Araluen

  —
   * A stream in the Braidwood district, New South Wales.
  —

   River, myrtle rimmed, and set
    Deep amongst unfooted dells—
   Daughter of grey hills of wet,
    Born by mossed and yellow wells;

   Now that soft September lays
    Tender hands on thee and thine,
   Let me think of blue-eyed days,
    Star-like flowers and leaves of shine!

   Cities soil the life with rust;
    Water banks are cool and sweet;
   River, tired of noise and dust,
    Here I come to rest my feet.

   Now the month from shade to sun
    Fleets and sings supremest songs,
   Now the wilful wood-winds run
    Through the tangled cedar throngs.

   Here are cushioned tufts and turns
    Where the sumptuous noontide lies:
   Here are seen by flags and ferns
    Summer's large, luxurious eyes.

   On this spot wan Winter casts
    Eyes of ruth, and spares its green
   From his bitter sea-nursed blasts,
    Spears of rain and hailstones keen.

   Rather here abideth Spring,
    Lady of a lovely land,
   Dear to leaf and fluttering wing,
    Deep in blooms—by breezes fanned.

   Faithful friend beyond the main,
    Friend that time nor change makes cold;
   Now, like ghosts, return again
    Pallid, perished days of old.

   Ah, the days!—the old, old theme,
    Never stale, but never new,
   Floating like a pleasant dream,
    Back to me and back to you.

   Since we rested on these slopes
    Seasons fierce have beaten down
   Ardent loves and blossoming hopes—
    Loves that lift and hopes that crown.

   But, believe me, still mine eyes
    Often fill with light that springs
   From divinity, which lies
    Ever at the heart of things.

   Solace do I sometimes find
    Where you used to hear with me
   Songs of stream and forest wind,
    Tones of wave and harp-like tree.

   Araluen—home of dreams,
    Fairer for its flowerful glade
   Than the face of Persian streams
    Or the slopes of Syrian shade;

   Why should I still love it so,
    Friend and brother far away?
   Ask the winds that come and go,
    What hath brought me here to-day.

   Evermore of you I think,
    When the leaves begin to fall,
   Where our river breaks its brink,
    And a rest is over all.

   Evermore in quiet lands,
    Friend of mine beyond the sea,
   Memory comes with cunning hands,
    Stays, and paints your face for me.

At Euroma

  —
   * Charles Harpur was buried at Euroma, N.S.W., but this poem refers
     to the grave of a stranger whose name is unknown.
  —

   They built his mound of the rough, red ground,
    By the dip of a desert dell,
   Where all things sweet are killed by the heat,
    And scattered o'er flat and fell;
   In a burning zone they left him alone,
    Past the uttermost western plain,
   And the nightfall dim heard his funeral hymn
    In the voices of wind and rain.

   The songs austere of the forests drear,
    And the echoes of clift and cave,
   When the dark is keen where the storm hath been,
    Fleet over the far-away grave.
   And through the days when the torrid rays
    Strike down on a coppery gloom,
   Some spirit grieves in the perished leaves,
    Whose theme is that desolate tomb.

   No human foot or paw of brute
    Halts now where the stranger sleeps;
   But cloud and star his fellows are,
    And the rain that sobs and weeps.
   The dingo yells by the far iron fells,
    The plover is loud in the range,
   But they never come near to the slumberer here,
    Whose rest is a rest without change.

   Ah! in his life, had he mother or wife,
    To wait for his step on the floor?
   Did beauty wax dim while watching for him
    Who passed through the threshold no more?
   Doth it trouble his head?  He is one with the dead;
    He lies by the alien streams;
   And sweeter than sleep is death that is deep
    And unvexed by the lordship of dreams.

Illa Creek

   A strong sea-wind flies up and sings
    Across the blown-wet border,
   Whose stormy echo runs and rings
    Like bells in wild disorder.

   Fierce breath hath vexed the foreland's face,
    It glistens, glooms, and glistens;
   But deep within this quiet place
    Sweet Illa lies and listens.

   Sweet Illa of the shining sands,
    She sleeps in shady hollows,
   Where August flits with flowerful hands,
    And silver Summer follows.

