Chapter VI: Front Matter (6)

In girthing a tree that he sells in the round,
He assumes, as a rule, that the body is sound,
And measures, forgetting to bark it!
He may be a ninny, but still the old dog
Can plug to perfection the pipe of a log
And palm it away on the market.

He splits a fair shingle, but holds to the rule
Of his father's, and, haply, his grandfather's school;
Which means that he never has blundered,
When tying his shingles, by slinging in more
Than the recognized number of ninety and four
To the bundle he sells for a hundred!

When asked by the market for ironbark red,
It always occurs to the Wollombi head
To do a "mahogany" swindle.
In forests where never the ironbark grew,
When Jim is at work, it would flabbergast you
To see how the ironbarks dwindle.

He can stick to the saddle, can Wollombi Jim,
And when a buckjumper dispenses with him,
The leather goes off with the rider.
And, as to a team, over gully and hill
He can travel with twelve on the breadth of a quill
And boss the unlucky offsider.

He shines at his best at the tiller of saw,
On the top of the pit, where his whisper is law
To the gentleman working below him.
When the pair of them pause in a circle of dust,
Like a monarch he poses--exalted, august--
There's nothing this planet can show him!

For a man is a _man_ who can sharpen and set,
And _he_ is the only thing masculine yet
According to sawyer and splitter--
Or rather according to Wollombi Jim;
And nothing will tempt me to differ from him,
For Jim is a bit of a hitter.

But, being full up, we'll allow him to rip,
Along with his lingo, his saw, and his whip--
He isn't the classical notion.
And, after a night in his humpy, you see,
A person of orthodox habits would be
Refreshed by a dip in the ocean.

To tot him right up from the heel to the head,
He isn't the Grecian of whom we have read--
His face is a trifle too shady.
The nymph in green valleys of Thessaly dim
Would never "jack up" her old lover for him,
For she has the tastes of a lady.

So much for our hero! A statuesque foot
Would suffer by wearing that heavy-nailed boot--
Its owner is hardly Achilles.
However, he's happy! He cuts a great "fig"
In the land where a coat is no part of the rig--
In the country of damper and billies.

Mooni

(Written in the shadow of 1872.)

Ah, to be by Mooni now,
Where the great dark hills of wonder,
Scarred with storm and cleft asunder
By the strong sword of the thunder,
Make a night on morning's brow!
Just to stand where Nature's face is
Flushed with power in forest places--
Where of God authentic trace is--
Ah, to be by Mooni now!

Just to be by Mooni's springs!
There to stand, the shining sharer
Of that larger life, and rarer
Beauty caught from beauty fairer
Than the human face of things!
Soul of mine from sin abhorrent
Fain would hide by flashing current,
Like a sister of the torrent,
Far away by Mooni's springs.

He that is by Mooni now
Sees the water-sapphires gleaming
Where the River Spirit, dreaming,
Sleeps by fall and fountain streaming
Under lute of leaf and bough--
Hears, where stamp of storm with stress is,
Psalms from unseen wildernesses
Deep amongst far hill-recesses--
He that is by Mooni now.

Yea, for him by Mooni's marge
Sings the yellow-haired September,
With the face the gods remember
When the ridge is burnt to ember,
And the dumb sea chains the barge!
Where the mount like molten brass is,
Down beneath fern-feathered passes,
Noonday dew in cool green grasses
Gleams on him by Mooni's marge.

Who that dwells by Mooni yet,
Feels, in flowerful forest arches,
Smiting wings and breath that parches
Where strong Summer's path of march is,
And the suns in thunder set?
Housed beneath the gracious kirtle
Of the shadowy water myrtle,
Winds may hiss with heat, and hurtle--
He is safe by Mooni yet!

Days there were when he who sings
(Dumb so long through passion's losses)
Stood where Mooni's water crosses
Shining tracts of green-haired mosses,
Like a soul with radiant wings;
Then the psalm the wind rehearses--
Then the song the stream disperses
Lent a beauty to his verses,
Who to-night of Mooni sings.

