Sedan

   Another battle! and the sounds have rolled
    By many a gloomy gorge and wasted plain
   O'er huddled hills and mountains manifold,
    Like winds that run before a heavy rain
    When Autumn lops the leaves and drooping grain,
   And earth lies deep in brown and cloudy gold.
    My brothers, lo! our grand old England stands,
    With weapons gleaming in her ready hands,
   Outside the tumult!  Let us watch and trust
   That she will never darken in the dust
    And drift of wild contention, but remain
    The hope and stay of many troubled lands,
   Where so she waits the issue of the fight,
   Aloof; but praying "God defend the Right!"

OTHER POEMS, 1871-82

Adam Lindsay Gordon

   At rest!  Hard by the margin of that sea
   Whose sounds are mingled with his noble verse
   Now lies the shell that never more will house
   The fine strong spirit of my gifted friend.
   Yea, he who flashed upon us suddenly,
   A shining soul with syllables of fire,
   Who sang the first great songs these lands can claim
   To be their own; the one who did not seem
   To know what royal place awaited him
   Within the Temple of the Beautiful,
   Has passed away; and we who knew him sit
   Aghast in darkness, dumb with that great grief
   Whose stature yet we cannot comprehend;
   While over yonder churchyard, hearsed with pines,
   The night wind sings its immemorial hymn,
   And sobs above a newly-covered grave.
   The bard, the scholar, and the man who lived
   That frank, that open-hearted life which keeps
   The splendid fire of English chivalry
   From dying out; the one who never wronged
   A fellow man; the faithful friend who judged
   The many, anxious to be loved of him
   By what he saw, and not by what he heard,
   As lesser spirits do; the brave, great soul
   That never told a lie, or turned aside
   To fly from danger—he, as I say, was one
   Of that bright company this sin-stained world
   Can ill afford to lose.

                            They did not know,
   The hundreds who had read his sturdy verse
   And revelled over ringing major notes,
   The mournful meaning of the undersong
   Which runs through all he wrote, and often takes
   The deep autumnal, half-prophetic tone
   Of forest winds in March; nor did they think
   That on that healthy-hearted man there lay
   The wild specific curse which seems to cling
   Forever to the Poet's twofold life!

   To Adam Lindsay Gordon, I who laid
   Two years ago on Lionel Michael's grave
   A tender leaf of my regard; yea, I
   Who culled a garland from the flowers of song
   To place where Harpur sleeps; I, left alone,
   The sad disciple of a shining band
   Now gone—to Adam Lindsay Gordon's name
   I dedicate these lines; and if 'tis true
   That, past the darkness of the grave, the soul
   Becomes omniscient, then the bard may stoop
   From his high seat to take the offering,
   And read it with a sigh for human friends,
   In human bonds, and grey with human griefs.

   And having wove and proffered this poor wreath,
   I stand to-day as lone as he who saw
   At nightfall, through the glimmering moony mist,
   The last of Arthur on the wailing mere,
   And strained in vain to hear the going voice.

In Memory of Edward Butler

   A voice of grave, deep emphasis
    Is in the woods to-night;
   No sound of radiant day is this,
    No cadence of the light.
   Here in the fall and flights of leaves
    Against grey widths of sea,
   The spirit of the forests grieves
    For lost Persephone.

   The fair divinity that roves
    Where many waters sing
   Doth miss her daughter of the groves—
    The golden-headed Spring.
   She cannot find the shining hand
    That once the rose caressed;
   There is no blossom on the land,
    No bird in last year's nest.

   Here, where this strange Demeter weeps—
    This large, sad life unseen—
   Where July's strong, wild torrent leaps
    The wet hill-heads between,
   I sit and listen to the grief,
    The high, supreme distress,
   Which sobs above the fallen leaf
    Like human tenderness!

   Where sighs the sedge and moans the marsh,
    The hermit plover calls;
   The voice of straitened streams is harsh
    By windy mountain walls;
   There is no gleam upon the hills
    Of last October's wings;
   The shining lady of the rills
    Is with forgotten things.

   Now where the land's worn face is grey
    And storm is on the wave,
   What flower is left to bear away
    To Edward Butler's grave?
   What tender rose of song is here
    That I may pluck and send
   Across the hills and seas austere
    To my lamented friend?

