Hunted Down

   Two years had the tiger, whose shape was that of a sinister man,
   Been out since the night of escape—two years under horror and ban.
   In a time full of thunder and rain, when hurricanes hackled the tree,
   He slipt through the sludge of a drain, and swam a fierce fork of the sea.
   Through the roar of the storm, and the ring
     and the wild savage whistle of hail,
   Did this naked, whipt, desperate thing
     break loose from the guards of the gaol.
   And breasting the foam of the bay, and facing the fangs of the bight,
   With a great cruel cry on his way, he dashed through the darkness of night.

   But foiled was the terror of fin, and baffled the strength of the tide,
   For a devil supported his chin and a fiend kept a watch at his side.
   And hands of iniquity drest the hellish hyena, and gave
   Him food in the hills of the west—in cells of indefinite cave.
   Then, strengthened and weaponed, this peer
     of the brute, on the track of its prey,
   Sprang out, and shed sorrow and fear through the beautiful fields of the day.
   And pillage and murder, and worse, swept peace from the face of the land—
   The black, bitter work of this curse with the blood on his infamous hand.

   But wolf of the hills at the end—chased back to the depths of his lair—
   Had horror for neighbour and friend—he supped in the dark with despair.
   A whisper of leaf or a breath of the wind in the watch of the night
   Was ever as message of death to this devil bent double with fright.
   For now were the hunters abroad; and the fiend like an adder at bay,
   Cast out of the sight of the Lord, in the folds of his fastnesses lay.
   Yea, skulking in pits of the slime—in venomous dens of eclipse—
   He cowered and bided his time, with the white malice set on his lips.

   Two years had his shadow been cast in forest, on highway, and run;
   But Nemesis tracked him at last, and swept him from under the sun.
   Foul felons in chains were ashamed to speak of the bloodthirsty thing
   Who lived, like a panther inflamed, the life that no singer can sing—
   Who butchered one night in the wild three women, a lad, and a maid,
   And cut the sweet throat of a child—its mother's pure blood on his blade!
   But over the plains and away by the range and the forested lake,
   Rode hard, for a week and a day, the terrible tracker, Dick Blake.

   Dick Blake had the scent of a hound, the eye of a lynx, and could track
   Where never a sign on the ground or the rock could be seen by the black.
   A rascal at large, when he heard that Blake was out hard at his heels,
   Felt just as the wilderness bird, in the snare fettered hopelessly, feels.
   And, hence, when the wolf with the brand of Cain written thrice on his face,
   Knew terrible Dick was at hand, he slunk like a snake to his place—
   To the depths of his kennel he crept, far back in the passages dim;
   But Blake and his mates never slept; they hunted and listened for him.

   The mountains were many, but he who had captured big Terrigal Bill,
   The slayer of Hawkins and Lee, found tracks by a conical hill.
   There were three in the party—no more:  Dick Blake and his brother, and one
   Who came from a far-away shore, called here by the blood of his son.
   Two nights and two days did they wait on the trail of the curst of all men;
   But on the third morning a fate led Dick to the door of the den;
   And a thunder ran up from the south and smote all the woods into sound;
   And Blake, with an oath on his mouth, called out for the fiend underground.

   But the answer was blue, bitter lead, and the brother of Dick, with a cry,
   Fell back, and the storm overhead set night like a seal on the sky;
   And the strength of the hurricane tore asunder hill-turrets uphurled;
   And a rushing of rain and a roar made wan the green widths of the world.
   The flame, and the roll, and the ring, and the hiss of the thunder and hail
   Set fear on the face of the Spring laid bare to the arrow of gale.
   But here in the flash and the din, in the cry of the mountain and wave,
   Dick Blake, through the shadow, dashed in and strangled the wolf in his cave.

Wamberal

   Just a shell, to which the seaweed glittering yet with greenness clings,
   Like the song that once I loved so, softly of the old time sings—
   Softly of the old time speaketh—bringing ever back to me
   Sights of far-off lordly forelands—glimpses of the sounding sea!
   Now the cliffs are all before me—now, indeed, do I behold
   Shining growths on wild wet hillheads, quiet pools of green and gold.
   And, across the gleaming beaches, lo! the mighty flow and fall
   Of the great ingathering waters thundering under Wamberal!