Ah, the theme--the sad, grey theme!
Certain days are not above me,
Certain hearts have ceased to love me,
Certain fancies fail to move me
Like the affluent morning dream.
Head whereon the white is stealing,
Heart whose hurts are past all healing,
Where is now the first pure feeling?
Ah, the theme--the sad, grey theme!

Sin and shame have left their trace!
He who mocks the mighty, gracious
Love of Christ, with eyes audacious,
Hunting after fires fallacious,
Wears the issue in his face.
Soul that flouted gift and Giver,
Like the broken Persian river,
Thou hast lost thy strength for ever!
Sin and shame have left their trace.

In the years that used to be,
When the large, supreme occasion
Brought the life of inspiration,
Like a god's transfiguration
Was the shining change in me.
Then, where Mooni's glory glances,
Clear, diviner countenances
Beamed on me like blessed chances,
In the years that used to be.

Ah, the beauty of old ways!
Then the man who so resembled
Lords of light unstained, unhumbled,
Touched the skirts of Christ, nor trembled
At the grand benignant gaze!
Now he shrinks before the splendid
Face of Deity offended,
All the loveliness is ended!
All the beauty of old ways!

Still to be by Mooni cool--
Where the water-blossoms glister,
And, by gleaming vale and vista,
Sits the English April's sister
Soft and sweet and wonderful.
Just to rest beyond the burning
Outer world--its sneers and spurning--
Ah! my heart--my heart is yearning
Still to be by Mooni cool!

Now, by Mooni's fair hill heads,
Lo, the gold green lights are glowing,
Where, because no wind is blowing,
Fancy hears the flowers growing
In the herby watersheds!
Faint it is--the sound of thunder
From the torrents far thereunder,
Where the meeting mountains ponder--
Now, by Mooni's fair hill heads.

Just to be where Mooni is,
Even where the fierce fall races
Down august, unfathomed places,
Where of sun or moon no trace is,
And the streams of shadows hiss!
Have I not an ample reason
So to long for--sick of treason--
Something of the grand old season,
Just to be where Mooni is?

Pytheas

Gaul whose keel in far, dim ages ploughed wan widths of polar sea--
Gray old sailor of Massilia, who hath woven wreath for thee?
Who amongst the world's high singers ever breathed the tale sublime
Of the man who coasted England in the misty dawn of time?
Leaves of laurel, lights of music--these and these have never shed
Glory on the name unheard of, lustre on the vanished head.
Lords of song, and these are many, never yet have raised the lay
For the white, wind-beaten seaman of a wild, forgotten day.
Harp of shining son of Godhead still is as a voice august;
But the man who first saw Britain sleeps beneath unnoticed dust.

From the fair, calm bays Hellenic, from the crescents and the bends,
Round the wall of crystal Athens, glowing in gold evening-ends,
Sailed abroad the grand, strong father, with his face towards the snow
Of the awful northern mountains, twenty centuries ago.
On the seas that none had heard of, by the shores where none had furled
Wing of canvas, passed this elder to the limits of the world.
Lurid limits, loud with thunder and the roar of flaming cone,
Ghastly tracts of ice and whirlwind lying in a dim, blind zone,
Bitter belts of naked region, girt about by cliffs of fear,
Where the Spirit of the Darkness dwells in heaven half the year.

Yea, against the wild, weird Thule, steered the stranger through the gates
Opened by a fire eternal, into tempest-trampled straits--
Thule, lying like a nightmare on the borders of the Pole:
Neither land, nor air, nor water, but a mixture of the whole!
Dumb, dead chaos, grey as spectre, now a mist and now a cloud,
Where the winds cry out for ever, and the wave is always loud.
Here the lord of many waters, in the great exalted years,
Saw the sight that no man knows of--heard the sound that no man hears--
Felt that God was in the Shadow ere he turned his prow and sped
To the sweet green fields of England with the sunshine overhead.

In the day when pallid Persia fled before the Thracian steel,
By the land that now is London passed the strange Hellenic keel.
Up the bends of quiet river, hard by banks of grove and flower,
Sailed the father through a silence in the old majestic hour.
Not a sound of fin or feather, not a note of wave or breeze,
Vext the face of sleeping streamlets, broke the rest of stirless trees.
Not a foot was in the forest, not a voice was in the wood,
When the elder from Massilia over English waters stood.
All was new, and hushed, and holy--all was pure untrodden space,
When the lord of many oceans turned to it a reverent face.

