of a bird
    That I wish to be dear to you all.

   I have given my darling the name
    Of a land at the gates of the day,
   Where morning is always the same,
    And spring never passes away.
   With a prayer for a lifetime of light,
    I christened her Persia, you see;
   And I hope that some fathers to-night
    Will kneel in the spirit with me.

   She is only commencing to look
    At the beauty in which she is set;
   And forest and flower and brook,
    To her are all mysteries yet.
   I know that to many my words
    Will seem insignificant things;
   But you who are mothers of birds
    Will feel for the father who sings.

   For all of you doubtless have been
    Where sorrows are many and wild;
   And you know what a beautiful scene
    Of this world can be made by a child:
   I am sure, if they listen to this,
    Sweet women will quiver, and long
   To tenderly stoop to and kiss
    The Persia I've put in a song.

   And I'm certain the critic will pause,
    And excuse, for the sake of my bird,
   My sins against critical laws—
    The slips in the thought and the word.
   And haply some dear little face
    Of his own to his mind will occur—
   Some Persia who brightens his place—
    And I'll be forgiven for her.

   A life that is turning to grey
    Has hardly been happy, you see;
   But the rose that has dropped on my way
    Is morning and music to me.
   Yea, she that I hold by the hand
    Is changing white winter to green,
   And making a light of the land—
    All fathers will know what I mean:

   All women and men who have known
    The sickness of sorrow and sin,
   Will feel—having babes of their own—
    My verse and the pathos therein.
   For that must be touching which shows
    How a life has been led from the wild
   To a garden of glitter and rose,
    By the flower-like hand of a child.

   She is strange to this wonderful sphere;
    One summer and winter have set
   Since God left her radiance here—
    Her sweet second year is not yet.
   The world is so lovely and new
    To eyes full of eloquent light,
   And, sisters, I'm hoping that you
    Will pray for my Persia to-night.

   For I, who have suffered so much,
    And know what the bitterness is,
   Am sad to think sorrow must touch
    Some day even darlings like this!
   But sorrow is part of this life,
    And, therefore, a father doth long
   For the blessing of mother and wife
    On the bird he has put in a song.

Lilith

   Strange is the song, and the soul that is singing
    Falters because of the vision it sees;
   Voice that is not of the living is ringing
   Down in the depths where the darkness is clinging,
    Even when Noon is the lord of the leas,
    Fast, like a curse, to the ghosts of the trees!

   Here in a mist that is parted in sunder,
    Half with the darkness and half with the day;
   Face of a woman, but face of a wonder,
   Vivid and wild as a flame of the thunder,
    Flashes and fades, and the wail of the grey
    Water is loud on the straits of the bay!

   Father, whose years have been many and weary—
    Elder, whose life is as lovely as light
   Shining in ways that are sterile and dreary—
   Tell me the name of this beautiful peri,
    Flashing on me like the wonderful white
    Star, at the meeting of morning and night.

   Look to thy Saviour, and down on thy knee, man,
    Lean on the Lord, as the Zebedee leaned;
   Daughter of hell is the neighbour of thee, man—
   Lilith, of Adam the luminous leman!
    Turn to the Christ to be succoured and screened,
    Saved from the eyes of a marvellous fiend!

   Serpent she is in the shape of a woman,
    Brighter than woman, ineffably fair!
   Shelter thyself from the splendour, and sue, man;
   Light that was never a loveliness human
    Lives in the face of this sinister snare,
    Longing to strangle thy soul with her hair!

   Lilith, who came to the father and bound him
    Fast with her eyes in the first of the springs;
   Lilith she is, but remember she drowned him,
   Shedding her flood of gold tresses around him—
    Lulled him to sleep with the lyric she sings:
    Melody strange with unspeakable things!

   Low is her voice, but beware of it ever,
    Swift bitter death is the fruit of delay;
   Never was song of its beauty—ah! never—
   Heard on the mountain, or meadow, or river,
    Not of the night is it, not of the day—
    Fly from it, stranger, away and away.

   Back on the hills are the blossom and feather,
    Glory of noon is on valley and spire;
   Here is the grace of magnificent weather,
   Where is the woman from gulfs of the nether?
    Where is the fiend with the face of desire?
    Gone, with a cry, in miraculous fire!

   Sound that was not of this world, or the spacious
    Splendid blue heaven, has passed from the lea;
   Dead is the voice of the devil audacious:
   Only a dream is her music fallacious,
    Here, in the song and the shadow of tree,
    Down by the green and the gold of the sea.

