Chapter VII: Front Matter (7)

These are the shores, where, in a dream of fear,
Cathay saw darkness dwelling half the year!*1*
These are the coasts that old fallacious tales
Chained down with ice and ringed with sleepless gales!
This is the land that, in the hour of awe,
From Indian peaks the rapt Venetian saw!*2*
Here is the long grey line of strange sea wall
That checked the prow of the audacious Gaul,
What time he steered towards the southern snow,
From zone to zone, four hundred years ago!*3*
By yonder gulf, whose marching waters meet
The wine-dark currents from the isles of heat,
Strong sons of Europe, in a far dim year,
Faced ghastly foes, and felt the alien spear!
There, in a later dawn, by shipless waves,
The tender grasses found forgotten graves.*4*
Far in the west, beyond those hills sublime,
Dirk Hartog anchored in the olden time;
There, by a wild-faced bay, and in a cleft,
His shining name the fair-haired Northman left;*5*
And, on those broad imperial waters, far
Beneath the lordly occidental star,
Sailed Tasman down a great and glowing space
Whose softer lights were like his lady's face.
In dreams of her he roved from zone to zone,
And gave her lovely name to coasts unknown*6*
And saw, in streaming sunset everywhere,
The curious beauty of her golden hair,
By flaming tracts of tropic afternoon,
Where in low heavens hangs a fourfold moon.
Here, on the tides of a resplendent year,
By capes of jasper, came the buccaneer.*7*
Then, then, the wild men, flying from the beach,
First heard the clear, bold sounds of English speech;
And then first fell across a Southern plain
The broad, strong shadows of a Saxon train.
Near yonder wall of stately cliff, that braves
The arrogance of congregated waves,
The daring son of grey old Yorkshire stood
And dreamed in a majestic solitude,
What time a gentle April shed its showers,
Aflame with sunset, on the Bay of Flowers.*8*
The noble seaman who withheld the hand,
And spared the Hector of his native land--
The single savage, yelling on the beach
The dark, strange curses of barbaric speech.
Exalted sailor! whose benignant phrase
Shines full of beauty in these latter days;
Who met the naked tribes of fiery skies
With great, divine compassion in his eyes;
Who died, like Him of hoary Nazareth,
That death august--the radiant martyr's death;
Who in the last hour showed the Christian face
Whose crumbling beauty shamed the alien race.
In peace he sleeps where deep eternal calms
Lie round the land of heavy-fruited palms.
Lo! in that dell, behind a singing bar,
Where deep, pure pools of glittering waters are,
Beyond a mossy, yellow, gleaming glade,
The last of Forby Sutherland was laid--
The blue-eyed Saxon from the hills of snow
Who fell asleep a hundred years ago.
In flowerful shades, where gold and green are rife,
Still rests the shell of his forgotten life.
Far, far away, beneath some northern sky
The fathers of his humble household lie;
But by his lonely grave are sapphire streams,
And gracious woodlands, where the fire-fly gleams;
And ever comes across a silver lea
The hymn sublime of the eternal sea.

--
*1* According to Mr. R. H. Major, and others, the Great Southern Land
is referred to in old Chinese records as a polar continent,
subject to the long polar nights.
*2* Marco Polo mentions a large land called by the Malays Lochac.
The northern coast was supposed to be in latitude 10 Degrees S.
*3* Mr. R. H. Major discovered a map of Terra Australis
dated A.D. 1555 and bearing the name of Le Testu, a French pilot.
Le Testu must have visited these coasts some years before
the date of the chart.
*4* The sailors of the _Duyfken_, a Dutch vessel which entered
the Gulf of Carpentaria in A.D. 1606, were attacked by the natives.
In the fray some of the whites were killed. No doubt these
unlucky adventurers were the first Europeans buried in Australia.
*5* Dirk Hartog left a tin plate, bearing his name, in Shark Bay,
Western Australia.
*6* The story of Tasman's love for Maria, the daughter of Governor Van Diemen,
was generally accepted at the time Kendall wrote; but it has since
been disproved. Maria was the wife of Antony Van Diemen,
Governor of Batavia, who had no children.--Ed.
*7* Dampier.
*8* Botany Bay.
--

On that bold hill, against a broad blue stream,
Stood Arthur Phillip in a day of dream:
What time the mists of morning westward rolled,
And heaven flowered on a bay of gold!
Here, in the hour that shines and sounds afar,
Flamed first old England's banner like a star;
Here, in a time august with prayer and praise,
Was born the nation of these splendid days;
And here this land's majestic yesterday
Of immemorial silence died away.
Where are the woods that, ninety summers back,
Stood hoar with ages by the water-track?
Where are the valleys of the flashing wing,
The dim green margins and the glimmering spring?
Where now the warrior of the forest race,
His glaring war-paint and his fearless face?
The banks of April and the groves of bird,
The glades of silence and the pools unstirred,
The gleaming savage and the whistling spear,
Passed with the passing of a wild old year!
A single torrent singing by the wave,
A shadowy relic in a mountain cave,
A ghost of fire in immemorial hills,
The whittled tree by folded wayside rills,
The call of bird that hides in hollows far,
Where feet of thunder, wings of winter are--
Of all that Past, these wrecks of wind and rain,
These touching memories--these alone remain!