Man who knew resplendent Athens, set and framed in silver sea,
Did not dream a dream of England--England of the years to be!
Friend of fathers like to Plato--bards august and hallowed seers--
Did not see that tenfold glory, Britain of the future years!
Spirit filled with Grecian music, songs that charm the dark away,
On that large, supreme occasion, did not note diviner lay--
Did not hear the voice of Shakespeare--all the mighty life was still,
Down the slopes that dipped to seaward, on the shoulders of the hill;
But the gold and green were brighter than the bloom of Thracian springs,
And a strange, surpassing beauty shone upon the face of things.

In a grave that no man thinks of--back from far-forgotten bays--
Sleeps the grey, wind-beaten sailor of the old exalted days.
He that coasted Wales and Dover, he that first saw Sussex plains,
Passed away with head unlaurelled in the wild Thessalian rains.
In a space by hand untended, by a fen of vapours blind,
Lies the king of many waters--out of sight and out of mind!
No one brings the yearly blossom--no one culls the flower of grace,
For the shell of mighty father buried in that lonely place;
But the winds are low and holy, and the songs of sweetness flow,
Where he fell asleep for ever, twenty centuries ago.

Bill the Bullock-Driver

The leaders of millions, the lords of the lands,
Who sway the wide world with their will
And shake the great globe with the strength of their hands,
Flash past us--unnoticed by Bill.

The elders of science who measure the spheres
And weigh the vast bulk of the sun--
Who see the grand lights beyond aeons of years,
Are less than a bullock to _one_.

The singers that sweeten all time with their song--
Pure voices that make us forget
Humanity's drama of marvellous wrong--
To Bill are as mysteries yet.

By thunders of battle and nations uphurled,
Bill's sympathies never were stirred:
The helmsmen who stand at the wheel of the world
By him are unknown and unheard.

What trouble has Bill for the ruin of lands,
Or the quarrels of temple and throne,
So long as the whip that he holds in his hands
And the team that he drives are his own?

As straight and as sound as a slab without crack,
Our Bill is a king in his way;
Though he camps by the side of a shingle track,
And sleeps on the bed of his dray.

A whip-lash to him is as dear as a rose
Would be to a delicate maid;
He carries his darlings wherever he goes,
In a pocket-book tattered and frayed.

The joy of a bard when he happens to write
A song like the song of his dream
Is nothing at all to our hero's delight
In the pluck and the strength of his team.

For the kings of the earth, for the faces august
Of princes, the millions may shout;
To Bill, as he lumbers along in the dust,
A bullock's the grandest thing out.

His four-footed friends are the friends of his choice--
No lover is Bill of your dames;
But the cattle that turn at the sound of his voice
Have the sweetest of features and names.

A father's chief joy is a favourite son,
When he reaches some eminent goal,
But the pride of Bill's heart is the hairy-legged one
That pulls with a will at the pole.

His dray is no living, responsible thing,
But he gives it the gender of life;
And, seeing his fancy is free in the wing,
It suits him as well as a wife.

He thrives like an Arab. Between the two wheels
Is his bedroom, where, lying up-curled,
He thinks for himself, like a sultan, and feels
That his home is the best in the world.

For, even though cattle, like subjects, will break
At times from the yoke and the band,
Bill knows how to act when his rule is at stake,
And is therefore a lord of the land.

Of course he must dream; but be sure that his dreams,
If happy, must compass, alas!
Fat bullocks at feed by improbable streams,
Knee-deep in improbable grass.

No poet is Bill, for the visions of night
To him are as visions of day;
And the pipe that in sleep he endeavours to light
Is the pipe that he smokes on the dray.

To the mighty, magnificent temples of God,
In the hearts of the dominant hills,
Bill's eyes are as blind as the fire-blackened clod
That burns far away from the rills.

Through beautiful, bountiful forests that screen
A marvel of blossoms from heat--
Whose lights are the mellow and golden and green--
Bill walks with irreverent feet.