   Far up the naked hills is heard
    A noise of many waters,
   But green-haired Illa lies unstirred
    Amongst her star-like daughters.

   The tempest, pent in moaning ways,
    Awakes the shepherd yonder,
   But Illa dreams unknown to days
    Whose wings are wind and thunder.

   Here fairy hands and floral feet
    Are brought by bright October;
   Here, stained with grapes and smit with heat,
    Comes Autumn, sweet and sober.

   Here lovers rest, what time the red
    And yellow colours mingle,
   And daylight droops with dying head
    Beyond the western dingle.

   And here, from month to month, the time
    Is kissed by peace and pleasure,
   While Nature sings her woodland rhyme
    And hoards her woodland treasure.

   Ah, Illa Creek! ere evening spreads
    Her wings o'er towns unshaded,
   How oft we seek thy mossy beds
    To lave our foreheads faded!

   For, let me whisper, then we find
    The strength that lives, nor falters,
   In wood and water, waste and wind,
    And hidden mountain altars.

Moss on a Wall

   Dim dreams it hath of singing ways,
    Of far-off woodland water-heads,
   And shining ends of April days
    Amongst the yellow runnel-beds.

   Stoop closer to the ruined wall,
    Whereon the wilful wilding sleeps,
   As if its home were waterfall
    By dripping clefts and shadowy steeps.

   A little waif, whose beauty takes
    A touching tone because it dwells
   So far away from mountain lakes,
    And lily leaves, and lightening fells.

   Deep hidden in delicious floss
    It nestles, sister, from the heat—
   A gracious growth of tender moss
    Whose nights are soft, whose days are sweet.

   Swift gleams across its petals run
    With winds that hum a pleasant tune,
   Serene surprises of the sun,
    And whispers from the lips of noon.

   The evening-coloured apple-trees
    Are faint with July's frosty breath.
   But lo! this stranger getteth ease,
    And shines amidst the strays of Death.

   And at the turning of the year,
    When August wanders in the cold,
   The raiment of the nursling here
    Is rich with green and glad with gold.

   Oh, friend of mine, to one whose eyes
    Are vexed because of alien things,
   For ever in the wall moss lies
    The peace of hills and hidden springs.

   From faithless lips and fickle lights
    The tired pilgrim sets his face,
   And thinketh here of sounds and sights
    In many a lovely forest-place.

   And when by sudden fits and starts
    The sunset on the moss doth burn,
   He often dreams, and, lo! the marts
    And streets are changed to dells of fern.

   For, let me say, the wilding placed
    By hands unseen amongst these stones,
   Restores a Past by Time effaced,
    Lost loves and long-forgotten tones!

   As sometimes songs and scenes of old
    Come faintly unto you and me,
   When winds are wailing in the cold,
    And rains are sobbing on the sea.

Campaspe

   Turn from the ways of this Woman!  Campaspe we call her by name—
   She is fairer than flowers of the fire—
     she is brighter than brightness of flame.
   As a song that strikes swift to the heart
     with the beat of the blood of the South,
   And a light and a leap and a smart, is the play of her perilous mouth.
   Her eyes are as splendours that break in the rain at the set of the sun,
   But turn from the steps of Campaspe—a Woman to look at and shun!

   Dost thou know of the cunning of Beauty?  Take heed to thyself and beware
   Of the trap in the droop in the raiment—the snare in the folds of the hair!
   She is fulgent in flashes of pearl, the breeze with her breathing is sweet,
   But fly from the face of the girl—there is death in the fall of her feet!
   Is she maiden or marvel of marble?  Oh, rather a tigress at wait
   To pounce on thy soul for her pastime—a leopard for love or for hate.

   Woman of shadow and furnace!  She biteth her lips to restrain
   Speech that springs out when she sleepeth,
     by the stirs and the starts of her pain.
   As music half-shapen of sorrow, with its wants and its infinite wail,
   Is the voice of Campaspe, the beauty at bay with her passion dead-pale.
   Go out from the courts of her loving, nor tempt the fierce dance of desire
   Where thy life would be shrivelled like stubble
     in the stress and the fervour of fire!