What sun is this that beams and broadens west?
What wonder this, in deathless glory dressed?
What strange, sweet harp of highest god took flame
And gave this Troy its life, its light, its name?
What awful lyre of marvellous power and range
Upraised this Ilion--wrought this dazzling change?
No shining singer of Hellenic dreams
Set yonder splendour by the morning streams!
No god who glimmers in a doubtful sphere
Shed glory there--created beauty here!
This is the city that our fathers framed--
These are the crescents by the elders named!
The human hands of strong, heroic men
Broke down the mountain, filled the gaping glen,
Ran streets through swamp, built banks against the foam,
And bent the arch and raised the lordly dome!
Here are the towers that the founders made!
Here are the temples where these Romans prayed!
Here stand the courts in which their leaders met!
Here are their homes, and here their altars yet!
Here sleep the grand old men whose lives sublime
Of thought and action shine and sound through time!
Who worked in darkness--onward fought their ways
To bring about these large majestic days--
Who left their sons the hearts and high desires
Which built this city of the hundred spires!

A stately Morning rises on the wing,
The hills take colour, and the valleys sing.
A strong September flames beyond the lea--
A silver vision on a silver sea.
A new Age, "cast in a diviner mould",
Comes crowned with lustre, zoned and shod with gold!
What dream is this on lawny spaces set?
What miracle of dome and minaret?
What great mute majesty is this that takes
The first of morning ere the song-bird wakes?
Lo, this was built to honour gathering lands
By Celtic, Saxon, Australasian hands!
These are the halls where all the flags unfurled
Break into speech that welcomes all the world.
And lo, our friends are here from every zone--
From isles we dream of and from tracts unknown!
Here are the fathers from the stately space
Where Ireland is and England's sacred face!
Here are the Norsemen from their strong sea-wall,
The grave, grand Teuton and the brilliant Gaul!
From green, sweet groves the dark-eyed Lusians sail,
And proud Iberia leaves the grape-flushed vale.
Here are the lords whose starry banner shines
From fierce Magellan to the Arctic pines.
Here come the strangers from the gates of day--
From hills of sunrise and from white Cathay.
The spicy islands send their swarthy sons,
The lofty North its mailed and mighty ones.
Venetian keels are floating on our sea;
Our eyes are glad with radiant Italy!
Yea, North and South, and glowing West and East,
Are gathering here to grace our splendid feast!
The chiefs from peaks august with Asian snow,
The elders born where regal roses grow,
Come hither, with the flower of that fair land
That blooms beyond the fiery tracts of sand
Where Syrian suns their angry lustres fling
Across blind channels of the bygone spring.
And on this great, auspicious day, the flowers
Of labour glorify majestic hours.

The singing angel from the starry sphere
Of dazzling Science shows his wonders here;
And Art, the dream-clad spirit, starts, and brings
From Fairyland her strange, sweet, glittering things.
Here are the works man did, what time his face
Was touched by God in some exalted place;
Here glows the splendour--here the marvel wrought
When Heaven flashed upon the maker's thought!
Yea, here are all the miracles sublime--
The lights of Genius and the stars of Time!
And, being lifted by this noble noon,
Australia broadens like a tropic moon.
Her white, pure lustre beams across the zones;
The nations greet her from their awful thrones.
From hence the morning beauty of her name
Will shine afar, like an exceeding flame.
Her place will be with mighty lords, whose sway
Controls the thunder and the marching day.
Her crown will shine beside the crowns of kings
Who shape the seasons, rule the course of things,
The fame of her across the years to be
Will spread like light on a surpassing sea;
And graced with glory, girt with power august,
Her life will last till all things turn to dust.

To Thee the face of song is lifted now,
O Lord! to whom the awful mountains bow;
Whose hands, unseen, the tenfold storms control;
Whose thunders shake the spheres from pole to pole;
Who from Thy highest heaven lookest down,
The sea Thy footstool, and the sun Thy crown;
Around whose throne the deathless planets sing
Hosannas to their high, eternal King.
To Thee the soul of prayer this morning turns,
With faith that glitters, and with hope that burns!
And, in the moments of majestic calm
That fill the heart in pauses of the psalm,
She asks Thy blessing for this fair young land
That flowers within the hollow of Thine hand!
She seeks of Thee that boon, that gift sublime,
The Christian radiance, for this hope of Time!
And Thou wilt listen! and Thy face will bend
To smile upon us--Master, Father, Friend!
The Christ to whom pure pleading heart hath crept
Was human once, and in the darkness wept;
The gracious love that helped us long ago
Will on us like a summer sunrise flow,
And be a light to guide the nation's feet
On holy paths--on sacred ways and sweet.

Christmas Creek

Phantom streams were in the distance--mocking lights of lake and pool--
Ghosts of trees of soft green lustre--groves of shadows deep and cool!
Yea, some devil ran before them changing skies of brass to blue,
Setting bloom where curse is planted, where a grass-blade never grew.
Six there were, and high above them glared a wild and wizened sun,
Ninety leagues from where the waters of the singing valleys run.
There before them, there behind them, was the great, stark, stubborn plain,
Where the dry winds hiss for ever, and the blind earth moans for rain!
Ringed about by tracks of furnace, ninety leagues from stream and tree,
Six there were, with wasted faces, working northwards to the sea!

. . . . .

Ah, the bitter, hopeless desert! Here these broken human wrecks
Trod the wilds where sand of fire is with the spiteful spinifex,
Toiled through spheres that no bird knows of, where with fiery emphasis
Hell hath stamped its awful mint-mark deep on every thing that is!
Toiled and thirsted, strove and suffered! _This_ was where December's breath
As a wind of smiting flame is on weird, haggard wastes of death!
_This_ was where a withered moan is, and the gleam of weak, wan star,
And a thunder full of menace sends its mighty voices far!
_This_ was where black execrations, from some dark tribunal hurled,
Set the brand of curse on all things in the morning of the world!