The manifold splendours of mountain and wood
By Bill like nonentities slip;
He loves the black myrtle because it is good
As a handle to lash to his whip.

And thus through the world, with a swing in his tread,
Our hero self-satisfied goes;
With his cabbage-tree hat on the back of his head,
And the string of it under his nose.

Poor bullocky Bill! In the circles select
Of the scholars he hasn't a place;
But he walks like a _man_, with his forehead erect,
And he looks at God's day in the face.

For, rough as he seems, he would shudder to wrong
A dog with the loss of a hair;
And the angels of shine and superlative song
See his heart and the deity there.

Few know him, indeed; but the beauty that glows
In the forest is loveliness still;
And Providence helping the life of the rose
Is a Friend and a Father to Bill.

Cooranbean

Years fifty, and seven to boot, have smitten the children of men
Since sound of a voice or a foot came out of the head of that glen.
The brand of black devil is there--an evil wind moaneth around--
There is doom, there is death in the air: a curse groweth up from the ground!
No noise of the axe or the saw in that hollow unholy is heard,
No fall of the hoof or the paw, no whirr of the wing of the bird;
But a grey mother down by the sea, as wan as the foam on the strait,
Has counted the beads on her knee these forty-nine winters and eight.

Whenever an elder is asked--a white-headed man of the woods--
Of the terrible mystery masked where the dark everlastingly broods,
Be sure he will turn to the bay, with his back to the glen in the range,
And glide like a phantom away, with a countenance pallid with change.
From the line of dead timber that lies supine at the foot of the glade,
The fierce-featured eaglehawk flies--afraid as a dove is afraid;
But back in that wilderness dread are a fall and the forks of a ford--
_Ah! pray and uncover your head, and lean like a child on the Lord._

A sinister fog at the wane--at the change of the moon cometh forth
Like an ominous ghost in the train of a bitter, black storm of the north!
At the head of the gully unknown it hangs like a spirit of bale.
And the noise of a shriek and a groan strikes up in the gusts of the gale.
In the throat of a feculent pit is the beard of a bloody-red sedge;
And a foam like the foam of a fit sweats out of the lips of the ledge.
But down in the water of death, in the livid, dead pool at the base--
_Bow low, with inaudible breath, beseech with the hands to the face!_

A furlong of fetid, black fen, with gelid, green patches of pond,
Lies dumb by the horns of the glen--at the gates of the horror beyond;
And those who have looked on it tell of the terrible growths that are there--
The flowerage fostered by hell, the blossoms that startle and scare.
If ever a wandering bird should light on Gehennas like this
Be sure that a cry will be heard, and the sound of the flat adder's hiss.
But hard by the jaws of the bend is a ghastly Thing matted with moss--
_Ah, Lord! be a father, a friend, for the sake of the Christ of the Cross._

Black Tom, with the sinews of five--that never a hangman could hang--
In the days of the shackle and gyve, broke loose from the guards of the gang.
Thereafter, for seasons a score, this devil prowled under the ban;
A mate of red talon and paw, a wolf in the shape of a man.
But, ringed by ineffable fire, in a thunder and wind of the north,
The sword of Omnipotent ire--the bolt of high Heaven went forth!
But, wan as the sorrowful foam, a grey mother waits by the sea
For the boys that have never come home these fifty-four winters and three.

From the folds of the forested hills there are ravelled and roundabout tracks,
Because of the terror that fills the strong-handed men of the axe!
Of the workers away in the range there is none that will wait for the night,
When the storm-stricken moon is in change and the sinister fog is in sight.
And later and deep in the dark, when the bitter wind whistles about,
There is never a howl or a bark from the dog in the kennel without,
But the white fathers fasten the door, and often and often they start,
At a sound like a foot on the floor and a touch like a hand on the heart.

When Underneath the Brown Dead Grass

When underneath the brown dead grass
My weary bones are laid,
I hope I shall not see the glass
At ninety in the shade.
I trust indeed that, when I lie
Beneath the churchyard pine,
I shall not hear that startling cry
"'Thermom' is ninety-nine!"