Bob

   Singer of songs of the hills—
    Dreamer, by waters unstirred,
   Back in a valley of rills,
    Home of the leaf and the bird!—
   Read in this fall of the year
    Just the compassionate phrase,
   Faded with traces of tear,
    Written in far-away days:

   "Gone is the light of my lap
    (Lord, at Thy bidding I bow),
   Here is my little one's cap,
    He has no need of it now,
   Give it to somebody's boy—
    Somebody's darling"—she wrote.
   Touching was Bob in his joy—
    Bob without boots or a coat.

   Only a cap; but it gave
    Capless and comfortless one
   Happiness, bright as the brave,
    Beautiful light of the sun.
   Soft may the sanctified sod
    Rest on the father who led
   Bob from the gutter, unshod—
    Covered his cold little head!

   Bob from the foot to the crown
    Measured a yard, and no more—
   Baby alone in the town,
    Homeless, and hungry, and sore—
   Child that was never a child,
    Hiding away from the rain,
   Draggled and dirty and wild,
    Down in a pipe of the drain.

   Poor little beggar was Bob—
    Couldn't afford to be sick,
   Getting a penny a job,
    Sometimes a curse and a kick.
   Father was killed by the drink;
    Mother was driven to shame;
   Bob couldn't manage to think—
    He had forgotten their name.

   God was in heaven above,
    Flowers illumined the ground,
   Women of infinite love
    Lived in the palaces round—
   Saints with the character sweet
    Found in the fathers of old,
   Laboured in alley and street—
    Baby slept out in the cold.

   Nobody noticed the child—
    Nobody knew of the mite
   Creeping about like a wild
    Thing in the shadow of night.
   Beaten by drunkards and cowed—
    Frightened to speak or to sob—
   How could he ask you aloud,
    "Have you a penny for Bob?"

   Few were the pennies he got—
    Seldom could hide them away,
   Watched by the ravenous sot
    Ever at wait for his prey.
   Poor little man!  He would weep
    Oft for a morsel of bread;
   Coppers he wanted to keep
    Went to the tavern instead.

   This was his history, friend—
    Ragged, unhoused, and alone;
   How could the child comprehend
    Love that he never had known?
   Hunted about in the world,
    Crouching in crevices dim,
   Crust with a curse at him hurled
    Stood for a kindness with him.

   Little excited his joy—
    Bun after doing a job;
   Mother of bright-headed boy,
    Think of the motherless Bob!
   High in the heavens august
    Providence saw him, and said—
   "Out of the pits of the dust
    Lift him, and cover his head."

   Ah, the ineffable grace,
    Father of children, in Thee!
   Boy in a radiant place,
    Fanned by the breeze of the sea—
   Child on a lullaby lap
    Said, in the pause of his pain,
   "Mother, don't bury my cap—
    Give it to Bob in the lane."

   Beautiful bidding of Death!
    What could she do but obey,
   Even when suffering Faith
    Hadn't the power to pray?
   So, in the fall of the year,
    Saint with the fatherly head
   Hunted for somebody's dear—
    "Somebody's darling," he said.

   Bob, who was nobody's child,
    Sitting on nobody's lap,
   Draggled and dirty and wild—
    Bob got the little one's cap.
   Strange were compassionate words!
    Waif of the alley and lane
   Dreamed of the music of birds
    Floating about in the rain.

   White-headed father in God,
    Over thy beautiful grave
   Green is the grass of the sod,
    Soft is the sound of the wave.
   Down by the slopes of the sea
    Often and often will sob
   Boy who was fostered by thee—
    This is the story of Bob.

Peter the Piccaninny

   He has a name which can't be brought
    Within the sphere of metre;
   But, as he's Peter by report,
    I'll trot him out as Peter.

   I call him mine; but don't suppose
    That I'm his dad, O reader!
   My wife has got a Norman nose—
    She reads the tales of Ouida.

   I never loved a nigger belle—
    My tastes are too aesthetic!
   The perfume from a gin is—well,
    A rather strong emetic.

   But, seeing that my theme is Pete,
    This verse will be the neater
   If I keep on the proper beat,
    And stick throughout to Peter.

   We picked him up the Lord knows where!
    At noon we came across him
   Asleep beside a hunk of bear—
    His paunch was bulged with 'possum.

   (Last stanza will not bear, I own,
    A pressure analytic;
   But bard whose weight is fourteen stone,
    Is apt to thump the critic.)

   We asked the kid to give his name:
    He didn't seem too willing—
   The darkey played the darkey's game—
    We tipped him with a shilling!