. . . . .

One man yielded--then another--then a lad of nineteen years
Reeled and fell, with English rivers singing softly in his ears,
English grasses started round him--then the grace of Sussex lea
Came and touched him with the beauty of a green land by the sea!
Old-world faces thronged about him--old-world voices spoke to him;
But his speech was like a whisper, and his eyes were very dim.
In a dream of golden evening, beaming on a quiet strand,
Lay the stranger till a bright One came and took him by the hand.
England vanished; died the voices; but he heard a holier tone,
And an angel that we know not led him to the lands unknown!

. . . . .

Six there were, but three were taken! Three were left to struggle still;
But against the red horizon flamed a horn of brindled hill!
But beyond the northern skyline, past a wall of steep austere,
Lay the land of light and coolness in an April-coloured year!
"Courage, brothers!" cried the leader. "On the slope of yonder peak
There are tracts of herb and shadow, and the channels of the creek!"
So they made one last great effort--
haled their beasts through brake and briar,
Set their feet on spurs of furnace, grappled spikes and crags of fire,
Fought the stubborn mountain forces, smote down naked, natural powers,
Till they gazed from thrones of Morning on a sphere of streams and flowers.

Out behind them was the desert, glaring like a sea of brass!
Here before them were the valleys, fair with moonlight-coloured grass!
At their backs were haggard waste-lands, bickering in a wicked blaze!
In their faces beamed the waters, marching down melodious ways!
Touching was the cool, soft lustre over laps of lawn and lea;
And majestic was the great road Morning made across the sea.
On the sacred day of Christmas, after seven months of grief,
Rested three of six who started, on a bank of moss and leaf--
Rested by a running river, in a hushed, a holy week;
And they named the stream that saved them--
named it fitly--"Christmas Creek".

Orara

--
* Orara: A tributary of the river Clarence.
--

The strong sob of the chafing stream
That seaward fights its way
Down crags of glitter, dells of gleam,
Is in the hills to-day.

But far and faint, a grey-winged form
Hangs where the wild lights wane--
The phantom of a bygone storm,
A ghost of wind and rain.

The soft white feet of afternoon
Are on the shining meads,
The breeze is as a pleasant tune
Amongst the happy reeds.

The fierce, disastrous, flying fire,
That made the great caves ring,
And scarred the slope, and broke the spire,
Is a forgotten thing.

The air is full of mellow sounds,
The wet hill-heads are bright,
And down the fall of fragrant grounds,
The deep ways flame with light.

A rose-red space of stream I see,
Past banks of tender fern;
A radiant brook, unknown to me
Beyond its upper turn.

The singing, silver life I hear,
Whose home is in the green,
Far-folded woods of fountains clear,
Where I have never been.

Ah, brook above the upper bend,
I often long to stand
Where you in soft, cool shades descend
From the untrodden land!

Ah, folded woods, that hide the grace
Of moss and torrents strong,
I often wish to know the face
Of that which sings your song!

But I may linger, long, and look
Till night is over all:
My eyes will never see the brook,
Or sweet, strange waterfall.

The world is round me with its heat,
And toil, and cares that tire;
I cannot with my feeble feet
Climb after my desire.

But, on the lap of lands unseen,
Within a secret zone,
There shine diviner gold and green
Than man has ever known.

And where the silver waters sing
Down hushed and holy dells,
The flower of a celestial Spring--
A tenfold splendour, dwells.

Yea, in my dream of fall and brook
By far sweet forests furled,
I see that light for which I look
In vain through all the world--

The glory of a larger sky
On slopes of hills sublime,
That speak with God and morning, high
Above the ways of Time!

Ah! haply in this sphere of change
Where shadows spoil the beam,
It would not do to climb that range
And test my radiant Dream.

The slightest glimpse of yonder place,
Untrodden and alone,
Might wholly kill that nameless grace,
The charm of the unknown.

And therefore, though I look and long,
Perhaps the lot is bright
Which keeps the river of the song
A beauty out of sight.

The Curse of Mother Flood

Wizened the wood is, and wan is the way through it;
White as a corpse is the face of the fen;
Only blue adders abide in and stray through it--
Adders and venom and horrors to men.
Here is the "ghost of a garden" whose minister
Fosters strange blossoms that startle and scare.
Red as man's blood is the sun that, with sinister
Flame, is a menace of hell in the air.
Wrinkled and haggard the hills are--the jags of them
Gape like to living and ominous things:
Storm and dry thunder cry out in the crags of them--
Fire, and the wind with a woe in its wings.

Never a moon without clammy-cold shroud on it
Hitherward comes, or a flower-like star!
Only the hiss of the tempest is loud on it--
Hiss, and the moan of a bitter sea bar.
Here on this waste, and to left and to right of it,
Never is lisp or the ripple of rain:
Fierce is the daytime and wild is the night of it,
Flame without limit and frost without wane!
Trees half alive, with the sense of a curse on them,
Shudder and shrink from the black heavy gale;
Ghastly, with boughs like the plumes of a hearse on them:
Barren of blossom and blasted with bale.

Under the cliff that stares down to the south of it--
Back by the horns of a hazardous hill,
Dumb is the gorge with a grave in the mouth of it
Still, as a corpse in a coffin is still.
Never there hovers a hope of the Spring by it--
Never a glimmer of yellow and green:
Only the bat with a whisper of wing by it
Flits like a life out of flesh and unseen.
Here are the growths that are livid and glutinous,
Speckled, and bloated with poisonous blood:
This is the haunt of the viper-breed mutinous:
Cursed with the curse of weird Catherine Flood.