   I know of one, gentle as moonlight—she is sad as the shine of the moon,
   But touching the ways of her eyes are:  she comes to my soul like a tune—
   Like a tune that is filled with faint voices
     of the loved and the lost and the lone,
   Doth this stranger abide with my silence:  like a tune with a tremulous tone.
   The leopard, we call her, Campaspe!  I pluck at a rose and I stir
   To think of this sweet-hearted maiden—what name is too tender for her?

On a Cattle Track

   Where the strength of dry thunder splits hill-rocks asunder,
    And the shouts of the desert-wind break,
   By the gullies of deepness and ridges of steepness,
    Lo, the cattle track twists like a snake!
   Like a sea of dead embers, burnt white by Decembers,
    A plain to the left of it lies;
   And six fleeting horses dash down the creek courses
    With the terror of thirst in their eyes.

   The false strength of fever, that deadly deceiver,
    Gives foot to each famishing beast;
   And over lands rotten, by rain-winds forgotten,
    The mirage gleams out in the east.
   Ah! the waters are hidden from riders and ridden
    In a stream where the cattle track dips;
   And Death on their faces is scoring fierce traces,
    And the drouth is a fire on their lips.

   It is far to the station, and gaunt Desolation
    Is a spectre that glooms in the way;
   Like a red smoke the air is, like a hell-light its glare is,
    And as flame are the feet of the day.
   The wastes are like metal that forges unsettle
    When the heat of the furnace is white;
   And the cool breeze that bloweth when an English sun goeth,
    Is unknown to the wild desert night.

   A cry of distress there! a horseman the less there!
    The mock-waters shine like a moon!
   It is "Speed, and speed faster from this hole of disaster!
    And hurrah for yon God-sent lagoon!"
   Doth a devil deceive them?  Ah, now let us leave them—
    We are burdened in life with the sad;
   Our portion is trouble, our joy is a bubble,
    And the gladdest is never too glad.

   From the pale tracts of peril, past mountain heads sterile,
    To a sweet river shadowed with reeds,
   Where Summer steps lightly, and Winter beams brightly,
    The hoof-rutted cattle track leads.
   There soft is the moonlight, and tender the noon-light;
    There fiery things falter and fall;
   And there may be seen, now, the gold and the green, now,
    And the wings of a peace over all.

   Hush, bittern and plover!  Go, wind, to thy cover
    Away by the snow-smitten Pole!
   The rotten leaf falleth, the forest rain calleth;
    And what is the end of the whole?
   Some men are successful after seasons distressful
    [Now, masters, the drift of my tale];
   But the brink of salvation is a lair of damnation
    For others who struggle, yet fail.

To Damascus

   Where the sinister sun of the Syrians beat
    On the brittle, bright stubble,
   And the camels fell back from the swords of the heat,
   Came Saul, with a fire in the soles of his feet,
    And a forehead of trouble.

   And terrified faces to left and to right,
    Before and behind him,
   Fled away with the speed of a maddening fright
   To the cloughs of the bat and the chasms of night,
   Each hoping the zealot would fail in his flight
    To find him and bind him.

   For, behold you! the strong man of Tarsus came down
    With breathings of slaughter,
   From the priests of the city, the chiefs of the town
   (The lords with the sword, and the sires with the gown),
   To harry the Christians, and trample, and drown,
    And waste them like water.

   He was ever a fighter, this son of the Jews—
    A fighter in earnest;
   And the Lord took delight in the strength of his thews,
   For He knew he was one of the few He could choose
   To fight out His battles and carry His news
   Of a marvellous truth through the dark and the dews,
    And the desert lands furnaced!

   He knew he was one of the few He could take
    For His mission supernal,
   Whose feet would not falter, whose limbs would not ache,
   Through the waterless lands of the thorn and the snake,
   And the ways of the wild—bearing up for the sake
    Of a Beauty eternal.

   And therefore the road to Damascus was burned
    With a swift, sudden brightness;
   While Saul, with his face in the bitter dust, learned
   Of the sin which he did ere he tumbled, and turned
    Aghast at God's whiteness!