   Back there are the pondering mountains; there the dim, dumb ranges loom—
   Ghostly shapes in dead grey vapour—half-seen peaks august with gloom.
   There the voice of troubled torrents, hidden in unfathomed deeps,
   Known to moss and faint green sunlight, wanders down the oozy steeps.
   There the lake of many runnels nestles in a windless wild
   Far amongst thick-folded forests, like a radiant human child.
   And beyond surf-smitten uplands—high above the highest spur—
   Lo! the clouds like tents of tempest on the crags of Kincumber!

   Wamberal, the home of echoes!  Hard against a streaming strand,
   Sits the hill of blind black caverns, at the limits of the land.
   Here the haughty water marches—here the flights of straitened sea
   Make a noise like that of trumpets, breaking wide across the lea!
   But behold, in yonder crescent that a ring of island locks
   Are the gold and emerald cisterns shining moonlike in the rocks!
   Clear, bright cisterns, zoned by mosses, where the faint wet blossoms dwell
   With the leaf of many colours—down beside the starry shell.

   Friend of mine beyond the mountains, here and here the perished days
   Come like sad reproachful phantoms, in the deep grey evening haze—
   Come like ghosts, and sit beside me when the noise of day is still,
   And the rain is on the window, and the wind is on the hill.
   Then they linger, but they speak not, while my memory roams and roams
   Over scenes by death made sacred—other lands and other homes!
   Places sanctified by sorrow—sweetened by the face of yore—
   Face that you and I may look on (friend and brother) nevermore!

   Seasons come with tender solace—time lacks neither light nor rest;
   But the old thoughts were such dear ones, and the old days seem the best.
   And to those who've loved and suffered, every pulse of wind or rain—
   Every song with sadness in it, brings the peopled Past again.
   Therefore, just this shell yet dripping, with this weed of green and grey,
   Sets me thinking—sets me dreaming of the places far away;
   Dreaming of the golden rockpools—of the foreland and the fall;
   And the home behind the mountains looming over Wamberal.

In Memoriam—Alice Fane Gunn Stenhouse

  —
   * Daughter of Nicol Drysdale Stenhouse.
  —

   The grand, authentic songs that roll
    Across grey widths of wild-faced sea,
   The lordly anthems of the Pole,
    Are loud upon the lea.

   Yea, deep and full the South Wind sings
    The mighty symphonies that make
   A thunder at the mountain springs—
    A whiteness on the lake.

   And where the hermit hornet hums,
    When Summer fires his wings with gold,
   The hollow voice of August comes,
    Across the rain and cold.

   Now on the misty mountain tops,
    Where gleams the crag and glares the fell,
   Wild Winter, like one hunted, stops
    And shouts a fierce farewell.

   Keen fitful gusts shoot past the shore
    And hiss by moor and moody mere—
   The heralds bleak that come before
    The turning of the year.

   A sobbing spirit wanders where
    By fits and starts the wild-fire shines;
   Like one who walks in deep despair,
    With Death amongst the pines.

   And ah! the fine, majestic grief
    Which fills the heart of forests lone,
   And makes a lute of limb and leaf
    Is human in its tone.

   Too human for the thought to slip—
    How every song that sorrow sings
   Betrays the broad relationship
    Of all created things.

   Man's mournful speech, the wail of tree,
    The words the winds and waters say,
   Make up that general elegy,
    Whose burden is decay.

   To-night my soul looks back and sees,
    Across wind-broken wastes of wave,
   A widow on her bended knees
    Beside a new-made grave.

   A sufferer with a touching face
    By love and grief made beautiful;
   Whose rapt religion lights the place
    Where death holds awful rule.

   The fair, tired soul whose twofold grief
    For child and father lends a tone
   Of pathos to the pallid leaf
    That sighs above the stone.

   The large beloved heart whereon
    She used to lean, lies still and cold,
   Where, like a seraph, shines the sun
    On flowerful green and gold.

   I knew him well—the grand, the sweet,
    Pure nature past all human praise;
   The dear Gamaliel at whose feet
    I sat in other days.