He that hath looked on it--hurried aghast from it,
Hair of him frozen with horror straightway,
Chased by a sudden strange pestilent blast from it--
Where is the speech of him--what can he say?
Hath he not seen the fierce ghost of a hag in it?
Heard maledictions that startle the stars?
Dumb is his mouth as a mouth with a gag in it--
Mute is his life as a life within bars.
Just the one glimpse of that grey, shrieking woman there
Ringed by a circle of furnace and fiend!
He that went happy and healthy and human there--
Where shall the white leper fly to be cleaned?

Here, in a pit with indefinite doom on it,
Here, in the fumes of a feculent moat,
Under an alp with inscrutable gloom on it,
Squats the wild witch with a ghoul at her throat!
Black execration that cannot be spoken of--
Speech of red hell that would suffocate Song,
Starts from this terror with never a token of
Day and its loveliness all the year long.
Sin without name to it--man never heard of it--
Crime that would startle a fiend from his lair,
Blasted this Glen, and the leaf and the bird of it--
_Where is there hope for it, Father, O where?_

Far in the days of our fathers, the life in it
Blossomed and beamed in the sight of the sun:
Yellow and green and the purple were rife in it,
Singers of morning and waters that run.
Storm of the equinox shed no distress on it,
Thunder spoke softly, and summer-time left
Sunset's forsaken bright beautiful dress on it--
Blessing that shone half the night in the cleft.
Hymns of the highlands--hosannas from hills by it,
Psalms of great forests made holy the spot:
Cool were the mosses and clear were the rills by it--
Far in the days when the Horror was not.

Twenty miles south is the strong, shining Hawkesbury--
Spacious and splendid, and lordly with blooms.
There, between mountains magnificent, walks bury
Miles of their beauty in green myrtle glooms.
There, in the dell, is the fountain with falls by it--
Falls, and a torrent of summering stream:
There is the cave with the hyaline halls by it--
Haunt of the echo and home of the dream.
Over the hill, by the marvellous base of it,
Wanders the wind with a song in its breath
Out to the sea with the gold on the face of it--
Twenty miles south of the Valley of Death.

On a Spanish Cathedral

--
* Every happy expression in these stanzas may fairly be claimed
by the Hon. W. B. Dalley (_Author's note_).
--

Deep under the spires of a hill, by the feet of the thunder-cloud trod,
I pause in a luminous, still, magnificent temple of God!
At the steps of the altar august--a vision of angels in stone--
I kneel, with my head to the dust, on the floors by the seraphim known.
No father in Jesus is near, with the high, the compassionate face;
But the glory of Godhead is here--its presence transfigures the place!
Behold in this beautiful fane, with the lights of blue heaven impearled,
I think of the Elders of Spain, in the deserts--the wilds of the world!

I think of the wanderers poor who knelt on the flints and the sands,
When the mighty and merciless Moor was lord of the Lady of Lands.
Where the African scimitar flamed, with a swift, bitter death in its kiss,
The fathers, unknown and unnamed, found God in cathedrals like this!
The glow of His Spirit--the beam of His blessing--made lords of the men
Whose food was the herb of the stream, whose roof was the dome of the den.
And, far in the hills by the sea, these awful hierophants prayed
For Rome and its temples to be--in a temple by Deity made.

Who knows of their faith--of its power?
Perhaps, with the light in their eyes,
They saw, in some wonderful hour, the marvel of centuries rise!
Perhaps in some moment supreme, when the mountains were holy and still,
They dreamed the magnificent dream that came to the monks of Seville!
Surrounded by pillars and spires whose summits shone out in the glare
Of the high, the omnipotent fires, who knows what was seen by them there?
Be sure, if they saw, in the noon of their faith, some ineffable fane,
They looked on the church like a moon dropped down by the Lord into Spain.

And the Elders who shone in the time when Christ over Christendom beamed
May have dreamed at their altars sublime
the dream that their fathers had dreamed,
By the glory of Italy moved--the majesty shining in Rome--
They turned to the land that they loved,
and prayed for a church in their home;
And a soul of unspeakable fire descended on them, and they fought
And laboured a life for the spire and tower and dome of their thought!
These grew under blessing and praise, as morning in summertime grows--
As Troy in the dawn of the days to the music of Delphicus rose.

In a land of bewildering light, where the feet of the season are Spring's,
They worked in the day and the night, surrounded by beautiful things.
The wonderful blossoms in stone--the flower and leaf of the Moor,
On column and cupola shone, and gleamed on the glimmering floor.
In a splendour of colour and form, from the marvellous African's hands
Yet vivid and shining and warm, they planted the Flower of the Lands.
Inspired by the patience supreme of the mute, the magnificent past,
They toiled till the dome of their dream in the firmament blossomed at last!

Just think of these men--of their time--
of the days of their deed, and the scene!
How touching their zeal--how sublime
their suppression of self must have been!
In a city yet hacked by the sword and scarred by the flame of the Moor,
They started the work of their Lord, sad, silent, and solemnly poor.
These fathers, how little they thought of themselves, and how much of the days
When the children of men would be brought to pray in their temple, and praise!
Ah! full of the radiant, still, heroic old life that has flown,
The merciful monks of Seville toiled on, and died bare and unknown.