If one should whisper through my sleep
"Come up and be alive,"
I'd answer--_No, unless you'll keep
The glass at sixty-five._
I _might_ be willing if allowed
To wear old Adam's rig,
And mix amongst the city crowd
Like Polynesian "nig".

Far better in the sod to lie,
With pasturing pig above,
Than broil beneath a copper sky--
In sight of all I love!
Far better to be turned to grass
To feed the poley cow,
Than be the half boiled bream, alas,
That I am really now!

For cow and pig I would not hear,
And hoof I would not see;
But if these items did appear
They wouldn't trouble me.
For ah! the pelt of mortal man
Weighs less than half a ton,
And any sight is better than
A sultry southern sun.

The Voice in the Wild Oak

(Written in the shadow of 1872.)

Twelve years ago, when I could face
High heaven's dome with different eyes--
In days full-flowered with hours of grace,
And nights not sad with sighs--
I wrote a song in which I strove
To shadow forth thy strain of woe,
Dark widowed sister of the grove!--
Twelve wasted years ago.

But youth was then too young to find
Those high authentic syllables,
Whose voice is like the wintering wind
By sunless mountain fells;
Nor had I sinned and suffered then
To that superlative degree
That I would rather seek, than men,
Wild fellowship with thee!

But he who hears this autumn day
Thy more than deep autumnal rhyme,
Is one whose hair was shot with grey
By Grief instead of Time.
He has no need, like many a bard,
To sing imaginary pain,
Because he bears, and finds it hard,
The punishment of Cain.

No more he sees the affluence
Which makes the heart of Nature glad;
For he has lost the fine, first sense
Of Beauty that he had.
The old delight God's happy breeze
Was wont to give, to Grief has grown;
And therefore, Niobe of trees,
His song is like thine own!

But I, who am that perished soul,
Have wasted so these powers of mine,
That I can never write that whole,
Pure, perfect speech of thine.
Some lord of words august, supreme,
The grave, grand melody demands;
The dark translation of thy theme
I leave to other hands.

Yet here, where plovers nightly call
Across dim, melancholy leas--
Where comes by whistling fen and fall
The moan of far-off seas--
A grey, old Fancy often sits
Beneath thy shade with tired wings,
And fills thy strong, strange rhyme by fits
With awful utterings.

Then times there are when all the words
Are like the sentences of one
Shut in by Fate from wind and birds
And light of stars and sun,
No dazzling dryad, but a dark
Dream-haunted spirit doomed to be
Imprisoned, crampt in bands of bark,
For all eternity.

Yea, like the speech of one aghast
At Immortality in chains,
What time the lordly storm rides past
With flames and arrowy rains:
Some wan Tithonus of the wood,
White with immeasurable years--
An awful ghost in solitude
With moaning moors and meres.

And when high thunder smites the hill
And hunts the wild dog to his den,
Thy cries, like maledictions, shrill
And shriek from glen to glen,
As if a frightful memory whipped
Thy soul for some infernal crime
That left it blasted, blind, and stript--
A dread to Death and Time!

But when the fair-haired August dies,
And flowers wax strong and beautiful,
Thy songs are stately harmonies
By wood-lights green and cool--
Most like the voice of one who shows
Through sufferings fierce, in fine relief,
A noble patience and repose--
A dignity in grief.

But, ah! conceptions fade away,
And still the life that lives in thee--
The soul of thy majestic lay--
Remains a mystery!
And he must speak the speech divine--
The language of the high-throned lords--
Who'd give that grand old theme of thine
Its sense in faultless words.

By hollow lands and sea-tracts harsh,
With ruin of the fourfold gale,
Where sighs the sedge and sobs the marsh,
Still wail thy lonely wail;
And, year by year, one step will break
The sleep of far hill-folded streams,
And seek, if only for thy sake
Thy home of many dreams.

Billy Vickers

No song is this of leaf and bird,
And gracious waters flowing;
I'm sick at heart, for I have heard
Big Billy Vickers "blowing".

He'd never take a leading place
In chambers legislative:
This booby with the vacant face--
This hoddy-doddy native!