   We tipped him with a shining bob—
    No Tommy Dodd, believe us.
   We didn't "tumble" to his job—
    Ah, why did Pete deceive us!

   I, being, as I've said, a bard,
    Resolved at once to foster
   This mite whose length was just a yard—
    This portable impostor!

   "This babe"—I spoke in Wordsworth's tone—
    (See Wordsworth's "Lucy", neighbour)
   "I'll make a darling of my own;
    And he'll repay my labour.

   "He'll grow as gentle as a fawn—
    As quiet as the blossoms
   That beautify a land of lawn—
    He'll eat no more opossums.

   "The child I to myself will take
    In a paternal manner;
   And ah! he will not swallow snake
    In future, or 'goanna'.

   "Will you reside with me, my dear?"
    I asked in accents mellow—
   The nigger grinned from ear to ear,
    And said, "All right, old fellow!"

   And so my Pete was taken home—
    My pretty piccaninny!
   And, not to speak of soap or comb,
    His cleansing cost a guinea.

   "But hang expenses!" I exclaimed,
    "I'll give him education:
   A 'nig' is better when he's tamed,
    Perhaps, than a Caucasian.

   "Ethnologists are in the wrong
    About our sable brothers;
   And I intend to stop the song
    Of Pickering and others."

   Alas, I didn't do it though!
    Old Pickering's conclusions
   Were to the point, as issues show,
    And mine were mere delusions.

   My inky pet was clothed and fed
    For months exceeding forty;
   But to the end, it must be said,
    His ways were very naughty.

   When told about the Land of Morn
    Above this world of Mammon,
   He'd shout, with an emphatic scorn,
    "Ah, gammon, gammon, gammon!"

   He never lingered, like the bard,
    To sniff at rose expanding.
   "Me like," he said, "em cattle-yard—
    Fine smell—de smell of branding!"

   The soul of man, I tried to show,
    Went up beyond our vision.
   "You ebber see dat fellow go?"
    He asked in sheer derision.

   In short, it soon occurred to me
    This kid of six or seven,
   Who wouldn't learn his A B C,
    Was hardly ripe for heaven.

   He never lost his appetite—
    He bigger grew, and bigger;
   And proved, with every inch of height,
    A nigger is a nigger.

   And, looking from this moment back,
    I have a strong persuasion
   That, after all, a finished black
    Is not the "clean"—Caucasian.

   Dear Peter from my threshold went,
    One morning in the body:
   He "dropped" me, to oblige a gent—
    A gent with spear and waddy!

   He shelved me for a boomerang—
    We never had a quarrel;
   And, if a moral here doth hang,
    Why let it hang—the moral!

   My mournful tale its course has run—
    My Pete, when last I spied him,
   Was eating 'possum underdone:
    He had his gin beside him.

Narrara Creek

   (Written in the shadow of 1872.)

   From the rainy hill-heads, where, in starts and in spasms,
   Leaps wild the white torrent from chasms to chasms—
   From the home of bold echoes, whose voices of wonder
   Fly out of blind caverns struck black by high thunder—
   Through gorges august, in whose nether recesses
   Is heard the far psalm of unseen wildernesses—
   Like a dominant spirit, a strong-handed sharer
   Of spoil with the tempest, comes down the Narrara.

   Yea, where the great sword of the hurricane cleaveth
   The forested fells that the dark never leaveth—
   By fierce-featured crags, in whose evil abysses
   The clammy snake coils, and the flat adder hisses—
   Past lordly rock temples, where Silence is riven
   By the anthems supreme of the four winds of heaven—
   It speeds, with the cry of the streams of the fountains
   It chained to its sides, and dragged down from the mountains!

   But when it goes forth from the slopes with a sally—
   Being strengthened with tribute from many a valley—
   It broadens and brightens, and thereupon marches
   Above the stream sapphires and under green arches,
   With the rhythm of majesty—careless of cumber—
   Its might in repose and its fierceness in slumber—
   Till it beams on the plains, where the wind is a bearer
   Of words from the sea to the stately Narrara!

   Narrara! grand son of the haughty hill torrent,
   Too late in my day have I looked at thy current—
   Too late in my life to discern and inherit
   The soul of thy beauty, the joy of thy spirit!
   With the years of the youth and the hairs of the hoary,
   I sit like a shadow outside of thy glory;
   Nor look with the morning-like feelings, O river,
   That illumined the boy in the days gone for ever!