The music, the colour, the gleam of their mighty cathedral will be
Hereafter a luminous dream of the heaven I never may see;
To a spirit that suffers and seeks for the calm of a competent creed,
This temple, whose majesty speaks, becomes a religion indeed;
The passionate lights--the intense, the ineffable beauty of sound--
Go straight to the heart through the sense,
as a song would of seraphim crowned.
And lo! by these altars august, the life that is highest we live,
And are filled with the infinite trust
and the peace that the world cannot give.

They have passed, have the elders of time--
they have gone; but the work of their hands,
Pre-eminent, peerless, sublime, like a type of eternity stands!
They are mute, are the fathers who made this church in the century dim;
But the dome with their beauty arrayed remains, a perpetual hymn.
Their names are unknown; but so long as the humble in spirit and pure
Are worshipped in speech and in song, our love for these monks will endure;
And the lesson by sacrifice taught will live in the light of the years
With a reverence not to be bought, and a tenderness deeper than tears.

Rover

No classic warrior tempts my pen
To fill with verse these pages--
No lordly-hearted man of men
My Muse's thought engages.

Let others choose the mighty dead,
And sing their battles over!
My champion, too, has fought and bled--
My theme is one-eyed Rover.

A grave old dog, with tattered ears
Too sore to cock up, reader!--
A four-legged hero, full of years,
But sturdy as a cedar.

Still, age is age; and if my rhyme
Is dashed with words pathetic,
Don't wonder, friend; I've seen the time
When Rove was more athletic.

He lies coiled up before me now,
A comfortable crescent.
His night-black nose and grizzled brow
Fixed in a fashion pleasant.

But ever and anon he lifts
The one good eye I mention,
And tries a thousand doggish shifts
To rivet my attention.

Just let me name his name, and up
You'll see him start and patter
Towards me, like a six-months' pup
In point of speed, but fatter.

He pokes his head upon my lap,
Nor heeds the whip above him;
Because he knows, the dear old chap,
His human friends all love him.

Our younger dogs cut off from hence
At sight of lash uplifted;
But Rove, with grand indifference,
Remains, and can't be shifted.

And, ah! the set upon his phiz
At meals defies expression;
For I confess that Rover is
A cadger by profession.

The lesser favourites of the place
At dinner keep their distance;
But by my chair one grizzled face
Begs on with brave persistence.

His jaws present a toothless sight,
But still my hearty hero
Can satisfy an appetite
Which brings a bone to zero.

And while Spot barks and pussy mews,
To move the cook's compassion,
He takes his after-dinner snooze
In genuine biped fashion.

In fact, in this, our ancient pet
So hits off human nature,
That I at times almost forget
He's but a dog in feature.

Between his tail and bright old eye
The swift communications
Outstrip the messages which fly
From telegraphic stations.

And, ah! that tail's rich eloquence
Conveys too clear a moral,
For men who have a grain of sense
About its drift to quarrel.

At night, his voice is only heard
When it is wanted badly;
For Rover is too cute a bird
To follow shadows madly.

The pup and Carlo in the dark
Will start at crickets chirring;
But when we hear the old dog bark
We know there's _something_ stirring.

He knows a gun, does Rover here;
And if I cock a trigger,
He makes himself from tail to ear
An admirable figure.

For, once the fowling piece is out,
And game is on the _tapis_,
The set upon my hero's snout
Would make a cockle happy.

And as for horses, why, betwixt
Our chestnut mare and Rover
The mutual friendship is as fixed
As any love of lover.

And when his master's hand resigns
The bridle for the paddle,
His dogship on the grass reclines,
And stays and minds the saddle.

Of other friends he has no lack;
Grey pussy is his crony,
And kittens mount upon his back,
As youngsters mount a pony.

They talk of man's superior sense,
And charge the few with treason
Who think a dog's intelligence
Is very like our reason.

But though Philosophy has tried
A score of definitions,
'Twixt man and dog it can't decide
The relative positions.

And I believe upon the whole
(Though you my creed deny, sir),
That Rove's entitled to a soul
As much as you or I, sir!

Indeed, I fail to see the force
Of your derisive laughter
Because I will not say my horse
Has not some horse-hereafter.

A fig for dogmas--let them pass!
There's much in life to grieve us;
And what most grieves is _this_, alas!
That all our best friends leave us.

And when I sip my nightly grog,
And watch old Rover blinking,
This royal ruin of a dog
Calls forth some serious thinking.

For, though he's lightly touched by Fate,
I cannot help remarking
The step of age is in his gait,
Its hoarseness in his barking.

He still goes on his rounds at night
To keep off forest prowlers;
But, ah! he has no teeth to bite
The cunning-hearted howlers.

Not like the Rover that, erewhile,
Gave droves of dingoes battle,
And dashed through flood and fierce defile--
The friend, but dread, of cattle.

Not like to him that, in past years,
Won fight by fight, and scattered
Whole tribes of dogs with rags of ears
And tail-ends torn and tattered.

But while time tells upon our pet,
And makes him greyer daily,
He is a noble fellow yet,
And wears his old age gaily.

Still, dogs must die; and in the end,
When he is past caressing,
We'll mourn him like some human friend
Whose presence was a blessing.

Till then, be bread and peace his lot--
A life of calm and clover!
The pup may sleep outside with Spot--
We'll keep the nook for Rover.

The Melbourne International Exhibition

[_Written for Music._]

I

Brothers from far-away lands,
Sons of the fathers of fame,
Here are our hearts and our hands--
This is our song of acclaim.
Lords from magnificent zones,
Shores of superlative sway,
Awful with lustre of thrones,
This is our greeting to-day.
Europe and Asia are here--
Shining they enter our ports!
She that is half of the sphere
Beams like a sun in our courts.
Children of elders whose day
Shone to the planet's white ends,
Meet, in the noble old way,
Sons of your forefather's friends.

