Aboriginal Death-Song

   Feet of the flying, and fierce
    Tops of the sharp-headed spear,
   Hard by the thickets that pierce,
    Lo! they are nimble and near.

   Women are we, and the wives
    Strong Arrawatta hath won;
   Weary because of our lives,
    Sick of the face of the sun.

   Koola, our love and our light,
    What have they done unto you?
   Man of the star-reaching sight,
    Dipped in the fire and the dew.

   Black-headed snakes in the grass
    Struck at the fleet-footed lord—
   Still is his voice at the pass,
    Soundless his step at the ford.

   Far by the forested glen,
    Starkly he lies in the rain;
   Kings of the council of men
    Shout for their leader in vain.

   Yea, and the fish-river clear
    Never shall blacken below
   Spear and the shadow of spear,
    Bow and the shadow of bow.

   Hunter and climber of trees,
    Now doth his tomahawk rust,
   (Dread of the cunning wild bees),
    Hidden in hillocks of dust.

   We, who were followed and bound,
    Dashed under foot by the foe,
   Sit with our eyes to the ground,
    Faint from the brand and the blow.

   Dumb with the sorrow that kills,
    Sorrow for brother and chief,
   Terror of thundering hills,
    Having no hope in our grief,

   Seeing the fathers are far
    Seeking the spoils of the dead
   Left on the path of the war,
    Matted and mangled and red.

Sydney Harbour

   Where Hornby, like a mighty fallen star,
   Burns through the darkness with a splendid ring
   Of tenfold light, and where the awful face
   Of Sydney's northern headland stares all night
   O'er dark, determined waters from the east,
   From year to year a wild, Titanic voice
   Of fierce aggressive sea shoots up and makes,—
   When storm sails high through drifts of driving sleet,
   And in the days when limpid waters glass
   December's sunny hair and forest face,—
   A roaring down by immemorial caves,
   A thunder in the everlasting hills.

   But calm and lucid as an English lake,
   Beloved by beams and wooed by wind and wing,
   Shut in from tempest-trampled wastes of wave,
   And sheltered from white wraths of surge by walls—
   Grand ramparts founded by the hand of God,
   The lordly Harbour gleams.  Yea, like a shield
   Of marvellous gold dropped in his fiery flight
   By some lost angel in the elder days,
   When Satan faced and fought Omnipotence,
   It shines amongst fair, flowering hills, and flows
   By dells of glimmering greenness manifold.
   And all day long, when soft-eyed Spring comes round
   With gracious gifts of bird and leaf and grass—
   And through the noon, when sumptuous Summer sleeps
   By yellowing runnels under beetling cliffs,
   This royal water blossoms far and wide
   With ships from all the corners of the world.

   And while sweet Autumn with her gipsy face
   Stands in the gardens, splashed from heel to thigh
   With spinning vine-blood—yea, and when the mild,
   Wan face of our Australian Winter looks
   Across the congregated southern fens,
   Then low, melodious, shell-like songs are heard
   Beneath proud hulls and pompous clouds of sail,
   By yellow beaches under lisping leaves
   And hidden nooks to Youth and Beauty dear,
   And where the ear may catch the counter-voice
   Of Ocean travelling over far, blue tracts.

   Moreover, when the moon is gazing down
   Upon her lovely reflex in the wave,
   (What time she, sitting in the zenith, makes
   A silver silence over stirless woods),
   Then, where its echoes start at sudden bells,
   And where its waters gleam with flying lights,
   The haven lies, in all its beauty clad,
   More lovely even than the golden lakes
   The poet saw, while dreaming splendid dreams
   Which showed his soul the far Hesperides.

A Birthday Trifle

   Here in this gold-green evening end,
    While air is soft and sky is clear,
   What tender message shall I send
    To her I hold so dear?
   What rose of song with breath like myrrh,
    And leaf of dew and fair pure beams
   Shall I select and give to her—
    The lady of my dreams?

   Alas! the blossom I would take,
    The song as sweet as Persian speech,
   And carry for my lady's sake,
    Is not within my reach.
   I have no perfect gift of words,
    Or I would hasten now to send
   A ballad full of tunes of birds
    To please my lovely friend.

   But this pure pleasure is my own,
    That I have power to waft away
   A hope as bright as heaven's zone
    On this her natal day.
   May all her life be like the light
    That softens down in spheres divine,
   "As lovely as a Lapland night,"
    All grace and chastened shine!

Frank Denz

   In the roar of the storm, in the wild bitter voice of the tempest-whipped sea,
   The cry of my darling, my child, comes ever and ever to me;
   And I stand where the haggard-faced wood stares down on a sinister shore,
   But all that is left is the hood of the babe I can cherish no more.