   Ah! sad are the sounds of old ballads which borrow
   One-half of their grief from the listener's sorrow;
   And sad are the eyes of the pilgrim who traces
   The ruins of Time in revisited places;
   But sadder than all is the sense of his losses
   That cometh to one when a sudden age crosses
   And cripples his manhood.  So, stricken by fate, I
   Felt older at thirty than some do at eighty.

   Because I believe in the beautiful story,
   The poem of Greece in the days of her glory—
   That the high-seated Lord of the woods and the waters
   Has peopled His world with His deified daughters—
   That flowerful forests and waterways streaming
   Are gracious with goddesses glowing and gleaming—
   I pray that thy singing divinity, fairer
   Than wonderful women, may listen, Narrara!

   O spirit of sea-going currents!—thou, being
   The child of immortals, all-knowing, all-seeing—
   Thou hast at thy heart the dark truth that I borrow
   For the song that I sing thee, no fanciful sorrow;
   In the sight of thine eyes is the history written
   Of Love smitten down as the strong leaf is smitten;
   And before thee there goeth a phantom beseeching
   For faculties forfeited—hopes beyond reaching.

       .   .   .   .   .

   Thou knowest, O sister of deities blazing
   With splendour ineffable, beauty amazing,
   What life the gods gave me—what largess I tasted—
   The youth thrown away, and the faculties wasted.
   I might, as thou seest, have stood in high places,
   Instead of in pits where the brand of disgrace is,
   A byword for scoffers—a butt and a caution,
   With the grave of poor Burns and Maginn for my portion.

   But the heart of the Father Supreme is offended,
   And my life in the light of His favour is ended;
   And, whipped by inflexible devils, I shiver,
   With a hollow "Too late" in my hearing for ever;
   But thou—being sinless, exalted, supernal,
   The daughter of diademed gods, the eternal—
   Shalt shine in thy waters when time and existence
   Have dwindled, like stars, in unspeakable distance.

   But the face of thy river—the torrented power
   That smites at the rock while it fosters the flower—
   Shall gleam in my dreams with the summer-look splendid,
   And the beauty of woodlands and waterfalls blended;
   And often I'll think of far-forested noises,
   And the emphasis deep of grand sea-going voices,
   And turn to Narrara the eyes of a lover,
   When the sorrowful days of my singing are over.

In Memory of John Fairfax

   Because this man fulfilled his days,
   Like one who walks with steadfast gaze
   Averted from forbidden ways
    With lures of fair, false flowerage deep,
   Behold the Lord whose throne is dim
   With fires of flaming seraphim—
   The Christ that suffered sent for him:
    "He giveth His beloved sleep."

   Think not that souls whose deeds august
   Put sin to shame and make men just
   Become at last the helpless dust
    That wintering winds through waste-lands sweep!
   The higher life within us cries,
   Like some fine spirit from the skies,
   "The Father's blessing on us lies—
    'He giveth His beloved sleep.'"

   Not human sleep—the fitful rest
   With evil shapes of dreams distressed,—
   But perfect quiet, unexpressed
    By any worldly word we keep.
   The dim Hereafter framed in creeds
   May not be this; but He who reads
   Our lives, sets flowers on wayside weeds—
    "He giveth His beloved sleep."

   Be sure this hero who has passed
   The human space—the outer vast—
   Who worked in harness to the last,
    Doth now a hallowed harvest reap.
   Love sees his grave, nor turns away—
   The eyes of faith are like the day,
   And grief has not a word to say—
    "He giveth His beloved sleep."

   That fair, rare spirit, Honour, throws
   A light, which puts to shame the rose,
   Across his grave, because she knows
    The son whose ashes it doth keep;
   And, like far music, this is heard—
   "Behold the man who never stirred,
   By word of his, an angry word!—
    'He giveth His beloved sleep.'"

   He earned his place.  Within his hands,
   The power which counsels and commands,
   And shapes the social life of lands,
    Became a blessing pure and deep.
   Through thirty years of turbulence
   Our thoughts were sweetened with a sense
   Of his benignant influence—
    "He giveth His beloved sleep."

   No splendid talents, which excite
   Like music, songs, or floods of light,
   Were his; but, rather, all those bright,
    Calm qualities of soul which reap
   A mute, but certain, fine respect,
   Not only from a source elect,
   But from the hearts of every sect—
    "He giveth His beloved sleep."

   He giveth His beloved rest!
   The faithful soul that onward pressed,
   Unswerving, from Life's east to west,
    By paths austere and passes steep,
   Is past all toil; and, over Death,
   With reverent hands and prayerful breath,
   I plant this flower, alive with faith—
    "He giveth His beloved sleep."