II

Dressed is the beautiful city--the spires of it
Burn in the firmament stately and still;
Forest has vanished--the wood and the lyres of it,
Lutes of the sea-wind and harps of the hill.
This is the region, and here is the bay by it,
Collins, the deathless, beheld in a dream:
Flinders and Fawkner, our forefathers grey, by it
Paused in the hush of a season supreme.
Here, on the waters of majesty near to us,
Lingered the leaders by towers of flame:
Elders who turn from the lordly old year to us
Crowned with the lights of ineffable fame.

III

Nine and seventy years ago,
Up the blaze of yonder bay,
On a great exalted day,
Came from seas august with snow--
Waters where the whirlwinds blow--
First of England's sons who stood
By the deep green, bygone wood
Where the wild song used to flow
Nine and seventy years ago.

Five and forty years ago,
On a grand auspicious morn
When the South Wind blew his horn,
Where the splendid mountains glow--
Peaks that God and Sunrise know--
Came the fearless, famous band,
Founders of our radiant land,
From the lawns where roses grow,
Five and forty years ago.

IV

By gracious slopes of fair green hills,
In shadows cool and deep,
Where floats the psalm of many rills,
The noble elders sleep.
But while their children's children last,
While seed from seedling springs,
The print and perfume of their past
Will be as deathless things.

Their voices are with vanished years,
With other days and hours;
Their homes are sanctified by tears--
They sleep amongst the flowers.
They do not walk by street or stream,
Or tread by grove or shore,
But, in the nation's highest dream,
They shine for evermore.

V

By lawny slope and lucent strand
Are singing flags of every land;
On streams of splendour--bays impearled--
The keels are here of all the world.
With lutes of light and cymbals clear
We waft goodwill to every sphere.
The links of love to-day are thrown
From sea to sea--from zone to zone;
And, lo! we greet, in glory drest,
The lords that come from east and west,
And march like noble children forth
To meet our fathers from the North!

VI

To Thee be the glory, All-Bountiful Giver!
The song that we sing is an anthem to Thee,
Whose blessing is shed on Thy people for ever,
Whose love is like beautiful light on the sea.
Behold, with high sense of Thy mercy unsleeping,
We come to Thee, kneel to Thee, praise Thee, and pray,
O Lord, in whose hand is the strength that is keeping
The storm from the wave and the night from the day!

By the Cliffs of the Sea

(In Memory of Samuel Bennett.)

In a far-away glen of the hills,
Where the bird of the night is at rest,
Shut in from the thunder that fills
The fog-hidden caves of the west--
In a sound of the leaf, and the lute
Of the wind on the quiet lagoon,
I stand, like a worshipper, mute
In the flow of a marvellous tune!
And the song that is sweet to my sense
Is, "Nearer, my God, unto Thee";
But it carries me sorrowing hence,
To a grave by the cliffs of the sea.

So many have gone that I loved--
So few of the fathers remain,
That where in old seasons I moved
I could never be happy again.
In the breaks of this beautiful psalm,
With its deep, its devotional tone,
And hints of ineffable calm,
I feel like a stranger, alone.
No wonder my eyes are so dim--
_Your_ trouble is heavy on me,
O widow and daughter of him
Who sleeps in the grave by the sea!

The years have been hard that have pressed
On a head full of premature grey,
Since Stenhouse went down to his rest,
And Harpur was taken away.
In the soft yellow evening-ends,
The wind of the water is faint
By the home of the last of my friends--
The shrine of the father and saint.
The tenderness touching--the grace
Of Ridley no more is for me;
And flowers have hidden the face
Of the brother who sleeps by the sea.

The vehement voice of the South
Is loud where the journalist lies;
But calm hath encompassed his mouth,
And sweet is the peace in his eyes.
Called hence by the Power who knows
When the work of a hero is done,
He turned at the message, and rose
With the harness of diligence on.
In the midst of magnificent toil,
He bowed at the holy decree;
And green is the grass on the soil
Of the grave by the cliffs of the sea.

I knew him, indeed; and I knew,
Having suffered so much in his day,
What a beautiful nature and true
In Bennett was hidden away.
In the folds of a shame without end,
When the lips of the scorner were curled,
I found in this brother a friend--
The last that was left in the world.
Ah! under the surface austere
Compassion was native to thee;
I send from my solitude here
This rose for the grave by the sea.

To the high, the heroic intent
Of a life that was never at rest,
He held, with a courage unspent,
Through the worst of his days and the best.
Far back in the years that are dead
He knew of the bitterness cold
That saddens with silver the head
And makes a man suddenly old.
The dignity gracing his grief
Was ever a lesson to me;
He lies under blossom and leaf
In a grave by the cliffs of the sea.

Above him the wandering face
Of the moon is a loveliness now,
And anthems encompass the place
From lutes of the luminous bough.
The forelands are fiery with foam
Where often and often he roved;
He sleeps in the sight of the home
That he built by the waters he loved.
The wave is his fellow at night,
And the sun, shining over the lea,
Sheds out an unspeakable light
On this grave by the cliffs of the sea.

Galatea

A silver slope, a fall of firs, a league of gleaming grasses,
And fiery cones, and sultry spurs, and swarthy pits and passes!

. . . . .

The long-haired Cyclops bated breath, and bit his lip and hearkened,
And dug and dragged the stone of death, by ways that dipped and darkened.