   A little blue hood, with the shawl of the girl that I took for my wife
   In a happy old season, is all that remains of the light of my life;
   The wail of a woman in pain, and the sob of a smothering bird,
   They come through the darkness again—
     in the wind and the rain they are heard.

   Oh, women and men who have known the perils of weather and wave,
   It is sad that my sweet ones are blown under sea without shelter of grave;
   I sob like a child in the night, when the gale on the waters is loud—
   My darlings went down in my sight, with neither a coffin nor shroud.

   In the whistle of wind, and the whirl of ominous fragments of wreck,
   The wife, with her poor little girl, saw death on the lee of the deck;
   But, sirs, she depended on me—she trusted my comforting word;
   She is down in the depths of the sea—my love, with her beautiful bird.

   In the boat I was ordered to go—I was not more afraid than the rest,
   But a husband will falter, you know, with the love of his life at his breast;
   My captain was angry a space, but soon he grew tender in tone—
   Perhaps there had flashed by his face a wife and a child of his own.

   I was weak for some moments, and cried; but only one hope was in life;
   The hood upon baby I tied—I fastened the shawl on my wife.
   The skipper took charge of the child—he stuck to his word till the last;
   But only this hood on the wild, bitter shore of the sea had been cast.

   In the place of a coward, who shook like a leaf in the quivering boat,
   A seat by the rowlocks I took; but the sea had me soon by the throat,
   The surge gripped me fast by the neck—in a ring, and a roll, and a roar,
   I was cast like a piece of the wreck, on a bleak, beaten, shelterless shore.

   And there were my darlings on board for the rest of that terrible day,
   And I watched and I prayed to the Lord, as never before I could pray.
   The windy hills stared at the black, heavy clouds coming over the wave;
   My girl was expecting me back, but where was my power to save?

   Ah! where was my power, when Death was glaring at me from the reef?
   I cried till I gasped for my breath, aloof with a maddening grief.
   We couldn't get back to the deck:  I wanted to go, but the sea
   Dashed over the sides of the wreck, and carried my darling from me.

   Oh, girl that I took by the hand to the altar two summers ago,
   I would you were buried on land—my dear, it would comfort me so!
   I would you were sleeping where grows the grass and the musical reed!
   For how can you find a repose in the toss of the tangle and weed?

   The night sped along, and I strained to the shadow and saw to the end
   My captain and bird—he remained to the death a superlative friend:
   In the face of the hurricane wild, he clung with the babe to the mast;
   To the last he was true to my child—he was true to my child to the last.

   The wind, like a life without home, comes mocking at door and at pane
   In the time of the cry of the foam—in the season of thunder and rain,
   And, dreaming, I start in the bed, and feel for my little one's brow—
   But lost is the beautiful head; the cradle is tenantless now!

   My home was all morning and glow when wife and her baby were there,
   But, ah! it is saddened, you know, by dresses my girl used to wear.
   I cannot re-enter the door; its threshold can never be crossed,
   For fear I should see on the floor the shoes of the child I have lost.

   There were three of us once in the world; but two are deep down in the sea,
   Where waif and where tangle are hurled—the two that were portions of me;
   They are far from me now, but I hear, when hushed are the night and the tide,
   The voice of my little one near—the step of my wife by my side.

Sydney Exhibition Cantata

     Part I

        Chorus

   Songs of morning, with your breath
   Sing the darkness now to death;
   Radiant river, beaming bay,
   Fair as Summer, shine to-day;
   Flying torrent, falling slope,
   Wear the face as bright as Hope;
   Wind and woodland, hill and sea,
   Lift your voices—sing for glee!
   Greet the guests your fame has won—
    Put your brightest garments on.

        Recitative and Chorus

   Lo, they come—the lords unknown,
   Sons of Peace, from every zone!
   See above our waves unfurled
   All the flags of all the world!
   North and south and west and east
   Gather in to grace our feast.
   Shining nations! let them see
   How like England we can be.
   Mighty nations! let them view
   Sons of generous sires in you.

        Solo—Tenor

   By the days that sound afar,
   Sound, and shine like star by star;
   By the grand old years aflame
   With the fires of England's fame—
   Heirs of those who fought for right
   When the world's wronged face was white—
   Meet these guests your fortune sends,
   As your fathers met their friends;
   Let the beauty of your race
   Glow like morning in your face.

     Part II

        Solo—Bass

   Where now a radiant city stands,
    The dark oak used to wave,
   The elfin harp of lonely lands
    Above the wild man's grave;
   Through windless woods, one clear, sweet stream
    (Sing soft and very low)
   Stole like the river of a dream
    A hundred years ago.