   Of the sin which he did ere he covered his head
    From the strange revelation.
   But, thereafter, you know of the life that he led—
   How he preached to the peoples, and suffered, and sped
   With the wonderful words which his Master had said,
    From nation to nation.

   Now would we be like him, who suffer and see,
    If the Chooser should choose us!
   For I tell you, brave brothers, whoever you be,
   It is right, till all learn to look further, and see,
    That our Master should use us!

   It is right, till all learn to discover and class,
    That our Master should task us:
   For now we may judge of the Truth through a glass;
   And the road over which they must evermore pass,
   Who would think for the many, and fight for the mass,
    Is the road to Damascus.

Bell-Birds

   By channels of coolness the echoes are calling,
   And down the dim gorges I hear the creek falling;
   It lives in the mountain, where moss and the sedges
   Touch with their beauty the banks and the ledges;
   Through brakes of the cedar and sycamore bowers
   Struggles the light that is love to the flowers.
   And, softer than slumber, and sweeter than singing,
   The notes of the bell-birds are running and ringing.

   The silver-voiced bell-birds, the darlings of day-time,
   They sing in September their songs of the May-time.
   When shadows wax strong and the thunder-bolts hurtle,
   They hide with their fear in the leaves of the myrtle;
   When rain and the sunbeams shine mingled together
   They start up like fairies that follow fair weather,
   And straightway the hues of their feathers unfolden
   Are the green and the purple, the blue and the golden.

   October, the maiden of bright yellow tresses,
   Loiters for love in these cool wildernesses;
   Loiters knee-deep in the grasses to listen,
   Where dripping rocks gleam and the leafy pools glisten.
   Then is the time when the water-moons splendid
   Break with their gold, and are scattered or blended
   Over the creeks, till the woodlands have warning
   Of songs of the bell-bird and wings of the morning.

   Welcome as waters unkissed by the summers
   Are the voices of bell-birds to thirsty far-comers.
   When fiery December sets foot in the forest,
   And the need of the wayfarer presses the sorest,
   Pent in the ridges for ever and ever.
   The bell-birds direct him to spring and to river,
   With ring and with ripple, like runnels whose torrents
   Are toned by the pebbles and leaves in the currents.

   Often I sit, looking back to a childhood
   Mixt with the sights and the sounds of the wildwood,
   Longing for power and the sweetness to fashion
   Lyrics with beats like the heart-beats of passion—
   Songs interwoven of lights and of laughters
   Borrowed from bell-birds in far forest rafters;
   So I might keep in the city and alleys
   The beauty and strength of the deep mountain valleys,
   Charming to slumber the pain of my losses
   With glimpses of creeks and a vision of mosses.

A Death in the Bush

   The hut was built of bark and shrunken slabs,
   That wore the marks of many rains, and showed
   Dry flaws wherein had crept and nestled rot.
   Moreover, round the bases of the bark
   Were left the tracks of flying forest fires,
   As you may see them on the lower bole
   Of every elder of the native woods.

   For, ere the early settlers came and stocked
   These wilds with sheep and kine, the grasses grew
   So that they took the passing pilgrim in
   And whelmed him, like a running sea, from sight.

   And therefore, through the fiercer summer months,
   While all the swamps were rotten; while the flats
   Were baked and broken; when the clayey rifts
   Yawned wide, half-choked with drifted herbage past,
   Spontaneous flames would burst from thence and race
   Across the prairies all day long.

                                      At night
   The winds were up, and then, with four-fold speed
   A harsh gigantic growth of smoke and fire
   Would roar along the bottoms, in the wake
   Of fainting flocks of parrots, wallaroos,
   And 'wildered wild things, scattering right and left,
   For safety vague, throughout the general gloom.

   Anon the nearer hillside-growing trees
   Would take the surges; thus from bough to bough
   Was borne the flaming terror!  Bole and spire,
   Rank after rank, now pillared, ringed, and rolled
   In blinding blaze, stood out against the dead,
   Down-smothered dark, for fifty leagues away.