Across a tract of furnaced flints there came a wind of water,
From yellow banks with tender hints of Tethys' white-armed daughter.

She sat amongst wild singing weeds, by beds of myrrh and moly;
And Acis made a flute of reeds, and drew its accents slowly;

And taught its spirit subtle sounds that leapt beyond suppression,
And paused and panted on the bounds of fierce and fitful passion.

Then he who shaped the cunning tune, by keen desire made bolder,
Fell fainting, like a fervent noon, upon the sea-nymph's shoulder.

Sicilian suns had laid a dower of light and life about her:
Her beauty was a gracious flower--the heart fell dead without her.

"Ah, Galate," said Polypheme, "I would that I could find thee
Some finest tone of hill or stream, wherewith to lull and bind thee!

"What lyre is left of marvellous range, whose subtle strings, containing
Some note supreme, might catch and change, or set thy passion waning?--

"Thy passion for the fair-haired youth whose fleet, light feet perplex me
By ledges rude, on paths uncouth, and broken ways that vex me?

"Ah, turn to me! else violent sleep shall track the cunning lover;
And thou wilt wait and thou wilt weep when I his haunts discover."

But golden Galatea laughed, and Thosa's son, like thunder,
Broke through a rifty runnel shaft, and dashed its rocks asunder,

And poised the bulk, and hurled the stone, and crushed the hidden Acis,
And struck with sorrow drear and lone the sweetest of all faces.

To Zeus, the mighty Father, she, with plaint and prayer, departed:
Then from fierce Aetna to the sea a fountained water started--

A lucent stream of lutes and lights--cool haunt of flower and feather,
Whose silver days and yellow nights made years of hallowed weather.

Here Galatea used to come, and rest beside the river;
Because, in faint, soft, blowing foam, her shepherd lived for ever.

Black Kate

Kate, they say, is seventeen--
Do not count her sweet, you know.
Arms of her are rather lean--
Ditto, calves and feet, you know.
Features of Hellenic type
Are not patent here, you see.
Katie loves a black clay pipe--
Doesn't hate her beer, you see.

Spartan Helen used to wear
Tresses in a plait, perhaps:
Kate has ochre in her hair--
Nose is rather flat, perhaps.
Rose Lorraine's surpassing dress
Glitters at the ball, you see:
Daughter of the wilderness
Has no dress at all, you see.

Laura's lovers every day
In sweet verse embody her:
Katie's have a different way,
Being frank, they "waddy" her.
Amy by her suitor kissed,
Every nightfall looks for him:
Kitty's sweetheart isn't missed--
Kitty "humps" and cooks for him.

Smith, and Brown, and Jenkins, bring
Roses to the fair, you know.
Darkies at their Katie fling
Hunks of native bear, you know.
English girls examine well
All the food they take, you twig:
Kate is hardly keen of smell--
Kate will eat a snake, you twig.

Yonder lady's sitting room--
Clean and cool and dark it is:
Kitty's chamber needs no broom--
Just a sheet of bark it is.
You may find a pipe or two
If you poke and grope about:
Not a bit of starch or blue--
Not a sign of soap about.

Girl I know reads _Lalla Rookh_--
Poem of the "heady" sort:
Kate is better as a cook
Of the rough and ready sort.
Byron's verse on Waterloo,
Makes my darling glad, you see:
Kate prefers a kangaroo--
Which is very sad, you see.

Other ladies wear a hat
Fit to write a sonnet on:
Kitty has--the naughty cat--
Neither hat nor bonnet on!
Fifty silks has Madame Tate--
She who loves to spank it on:
All her clothes are worn by Kate
When she has her blanket on.

Let her rip! the Phrygian boy
Bolted with a brighter one;
And the girl who ruined Troy
Was a rather whiter one.
Katie's mouth is hardly Greek--
Hardly like a rose it is:
Katie's nose is not antique--
Not the classic nose it is.

Dryad in the grand old day,
Though she walked the woods about,
Didn't smoke a penny clay--
Didn't "hump" her goods about.
Daphne by the fairy lake,
Far away from din and all,
Never ate a yard of snake,
Head and tail and skin and all.

A Hyde Park Larrikin

--
* To the servants of God that are to be found in every denomination,
these verses, of course, do not apply.--H.K.
--

You may have heard of Proclus, sir,
If you have been a reader;
And you may know a bit of her
Who helped the Lycian leader.

I have my doubts--the head you "sport"
(Now mark me, don't get crusty)
Is hardly of the classic sort--
Your lore, I think, is fusty.

Most likely you have stuck to tracts
Flushed through with flaming curses--
I judge you, neighbour, by your acts--
So don't you d----n my verses.

But to my theme. The Asian sage,
Whose name above I mention,
Lived in the pitchy Pagan age,
A life without pretension.

He may have worshipped gods like Zeus,
And termed old Dis a master;
But then he had a strong excuse--
He never heard a pastor.

However, it occurs to me
That, had he cut Demeter
And followed you, or followed me,
He wouldn't have been sweeter.

No doubt with "shepherds" of this time
He's not the "clean potato",
Because--excuse me for my rhyme--
He pinned his faith to Plato.

But these are facts you can't deny,
My pastor, smudged and sooty,
His mind was like a summer sky--
He lived a life of beauty--

To lift his brothers' thoughts above
This earth he used to labour:
His heart was luminous with love--
He didn't wound his neighbour.

To him all men were just the same--
He never foamed at altars,
Although he lived ere Moody came--
Ere Sankey dealt in psalters.