        Solo—Alto

   Upon the hills that blaze to-day
    With splendid dome and spire,
   The naked hunter tracked his prey,
    And slumbered by his fire.
   Within the sound of shipless seas
    The wild rose used to blow
   About the feet of royal trees,
    A hundred years ago.

        Solo—Soprano

   Ah! haply on some mossy slope,
    Against the shining springs,
   In those old days the angel Hope
    Sat down with folded wings;
   Perhaps she touched in dreams sublime,
    In glory and in glow,
   The skirts of this resplendent time,
    A hundred years ago.

     Part III

        Children

   A gracious morning on the hills of wet
   And wind and mist her glittering feet has set;
   The life and heat of light have chased away
   Australia's dark, mysterious yesterday.
   A great, glad glory now flows down and shines
   On gold-green lands where waved funereal pines.

        Solo—Soprano

   And hence a fair dream goes before our gaze,
   And lifts the skirts of the hereafter days,
   And sees afar, as dreams alone can see,
   The splendid marvel of the years to be.

     Part IV

        Basses and Chorus

   Father, All-Bountiful, humbly we bend to Thee;
    Heads are uncovered in sight of Thy face.
   Here, in the flow of the psalms that ascend to Thee,
    Teach us to live for the light of Thy grace.
   Here, in the pause of the anthems of praise to Thee,
    Master and Maker—pre-eminent Friend—
   Teach us to look to Thee—give all our days to Thee,
    Now and for evermore, world without end!

Hymn of Praise

   [Closing of Sydney International Exhibition.]

   Encompassed by the psalm of hill and stream,
   By hymns august with their majestic theme,
   Here in the evening of exalted days
   To Thee, our Friend, we bow with breath of praise.

   The great, sublime hosannas of the sea
   Ascend on wings of mighty winds to Thee,
   And mingled with their stately words are tones
   Of human love, O Lord of all the zones!

   Ah! at the close of many splendid hours,
   While falls Thy gracious light in radiant showers,
   We seek Thy face, we praise Thee, bless Thee, sing
   This song of reverence, Master, Maker, King!

   To Thee, from whom all shining blessings flow,
   All gifts of lustre, all the joys we know,
   To Thee, O Father, in this lordly space,
   The great world turns with worship in its face.

   For that glad season which will pass to-day
   With light and music like a psalm away,
   The gathered nations with a grand accord,
   In sight of Thy high heaven, thank Thee, Lord!

   All praise is Thine—all love that we can give
   Is also Thine, in whose large grace we live,
   In whom we find the One long-suffering Friend,
   Whose immemorial mercy has no end.

Basil Moss

   Sing, mountain-wind, thy strong, superior song—
   Thy haughty alpine anthem, over tracts
   Whose passes and whose swift, rock-straitened streams
   Catch mighty life and voice from thee, and make
   A lordly harmony on sea-chafed heights.
   Sing, mountain-wind, and take thine ancient tone,
   The grand, austere, imperial utterance.
   Which drives my soul before it back to days
   In one dark hour of which, when Storm rode high
   Past broken hills, and when the polar gale
   Roared round the Otway with the bitter breath
   That speaks for ever of the White South Land
   Alone with God and Silence in the cold,
   I heard the touching tale of Basil Moss,

   A story shining with a woman's love!
   And who that knows that love can ever doubt
   How dear, divine, sublime a thing it is;
   For while the tale of Basil Moss was one
   Not blackened with those stark, satanic sins
   Which call for superhuman sacrifice,
   Still, from the records of the world's sad life,
   This great, sweet, gladdening fact at length we've learned,
   There's not a depth to which a man can fall,
   No slough of crime in which such one can lie
   Stoned with the scorn and curses of his kind,
   But that some tender woman can be found
   To love and shield him still.

                                  What was the fate
   Of Basil Moss who, thirty years ago,
   A brave, high-minded, but impetuous youth,
   Left happy homesteads in the sweetest isle
   That wears the sober light of Northern suns?
   What happened him, the man who crossed far, fierce
   Sea-circles of the hoarse Atlantic—who,
   Without a friend to help him in the world,
   Commenced his battle in this fair young land,
   A Levite in the Temple Beautiful
   Of Art, who struggled hard, but found that here
   Both Bard and Painter learn, by bitter ways,
   That they are aliens in the working world,
   And that all Heaven's templed clouds at morn
   And sunset do not weigh one loaf of bread!