   He, glorified by god-like lore,
    First showed my soul Life's highest aim;
   When, like one winged, I breathed—before
    The years of sin and shame.

   God called him Home.  And, in the calm
    Beyond our best possessions priced,
   He passed, as floats a faultless psalm,
    To his fair Father, Christ.

   But left as solace for the hours
    Of sorrow and the loss thereof;
   A sister of the birds and flowers,
    The daughter of his love.

   She, like a stray sweet seraph, shed
    A healing spirit, that flamed and flowed
   As if about her bright young head
    A crown of saintship glowed.

   Suppressing, with sublime self-slight,
    The awful face of that distress
   Which fell upon her youth like blight,
    She shone like happiness.

   And, in the home so sanctified
    By death in its most noble guise,
   She kissed the lips of love, and dried
    The tears in sorrow's eyes.

   And helped the widowed heart to lean,
    So broken up with human cares,
   On one who must be felt and seen
    By such pure souls as hers.

   Moreover, having lived, and learned
    The taste of Life's most bitter spring,
   For all the sick this sister yearned—
    The poor and suffering.

   But though she had for every one
    The phrase of comfort and the smile,
   This shining daughter of the sun
    Was dying all the while.

   Yet self-withdrawn—held out of reach
    Was grief; except when music blent
   Its deep, divine, prophetic speech
    With voice and instrument.

   Then sometimes would escape a cry
    From that dark other life of hers—
   The half of her humanity—
    And sob through sound and verse.

   At last there came the holy touch,
    With psalms from higher homes and hours;
   And she who loved the flowers so much
    Now sleeps amongst the flowers.

   By hearse-like yews and grey-haired moss,
    Where wails the wind in starts and fits,
   Twice bowed and broken down with loss,
    The wife, the mother sits.

   God help her soul!  She cannot see,
    For very trouble, anything
   Beyond this wild Gethsemane
    Of swift, black suffering;

   Except it be that faltering faith
    Which leads the lips of life to say:
   "There must be something past this death—
    Lord, teach me how to pray!"

   Ah, teach her, Lord!  And shed through grief
    The clear full light, the undefiled,
   The blessing of the bright belief
    Which sanctified her child.

   Let me, a son of sin and doubt,
    Whose feet are set in ways amiss—
   Who cannot read Thy riddle out,
    Just plead, and ask Thee this;

   Give her the eyes to see the things—
    The Life and Love I cannot see;
   And lift her with the helping wings
    Thou hast denied to me.

   Yea, shining from the highest blue
    On those that sing by Beulah's streams,
   Shake on her thirsty soul the dew
    Which brings immortal dreams.

   So that her heart may find the great,
    Pure faith for which it looks so long;
   And learn the noble way to wait,
    To suffer, and be strong.

From the Forests

  —
   * Introductory verses for "The Sydney University Review", 1881.
  —

   Where in a green, moist, myrtle dell
    The torrent voice rings strong
   And clear, above a star-bright well,
    I write this woodland song.

   The melodies of many leaves
    Float in a fragrant zone;
   And here are flowers by deep-mossed eaves
    That day has never known.

   I'll weave a garland out of these,
    The darlings of the birds,
   And send it over singing seas
    With certain sunny words—

   With certain words alive with light
    Of welcome for a thing
   Of promise, born beneath the white,
    Soft afternoon of Spring.

   The faithful few have waited long
    A life like this to see;
   And they will understand the song
    That flows to-day from me.

   May every page within this book
    Be as a radiant hour;
   Or like a bank of mountain brook,
    All flower and leaf and flower.

   May all the strength and all the grace
    Of Letters make it beam
   As beams a lawn whose lovely face
    Is as a glorious dream.

   And may that strange divinity
    That men call Genius write
   Some deathless thing in days to be,
    To fill those days with light.

   Here where the free, frank waters run,
    I pray this book may grow
   A sacred candour like the sun
    Above the morning snow.

   May noble thoughts in faultless words—
    In clean white diction—make
   It shine as shines the home of birds
    And moss and leaf and lake.

   This fair fresh life with joy I hail,
    And this belief express,
   Its days will be a brilliant tale
    Of effort and success.