   For fifty leagues; and when the winds were strong
   For fifty more!  But in the olden time
   These fires were counted as the harbingers
   Of life-essential storms, since out of smoke
   And heat there came across the midnight ways
   Abundant comfort, with upgathered clouds
   And runnels babbling of a plenteous fall.

   So comes the southern gale at evenfall
   (The swift brick-fielder of the local folk),
   About the streets of Sydney, when the dust
   Lies burnt on glaring windows, and the men
   Look forth from doors of drouth and drink the change
   With thirsty haste, and that most thankful cry
   Of "Here it is—the cool, bright, blessed rain!"

   The hut, I say, was built of bark and slabs,
   And stood, the centre of a clearing, hemmed
   By hurdle-yards, and ancients of the blacks;
   These moped about their lazy fires, and sang
   Wild ditties of the old days, with a sound
   Of sorrow, like an everlasting wind
   Which mingled with the echoes of the noon
   And moaned amongst the noises of the night.

   From thence a cattle track, with link to link,
   Ran off against the fish-pools to the gap
   Which sets you face to face with gleaming miles
   Of broad Orara*, winding in amongst
   Black, barren ridges, where the nether spurs
   Are fenced about by cotton scrub, and grass
   Blue-bitten with the salt of many droughts.

  —
   * A tributary of the river Clarence, N.S.W.
  —

   'Twas here the shepherd housed him every night,
   And faced the prospect like a patient soul,
   Borne up by some vague hope of better days,
   And God's fine blessing in his faithful wife,
   Until the humour of his malady
   Took cunning changes from the good to bad,
   And laid him lastly on a bed of death.

   Two months thereafter, when the summer heat
   Had roused the serpent from his rotten lair,
   And made a noise of locusts in the boughs,
   It came to this, that as the blood-red sun
   Of one fierce day of many slanted down
   Obliquely past the nether jags of peaks
   And gulfs of mist, the tardy night came vexed
   By belted clouds and scuds that wheeled and whirled
   To left and right about the brazen clifts
   Of ridges, rigid with a leaden gloom.

   Then took the cattle to the forest camps
   With vacant terror, and the hustled sheep
   Stood dumb against the hurdles, even like
   A fallen patch of shadowed mountain snow;
   And ever through the curlew's call afar,
   The storm grew on, while round the stinted slabs
   Sharp snaps and hisses came, and went, and came,
   The huddled tokens of a mighty blast
   Which ran with an exceeding bitter cry
   Across the tumbled fragments of the hills,
   And through the sluices of the gorge and glen.

   So, therefore, all about the shepherd's hut
   That space was mute, save when the fastened dog,
   Without a kennel, caught a passing glimpse
   Of firelight moving through the lighted chinks,
   For then he knew the hints of warmth within,
   And stood and set his great pathetic eyes,
   In wind and wet, imploring to be loosed.

   Not often now the watcher left the couch
   Of him she watched, since in his fitful sleep
   His lips would stir to wayward themes, and close
   With bodeful catches.  Once she moved away,
   Half-deafened by terrific claps, and stooped
   And looked without—to see a pillar dim
   Of gathered gusts and fiery rain.

                                      Anon
   The sick man woke, and, startled by the noise,
   Stared round the room with dull, delirious sight,
   At this wild thing and that:  for through his eyes
   The place took fearful shapes, and fever showed
   Strange crosswise lights about his pillow-head.
   He, catching there at some phantasmic help,
   Sat upright on the bolster with a cry
   Of "Where is Jesus?  It is bitter cold!"
   And then, because the thunder-calls outside
   Were mixed for him with slanders of the past,
   He called his weeping wife by name, and said,
   "Come closer, darling!  We shall speed away
   Across the seas, and seek some mountain home
   Shut in from liars and the wicked words
   That track us day and night and night and day."
   So waned the sad refrain.  And those poor lips,
   Whose latest phrases were for peace, grew mute,
   And into everlasting silence passed.