   This was his tale.  For years he kept himself
   Erect, and looked his troubles in the face
   And grappled them; and, being helped at last
   By one who found she loved him, who became
   The patient sharer of his lot austere,
   He beat them bravely back; but like the heads
   Of Lerna's fabled hydra, they returned
   From day to day in numbers multiplied;
   And so it came to pass that Basil Moss
   (Who was, though brave, no mental Hercules,
   Who hid beneath a calmness forced, the keen
   Heart-breaking sensibility—which is
   The awful, wild, specific curse that clings
   Forever to the Poet's twofold life)
   Gave way at last; but not before the hand
   Of sickness fell upon him—not before
   The drooping form and sad averted eyes
   Of hectic Hope, that figure far and faint,
   Had given all his later thoughts a tongue—
   "It is too late—too late!"

                                  There is no need
   To tell the elders of the English world
   What followed this.  From step to step, the man—
   Now fairly gripped by fierce Intemperance—
   Descended in the social scale; and though
   He struggled hard at times to break away,
   And take the old free, dauntless stand again,
   He came to be as helpless as a child,
   And Darkness settled on the face of things,
   And Hope fell dead, and Will was paralysed.

   Yet sometimes, in the gloomy breaks between
   Each fit of madness issuing from his sin,
   He used to wander through familiar woods
   With God's glad breezes blowing in his face,
   And try to feel as he was wont to feel
   In other years; but never could he find
   Again his old enthusiastic sense
   Of Beauty; never could he exorcize
   The evil spell which seemed to shackle down
   The fine, keen, subtle faculty that used
   To see into the heart of loveliness;
   And therefore Basil learned to shun the haunts
   Where Nature holds her chiefest courts, because
   They forced upon him in the saddest light
   The fact of what he was, and once had been.

   So fared the drunkard for five awful years—
   The last of which, while lighting singing dells,
   With many a flame of flowers, found Basil Moss
   Cooped with his wife in one small wretched room;
   And there, one night, the man, when ill and weak—
   A sufferer from his latest bout of sin—
   Moaned, stricken sorely with a fourfold sense
   Of all the degradation he had brought
   Upon himself, and on his patient wife;
   And while he wrestled with his strong remorse
   He looked upon a sweet but pallid face,
   And cried, "My God! is this the trusting girl
   I swore to love, to shield, to cherish so
   But ten years back?  O, what a liar I am!"
   She, shivering in a thin and faded dress
   Beside a handful of pale, smouldering fire,
   On hearing Basil's words, moved on her chair,
   And turning to him blue, beseeching eyes,
   And pinched, pathetic features, faintly said—
   "O, Basil, love! now that you seem to feel
   And understand how much I've suffered since
   You first gave way—now that you comprehend
   The bitter heart-wear, darling, that has brought
   The swift, sad silver to this hair of mine
   Which should have come with Age—which came with Pain,
   Do make one more attempt to free yourself
   From what is slowly killing both of us;
   And if you do the thing I ask of you,
   If you but try this once, we may indeed—
   We may be happy yet."

                          Then Basil Moss,
   Remembering in his marvellous agony
   How often he had found her in the dead
   Of icy nights with uncomplaining eyes,
   A watcher in a cheerless room for him;
   And thinking, too, that often, while he threw
   His scanty earnings over reeking bars,
   The darling that he really loved through all
   Was left without enough to eat—then Moss,
   I say, sprang to his feet with sinews set
   And knotted brows, and throat that gasped for air,
   And cried aloud—"My poor, poor girl, I will."

   And so he did; and fought this time the fight
   Out to the bitter end; and with the help
   Of prayers and unremitting tenderness
   He gained the victory at last; but not—
   No, not before the agony and sweat
   Of fierce Gethsemanes had come to him;
   And not before the awful nightly trials,
   When, set in mental furnaces of flame,
   With eyes that ached and wooed in vain for sleep,
   He had to fight the devil holding out
   The cup of Lethe to his fevered lips.
   But still he conquered; and the end was this,
   That though he often had to face the eyes
   Of that bleak Virtue which is not of Christ
   (Because the gracious Lord of Love was one with Him
   Who blessed the dying thief upon the cross),
   He held his way with no unfaltering steps,
   And gathered hope and light, and never missed
   To do a thing for the sake of good.
   And every day that glided through the world
   Saw some fine instance of his bright reform,
   And some assurance he would never fall
   Into the pits and traps of hell again.
   And thus it came to pass that Basil's name
   Grew sweet with men; and, when he died, his end
   Was calm—was evening-like, and beautiful.

   Here ends the tale of Basil Moss.  To wives
   Who suffer as the Painter's darling did,
   I dedicate these lines; and hope they'll bear
   In mind those efforts of her lovely life,
   Which saved her husband's soul; and proved that while
   A man who sins can entertain remorse,
   He is not wholly lost.  If such as they
   But follow her, they may be sure of this,
   That Love, that sweet authentic messenger
   From God, can never fail while there is left
   Within the fallen one a single pulse
   Of what the angels call humanity.