   Here ends my song; I have a dream
    Of beauty like the grace
   Which lies upon the land of stream
    In yonder mountain place.

John Bede Polding

  —
   * Roman Catholic Archbishop of Sydney
  —

   With reverent eyes and bowed, uncovered head,
    A son of sorrow kneels by fanes you knew;
   But cannot say the words that should be said
    To crowned and winged divinities like you.

   The perfect speech of superhuman spheres
    Man has not heard since He of Nazareth,
   Slain for the sins of twice two thousand years,
    Saw Godship gleaming through the gates of Death.

   And therefore he who in these latter days
    Has lost a Father—falling by the shrine,
   Can only use the world's ephemeral phrase,
    Not, Lord, the faultless language that is Thine.

   But he, Thy son upon whose shoulders shone
    So long Elisha's gleaming garments, may
   Be pleased to hear a pleading human tone
    To sift the spirit of the words I say.

   O, Master, since the gentle Stenhouse died
    And left the void that none can ever fill,
   One harp at least has sorrow thrown aside,
    Its strings all broken, and its notes all still.

   Some lofty lord of music yet may find
    Its pulse of passion.  I can never touch
   The chords again—my life has been too blind;
    I've sinned too long and suffered far too much.

   But you will listen to the voice, although
    The harp is silent—you who glorified
   Your great, sad gift of life, because you know
    How souls are tempted and how hearts are tried.

   O marvellous follower in the steps of Christ,
    How pure your spirit must have been to see
   That light beyond our best expression priced
    The effluence of benignant Deity.

   You saw it, Father?  Let me think you did
    Because I, groping in the mists of Doubt,
   Am sometimes fearful that God's face is hid
    From all—that none can read His riddle out!

   A hope from lives like yours must everywhere
    Become like faith—that blessing undefiled,
   The refuge of the grey philosopher—
    The consolation of the simple child.

   Here in a land of many sects, where God
    As shaped by man in countless forms appears,
   Few comprehend how carefully you trod
    Without a slip for two and forty years.

   How wonderful the self-repression must
    Have been, that made you to the lovely close
   The Christian crowned with universal trust,
    The foe-less Father in a land of foes.

   How patiently—with how divine a strength
    Of tolerance you must have watched the frays
   Of fighting churches—warring through the length
    Of your bright, beautiful, unruffled days!

   Because men strove you did not love them less;
    You felt for each—for everyone and all—
   With that same apostolic tenderness
    Which Samuel felt when yearning over Saul.

   A crowned hierophant—a high Chief-Priest
    On flame with robes of light, you used to be;
   But yet you were as humble as the least
    Of those who followed Him of Galilee.

   'Mid splendid forms of faith which flower and fill
    God's oldest Church with gleams ineffable
   You stand, Our Lord's serene disciple still,
    In all the blaze which on your pallium fell.

   The pomp of altars, chasubles, and fires
    Of incense, moved you not; nor yet the dome
   Of haughty beauty—follower of the Sires—
    Who made a holiness of elder Rome.

   A lord of scholarship whose knowledge ran
    Through every groove of human history, you
   Were this and more—a Christian gentleman;
    A fount of learning with a heart like dew.

   O Father!  I who at your feet have knelt,
    On wings of singing fall, and fail to sing,
   Remembering the immense compassion felt
    By you for every form of suffering.

   As dies a gentle April in a sky
    Of faultless beauty—after many days
   Of loveliness and grand tranquillity—
    So passed your presence from our human gaze.

   But though your stately face is as the dust
    That windy hills to wintering hollows give,
   Your memory like a deity august
    Is with us still, to teach us how to live.

   Ah! may it teach us—may the lives that are
    Take colour from the life that was; and may
   Those souls be helped that in the dark so far
    Have strayed, and have forgotten how to pray!

   Let one of these at least retain the hope
    That fine examples, like a blessed dew
   Of summer falling in a fruitful scope,
    Give birth to issues beautiful and true.

   Such hope, O Master, is a light indeed
    To him that knows how hard it is to save
   The spirit resting on no certain creed
    Who kneels to plant this blossom on your grave.