   There is no blossom left at all;
    But this white winter leaf,
   Whose glad green life is past recall,
    Is token of my grief.
   Where love is tending growths of grace,
    The first-born of the Spring,
   Perhaps there may be found a place
    For my pale offering.

   For this heroic Irish heart
    We miss so much to-day,
   Whose life was of our lives a part,
    What words have I to say?
   Because I know the noble woe
    That shrinks beneath the touch—
   The pain of brothers stricken low—
    I will not say too much.

   But often in the lonely space
    When night is on the land,
   I dream of a departed face—
    A gracious, vanished hand.
   And when the solemn waters roll
    Against the outer steep,
   I see a great, benignant soul
    Beside me in my sleep.

   Yea, while the frost is on the ways
    With barren banks austere,
   The friend I knew in other days
    Is often very near.
   I do not hear a single tone;
    But where this brother gleams,
   The elders of the seasons flown
    Are with me in my dreams.

   The saintly face of Stenhouse turns—
    His kind old eyes I see;
   And Pell and Ridley from their urns
    Arise and look at me.
   By Butler's side the lights reveal
    The father of his fold,
   I start from sleep in tears, and feel
    That I am growing old.

   Where Edward Butler sleeps, the wave
    Is hardly ever heard;
   But now the leaves above his grave
    By August's songs are stirred.
   The slope beyond is green and still,
    And in my dreams I dream
   The hill is like an Irish hill
    Beside an Irish stream.

How the Melbourne Cup was Won

   In the beams of a beautiful day,
    Made soft by a breeze from the sea,
   The horses were started away,
    The fleet-footed thirty and three;
   Where beauty, with shining attire,
    Shed more than a noon on the land,
   Like spirits of thunder and fire
    They flashed by the fence and the stand.

   And the mouths of pale thousands were hushed
    When Somnus, a marvel of strength,
   Past Bowes like a sudden wind rushed,
    And led the bay colt by a length;
   But a chestnut came galloping through,
    And, down where the river-tide steals,
   O'Brien, on brave Waterloo,
    Dashed up to the big horse's heels.

   But Cracknell still kept to the fore,
    And first by the water bend wheeled,
   When a cry from the stand, and a roar
    Ran over green furlongs of field;
   Far out by the back of the course—
    A demon of muscle and pluck—
   Flashed onward the favourite horse,
    With his hoofs flaming clear of the ruck.

   But the wonderful Queenslander came,
    And the thundering leaders were three;
   And a ring, and a roll of acclaim,
    Went out, like a surge of the sea:
   "An Epigram! Epigram wins!"—
    "The Colt of the Derby"—"The bay!"
   But back where the crescent begins
    The favourite melted away.

   And the marvel that came from the North,
    With another, was heavily thrown;
   And here at the turning flashed forth
    To the front a surprising unknown;
   By shed and by paddock and gate
    The strange, the magnificent black,
   Led Darebin a length in the straight,
    With thirty and one at his back.

   But the Derby colt tired at the rails,
    And Ivory's marvellous bay
   Passed Burton, O'Brien, and Hales,
    As fleet as a flash of the day.
   But Gough on the African star
    Came clear in the front of his "field",
   Hard followed by Morrison's Czar
    And the blood unaccustomed to yield.

   Yes, first from the turn to the end,
    With a boy on him paler than ghost,
   The horse that had hardly a friend
    Shot flashing like fire by the post.
   When Graham was "riding" 'twas late
    For his friends to applaud on the stands,
   The black, through the bend and "the straight",
    Had the race of the year in his hands.

   In a clamour of calls and acclaim,
    He landed the money—the horse
   With the beautiful African name,
    That rang to the back of the course.
   Hurrah for the Hercules race,
    And the terror that came from his stall,
   With the bright, the intelligent face,
    To show the road home to them all!