Indeed, I'm forced to say aside,
To you, O reader, solely,
He only wants the horns and hide
To be a bullock wholly.

But, like all noodles, he is vain;
And when his tongue is wagging,
I feel inclined to copy Cain,
And "drop" him for his bragging.

He, being Bush-bred, stands, of course,
Six feet his dirty socks in;
His lingo is confined to horse
And plough, and pig and oxen.

Two years ago he'd less to say
Within his little circuit;
But now he has, besides a dray,
A team of twelve to work it.

No wonder is it that he feels
Inclined to clack and rattle
About his bullocks and his wheels--
He owns a dozen cattle.

In short, to be exact and blunt,
In his own estimation
He's "out and out" the head and front
Top-sawyer of creation!

For, mark me, he can "sit a buck"
For hours and hours together;
And never horse has had the luck
To pitch him from the leather.

If ever he should have a "spill"
Upon the grass or gravel,
Be sure of this, the saddle will
With Billy Vickers travel.

At punching oxen you may guess
There's nothing out can "camp" him:
He has, in fact, the slouch and dress
Which bullock-driver stamp him.

I do not mean to give offence,
But I have vainly striven
To ferret out the difference
'Twixt driver and the driven.

Of course, the statements herein made
In every other stanza
Are Billy's own; and I'm afraid
They're stark extravaganza.

I feel constrained to treat as trash
His noisy fiddle-faddle
About his doings with the lash,
His feats upon the saddle.

But grant he "knows his way about",
Or grant that he is silly,
There cannot be the slightest doubt
Of Billy's faith in Billy.

Of all the doings of the day
His ignorance is utter;
But he can quote the price of hay,
The current rate of butter.

His notions of our leading men
Are mixed and misty very:
He knows a cochin-china hen--
He never speaks of Berry.

As you'll assume, he hasn't heard
Of Madame Patti's singing;
But I will stake my solemn word
He knows what maize is bringing.

Surrounded by majestic peaks,
By lordly mountain ranges,
Where highest voice of thunder speaks
His aspect never changes.

The grand Pacific there beyond
His dirty hut is glowing:
He only sees a big salt pond,
O'er which his grain is going.

The sea that covers half the sphere,
With all its stately speeches,
Is held by Bill to be a mere
Broad highway for his peaches.

Through Nature's splendid temples he
Plods, under mountains hoary;
But he has not the eyes to see
Their grandeur and their glory.

A bullock in a biped's boot,
I iterate, is Billy!
He crushes with a careless foot
The touching water-lily.

I've said enough--I'll let him go!
If he could read these verses,
He'd pepper me for hours, I know,
With his peculiar curses.

But this is sure, he'll never change
His manners loud and flashy,
Nor learn with neatness to arrange
His clothing, cheap and trashy.

Like other louts, he'll jog along,
And swig at shanty liquors,
And chew and spit. Here ends the song
Of Mr. Billy Vickers.

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."

Araluen

--
* Araluen: The poet's daughter, who died in infancy.
--

Take this rose, and very gently place it on the tender, deep
Mosses where our little darling, Araluen, lies asleep.
Put the blossom close to baby--kneel with me, my love, and pray;
We must leave the bird we've buried--say good-bye to her to-day.
In the shadow of our trouble we must go to other lands,
And the flowers we have fostered will be left to other hands:
Other eyes will watch them growing--other feet will softly tread
Where two hearts are nearly breaking, where so many tears are shed.
Bitter is the world we live in: life and love are mixed with pain;
We will never see these daisies--never water them again.

Ah! the saddest thought in leaving baby in this bush alone
Is that we have not been able on her grave to place a stone:
We have been too poor to do it; but, my darling, never mind--
God is in the gracious heavens, and His sun and rain are kind:
They will dress the spot with beauty, they will make the grasses grow:
Many winds will lull our birdie, many songs will come and go.
Here the blue-eyed Spring will linger, here the shining month will stay,
Like a friend, by Araluen, when we two are far away;
But beyond the wild, wide waters, we will tread another shore--
We will never watch this blossom, never see it any more.