   As fares a swimmer who hath lost his breath
   In 'wildering seas afar from any help—
   Who, fronting Death, can never realize
   The dreadful Presence, but is prone to clutch
   At every weed upon the weltering wave—
   So fared the watcher, poring o'er the last
   Of him she loved, with dazed and stupid stare;
   Half conscious of the sudden loss and lack
   Of all that bound her life, but yet without
   The power to take her mighty sorrow in.

   Then came a patch or two of starry sky,
   And through a reef of cloven thunder-cloud
   The soft moon looked:  a patient face beyond
   The fierce impatient shadows of the slopes
   And the harsh voices of the broken hills!
   A patient face, and one which came and wrought
   A lovely silence, like a silver mist,
   Across the rainy relics of the storm.

   For in the breaks and pauses of her light
   The gale died out in gusts:  yet, evermore
   About the roof-tree on the dripping eaves,
   The damp wind loitered, and a fitful drift
   Sloped through the silent curtains, and athwart
   The dead.

              There, when the glare had dropped behind
   A mighty ridge of gloom, the woman turned
   And sat in darkness, face to face with God,
   And said, "I know," she said, "that Thou art wise;
   That when we build and hope, and hope and build,
   And see our best things fall, it comes to pass
   For evermore that we must turn to Thee!
   And therefore, now, because I cannot find
   The faintest token of Divinity
   In this my latest sorrow, let Thy light
   Inform mine eyes, so I may learn to look
   On something past the sight which shuts and blinds
   And seems to drive me wholly, Lord, from Thee."

   Now waned the moon beyond complaining depths,
   And as the dawn looked forth from showery woods
   (Whereon had dropped a hint of red and gold)
   There went about the crooked cavern-eaves
   Low flute-like echoes, with a noise of wings,
   And waters flying down far-hidden fells.
   Then might be seen the solitary owl
   Perched in the clefts, scared at the coming light,
   And staring outward (like a sea-shelled thing
   Chased to his cover by some bright, fierce foe),
   As at a monster in the middle waste.

   At last the great kingfisher came, and called
   Across the hollows, loud with early whips,
   And lighted, laughing, on the shepherd's hut,
   And roused the widow from a swoon like death.

   This day, and after it was noised abroad
   By blacks, and straggling horsemen on the roads,
   That he was dead "who had been sick so long",
   There flocked a troop from far-surrounding runs,
   To see their neighbour, and to bury him;
   And men who had forgotten how to cry
   (Rough, flinty fellows of the native bush)
   Now learned the bitter way, beholding there
   The wasted shadow of an iron frame,
   Brought down so low by years of fearful pain,
   And marking, too, the woman's gentle face,
   And all the pathos in her moaned reply
   Of "Masters, we have lived in better days."

   One stooped—a stockman from the nearer hills—
   To loose his wallet-strings, from whence he took
   A bag of tea, and laid it on her lap;
   Then sobbing, "God will help you, missus, yet,"
   He sought his horse, with most bewildered eyes,
   And, spurring, swiftly galloped down the glen.

   Where black Orara nightly chafes his brink,
   Midway between lamenting lines of oak
   And Warra's Gap, the shepherd's grave was built;
   And there the wild dog pauses, in the midst
   Of moonless watches, howling through the gloom
   At hopeless shadows flitting to and fro,
   What time the east wind hums his darkest hymn,
   And rains beat heavy on the ruined leaf.

   There, while the autumn in the cedar trees
   Sat cooped about by cloudy evergreens
   The widow sojourned on the silent road,
   And mutely faced the barren mound, and plucked
   A straggling shrub from thence, and passed away,
   Heart-broken, on to Sydney, where she took
   Her passage in an English vessel bound
   To London, for her home of other years.

   At rest!  Not near, with Sorrow on his grave,
   And roses quickened into beauty—wrapt
   In all the pathos of perennial bloom;
   But far from these, beneath the fretful clay
   Of lands within the lone perpetual cry
   Of hermit plovers and the night-like oaks,
   All moaning for the peace which never comes.

   At rest!  And she who sits and waits behind
   Is in the shadows; but her faith is sure,
   And one fine promise of the coming days
   Is breaking, like a blessed morning, far
   On hills that "slope through darkness up to God."