Blue Mountain Pioneers

   The dauntless three!  For twenty days and nights
   These heroes battled with the haughty heights;
   For twenty spaces of the star and sun
   These Romans kept their harness buckled on;
   By gaping gorges, and by cliffs austere,
   These fathers struggled in the great old year.
   Their feet they set on strange hills scarred by fire,
   Their strong arms forced a path through brake and briar;
   They fought with Nature till they reached the throne
   Where morning glittered on the great UNKNOWN!
   There, in a time with praise and prayer supreme,
   Paused Blaxland, Lawson, Wentworth, in a dream;
   There, where the silver arrows of the day
   Smote slope and spire, they halted on their way.
   Behind them were the conquered hills—they faced
   The vast green West, with glad, strange beauty graced;
   And every tone of every cave and tree
   Was as a voice of splendid prophecy.

Robert Parkes

  —
   * Son of Sir Henry Parkes.
  —

   High travelling winds by royal hill
    Their awful anthem sing,
   And songs exalted flow and fill
    The caverns of the spring.

   To-night across a wild wet plain
    A shadow sobs and strays;
   The trees are whispering in the rain
    Of long departed days.

   I cannot say what forest saith—
    Its words are strange to me:
   I only know that in its breath
    Are tones that used to be.

   Yea, in these deep dim solitudes
    I hear a sound I know—
   The voice that lived in Penrith woods
    Twelve weary years ago.

   And while the hymn of other years
    Is on a listening land,
   The Angel of the Past appears
    And leads me by the hand;

   And takes me over moaning wave,
    And tracts of sleepless change,
   To set me by a lonely grave
    Within a lonely range.

   The halo of the beautiful
    Is round the quiet spot;
   The grass is deep and green and cool,
    Where sound of life is not.

   Here in this lovely lap of bloom,
    The grace of glen and glade,
   That tender days and nights illume,
    My gentle friend was laid.

   I do not mark the shell that lies
    Beneath the touching flowers;
   I only see the radiant eyes
    Of other scenes and hours.

   I only turn, by grief inspired,
    Like some forsaken thing,
   To look upon a life retired
    As hushed Bethesda's spring.

   The glory of unblemished days
    Is on the silent mound—
   The light of years, too pure for praise;
    I kneel on holy ground!

   Here is the clay of one whose mind
    Was fairer than the dew,
   The sweetest nature of his kind
    I haply ever knew.

   This Christian, walking on the white
    Clear paths apart from strife,
   Kept far from all the heat and light
    That fills his father's life.

   The clamour and exceeding flame
    Were never in his days:
   A higher object was his aim
    Than thrones of shine and praise.

   Ah! like an English April psalm,
    That floats by sea and strand,
   He passed away into the calm
    Of the Eternal Land.

   The chair he filled is set aside
    Upon his father's floor;
   In morning hours, at eventide,
    His step is heard no more.

   No more his face the forest knows;
    His voice is of the past;
   But from his life of beauty flows
    A radiance that will last.

   Yea, from the hours that heard his speech
    High shining mem'ries give
   That fine example which will teach
    Our children how to live.

   Here, kneeling in the body, far
    From grave of flower and dew,
   My friend beyond the path of star,
    I say these words to you.

   Though you were as a fleeting flame
    Across my road austere,
   The memory of your face became
    A thing for ever dear.

   I never have forgotten yet
    The Christian's gentle touch;
   And, since the time when last we met,
    You know I've suffered much.

   I feel that I have given pain
    By certain words and deeds,
   But stricken here with Sorrow's rain,
    My contrite spirit bleeds.

   For your sole sake I rue the blow,
    But this assurance send:
   I smote, in noon, the public foe,
    But not the private friend.

   I know that once I wronged your sire,
    But since that awful day
   My soul has passed through blood and fire,
    My head is very grey.

   Here let me pause!  From years like yours
    There ever flows and thrives
   The splendid blessing which endures
    Beyond our little lives.

   From lonely lands across the wave
    Is sent to-night by me
   This rose of reverence for the grave
    Beside the mountain lea.

At Her Window

   To-night a strong south wind in thunder sings
   Across the city.  Now by salt wet flats,
   And ridges perished with the breath of drought,
   Comes up a deep, sonorous, gulf-like voice—
   Far-travelled herald of some distant storm—
   That strikes with harsh gigantic wings the cliff,
   Where twofold Otway meets his straitened surf,
   And makes a white wrath of a league of sea.