Girl, whose hand at God's high altar in the dear, dead year I pressed,
Lean your stricken head upon me--this is still your lover's breast!
She who sleeps was first and sweetest--none we have to take her place;
Empty is the little cradle--absent is the little face.
Other children may be given; but this rose beyond recall,
But this garland of your girlhood, will be dearest of them all.
None will ever, Araluen, nestle where you used to be,
In my heart of hearts, you darling, when the world was new to me;
We were young when you were with us, life and love were happy things
To your father and your mother ere the angels gave you wings.

You that sit and sob beside me--you, upon whose golden head
Many rains of many sorrows have from day to day been shed;
Who because your love was noble, faced with me the lot austere
Ever pressing with its hardship on the man of letters here--
Let me feel that you are near me, lay your hand within mine own;
You are all I have to live for, now that we are left alone.
Three there were, but one has vanished. Sins of mine have made you weep;
But forgive your baby's father now that baby is asleep.
Let us go, for night is falling; leave the darling with her flowers;
Other hands will come and tend them--other friends in other hours.

The Sydney International Exhibition

(The poem which won the prize offered by the proprietors
of the "Sydney Morning Herald".)

Now, while Orion, flaming south, doth set
A shining foot on hills of wind and wet--
Far haughty hills beyond the fountains cold
And dells of glimmering greenness manifold--
While August sings the advent of the Spring,
And in the calm is heard September's wing,
The lordly voice of song I ask of thee,
High, deathless radiance--crowned Calliope!
What though we never hear the great god's lays
Which made all music the Hellenic days--
What though the face of thy fair heaven beams
Still only on the crystal Grecian streams--
What though a sky of new, strange beauty shines
Where no white Dryad sings within the pines:
Here is a land whose large, imperial grace
Must tempt thee, goddess, in thine holy place!
Here are the dells of peace and plenilune,
The hills of morning and the slopes of noon;
Here are the waters dear to days of blue,
And dark-green hollows of the noontide dew;
Here lies the harp, by fragrant wood-winds fanned,
That waits the coming of thy quickening hand!
And shall Australia, framed and set in sea,
August with glory, wait in vain for thee?
Shall more than Tempe's beauty be unsung
Because its shine is strange--its colours young?
No! by the full, live light which puts to shame
The far, fair splendours of Thessalian flame--
By yonder forest psalm which sinks and swells
Like that of Phocis, grave with oracles--
By deep prophetic winds that come and go
Where whispering springs of pondering mountains flow--
By lute-like leaves and many-languaged caves,
Where sounds the strong hosanna of the waves,
This great new majesty shall not remain
Unhonoured by the high immortal strain!
Soon, soon, the music of the southern lyre
Shall start and blossom with a speech like fire!
Soon, soon, shall flower and flow in flame divine
Thy songs, Apollo, and Euterpe, thine!
Strong, shining sons of Delphicus shall rise
With all their father's glory in their eyes;
And then shall beam on yonder slopes and springs
The light that swims upon the light of things.
And therefore, lingering in a land of lawn,
I, standing here, a singer of the dawn,
With gaze upturned to where wan summits lie
Against the morning flowing up the sky--
Whose eyes in dreams of many colours see
A glittering vision of the years to be--
Do ask of thee, Calliope, one hour
Of life pre-eminent with perfect power,
That I may leave a song whose lonely rays
May shine hereafter from these songless days.

For now there breaks across the faint grey range
The rose-red dawning of a radiant change.
A soft, sweet voice is in the valleys deep,
Where darkness droops and sings itself to sleep.
The grave, mute woods, that yet the silence hold
Of dim, dead ages, gleam with hints of gold.
Yon eastern cape that meets the straitened wave--
A twofold tower above the whistling cave--
Whose strength in thunder shields the gentle lea,
And makes a white wrath of a league of sea,
Now wears the face of peace; and in the bay
The weak, spent voice of Winter dies away.
In every dell there is a whispering wing,
On every lawn a glimmer of the Spring;
By every hill are growths of tender green--
On every slope a fair, new life is seen;
And lo! beneath the morning's blossoming fires,
The shining city of a hundred spires,
In mists of gold, by countless havens furled,
And glad with all the flags of all the world!