   To-night the fretted Yarra chafes its banks,
   And dusks and glistens; while the city shows
   A ring of windy light.  From street to street
   The noise of labour, linked to hurrying wheels,
   Rolls off, as rolls the stately sound of wave,
   When he that hears it hastens from the shore.

   To-night beside a moody window sits
   A wife who watches for her absent love;
   Her home is in a dim suburban street,
   In which the winds, like one with straitened breath,
   Now fleet with whispers dry and short half-sobs,
   Or pause and beat against the showery panes
   Like homeless mem'ries seeking for a home.

   There, where the plopping of the guttered rain
   Sounds like a heavy footstep in the dark,
   Where every shadow thrown by flickering light
   Seems like her husband halting at the door,
   I say a woman sits, and waits, and sits,
   Then trims her fire, and comes to wait again.

   The chapel clock strikes twelve!  He has not come.
   The night grows wilder, and the wind dies off
   The roads, now turned to thoroughfares of storm,
   Save when a solitary, stumbling foot
   Breaks through the clamour.  Then the watcher starts,
   And trembles, with her hand upon the key,
   And flutters, with the love upon her lips;
   Then sighs, returns, and takes her seat once more.

   Is this the old, old tale?  Ah! do not ask,
   My gentle reader, but across your doubts
   Throw shining reasons on the happier side;
   Or, if you cannot choose but doubt the man—
   If you do count him in your thoughts as one
   Who leaves a good wife by a lonely hearth
   For more than half the night, for scenes (we'll say)
   Of revelry—I pray you think of how
   That wretch must suffer in his waking times
   (If he be human), when he recollects
   That through the long, long hours of evil feasts
   With painted sin, and under glaring gas,
   His brightest friend was at a window-sill
   A watcher, seated in a joyless room,
   And haply left without a loaf of bread.

   I, having learnt from sources pure and high,
   From springs of love that make the perfect wife,
   Can say how much a woman will endure
   For one to whom her tender heart has passed.
   When fortune fails, and friends drop off, and time
   Has shadows waiting in predestined ways—
   When shame that grows from want of money comes,
   And sets its brand upon a husband's brow,
   And makes him walk an alien in the streets:
   One faithful face, on which a light divine
   Becomes a glory when vicissitude
   Is in its darkest mood—one face, I say,
   Marks not the fallings-off that others see,
   Seeks not to know the thoughts that others think,
   Cares not to hear the words that others say:
   But, through her deep and self-sufficing love,
   She only sees the bright-eyed youth that won
   Her maiden heart in other, happier days,
   And not the silent, gloomy-featured man
   That frets and shivers by a sullen fire.

   And, therefore, knowing this from you, who've shared
   With me the ordeal of most trying times,
   I sometimes feel a hot shame flushing up,
   To think that there are those among my sex
   Who are so cursed with small-souled selfishness
   That they do give to noble wives like you,
   For love—that first and final flower of life—
   The dreadful portion of a drunkard's home.

William Bede Dalley

   That love of letters which is as the light
    Of deathless verse, intense, ineffable,
   Hath made this scholar's nature like the white,
    Pure Roman soul of whom the poets tell.

   He having lived so long with lords of thought,
    The grand hierophants of speech and song,
   Hath from the high, august communion caught
    Some portion of their inspiration strong.

   The clear, bright atmosphere through which he looks
    Is one by no dim, close horizon bound;
   The power shed as flame from noble books
    Hath made for him a larger world around.

   And he, thus strengthened with the fourfold force
    Which scholarship to genius gives, is one
   That liberal thinkers, pausing in their course,
    With fine esteem are glad to look upon.

   He, with the faultless intuition born
    Of splendid faculties, sees things aright,
   And all his strong, immeasurable scorn
    Falls like a thunder on the hypocrite.

   But for the sufferer and the son of shame
    On whom remorse—a great, sad burden—lies,
   His kindness glistens like a morning flame,
    Immense compassion shines within his eyes.

   Firm to the Church by which his fathers stood,
    But tolerant to every form of creed,
   He longs for universal brotherhood,
    And is a Christian gentleman indeed.

   These in his honour.  May his life be long,
    And, like a summer with a brilliant close,
   As full of music as a perfect song,
    As radiant as a rich, unhandled rose.