The Lycian sage, my "reverend" sir,
Had not your chances ample;
But, after all, I must prefer
His perfect, pure example.

You, having read the Holy Writ--
The Book the angels foster--
Say have you helped us on a bit,
You overfed impostor?

What have you done to edify,
You clammy chapel tinker?
What act like his of days gone by--
The grand old Asian thinker?

Is there no deed of yours at all
With beauty shining through it?
Ah, no! your heart reveals its gall
On every side I view it.

A blatant bigot with a big
Fat heavy fetid carcass,
You well become your greasy "rig"--
You're not a second Arcas.

What sort of "gospel" do you preach?
What "Bible" is your Bible?
There's worse than wormwood in your speech,
You livid, living libel!

How many lives are growing gray
Through your depraved behaviour!
I tell you plainly--every day
You crucify the Saviour!

Some evil spirit curses you--
Your actions never vary:
You cannot point your finger to
One fact to the contrary.

You seem to have a wicked joy
In your malicious labour,
Endeavouring daily to destroy
The neighbour's love for neighbour.

The brutal curses you eject
Make strong men dread to hear you.
The world outside your petty sect
Feels sick when it is near you.

No man who shuns that little hole
You call your tabernacle
Can have, you shriek, a ransomed soul--
He wears the devil's shackle.

And, hence the "Papist" by your clan
Is dogged with words inhuman,
Because he loves that friend of man
The highest type of woman--

Because he has that faith which sees
Before the high Creator
A Virgin pleading on her knees--
A shining Mediator!

God help the souls who grope in night--
Who in your ways have trusted!
I've said enough! the more I write,
The more I feel disgusted.

The warm, soft air is tainted through
With your pernicious leaven.
I would not live _one hour_ with you
In your peculiar heaven!

Now mount your musty pulpit--thump,
And muddle flat clodhoppers;
And let some long-eared booby "hump"
The plate about for coppers.

At priest and parson spit and bark,
And shake your "church" with curses,
You bitter blackguard of the dark--
With this I close my verses.

Names Upon a Stone

(Inscribed to G. L. Fagan, Esq.)

Across bleak widths of broken sea
A fierce north-easter breaks,
And makes a thunder on the lea--
A whiteness of the lakes.
Here, while beyond the rainy stream
The wild winds sobbing blow,
I see the river of my dream
Four wasted years ago.

Narrara of the waterfalls,
The darling of the hills,
Whose home is under mountain walls
By many-luted rills!
Her bright green nooks and channels cool
I never more may see;
But, ah! the Past was beautiful--
The sights that used to be.

There was a rock-pool in a glen
Beyond Narrara's sands;
The mountains shut it in from men
In flowerful fairy lands;
But once we found its dwelling-place--
The lovely and the lone--
And, in a dream, I stooped to trace
Our names upon a stone.

Above us, where the star-like moss
Shone on the wet, green wall
That spanned the straitened stream across,
We saw the waterfall--
A silver singer far away,
By folded hills and hoar;
Its voice is in the woods to-day--
A voice I hear no more.

I wonder if the leaves that screen
The rock-pool of the past
Are yet as soft and cool and green
As when we saw them last!
I wonder if that tender thing,
The moss, has overgrown
The letters by the limpid spring--
Our names upon the stone!

Across the face of scenes we know
There may have come a change--
The places seen four years ago
Perhaps would now look strange.
To you, indeed, they cannot be
What haply once they were:
A friend beloved by you and me
No more will greet us there.

Because I know the filial grief
That shrinks beneath the touch--
The noble love whose words are brief--
I will not say too much;
But often when the night-winds strike
Across the sighing rills,
I think of him whose life was like
The rock-pool's in the hills.

A beauty like the light of song
Is in my dreams, that show
The grand old man who lived so long
As spotless as the snow.
A fitting garland for the dead
I cannot compass yet;
But many things he did and said
I never will forget.

In dells where once we used to rove
The slow, sad water grieves;
And ever comes from glimmering grove
The liturgy of leaves.
But time and toil have marked my face,
My heart has older grown
Since, in the woods, I stooped to trace
Our names upon the stone.

Leichhardt

Lordly harp, by lordly master wakened from majestic sleep,
Yet shall speak and yet shall sing the words which make the fathers weep!
Voice surpassing human voices--high, unearthly harmony--
Yet shall tell the tale of hero, in exalted years to be!
In the ranges, by the rivers, on the uplands, down the dells,
Where the sound of wind and wave is, where the mountain anthem swells,
Yet shall float the song of lustre, sweet with tears and fair with flame,
Shining with a theme of beauty, holy with our Leichhardt's name!
Name of him who faced for science thirsty tracts of bitter glow,
Lurid lands that no one knows of--two-and-thirty years ago.

Born by hills of hard grey weather, far beyond the northern seas,
German mountains were his sponsors, and his mates were German trees;
Grandeur of the old-world forests passed into his radiant soul,
With the song of stormy crescents where the mighty waters roll.
Thus he came to be a brother of the river and the wood--
Thus the leaf, the bird, the blossom, grew a gracious sisterhood;
Nature led him to her children, in a space of light divine:
Kneeling down, he said--"My mother, let me be as one of thine!"
So she took him--thence she loved him--lodged him in her home of dreams,
Taught him what the trees were saying, schooled him in the speech of streams.

For her sake he crossed the waters--loving her, he left the place
Hallowed by his father's ashes, and his human mother's face--
Passed the seas and entered temples domed by skies of deathless beam,
Walled about by hills majestic, stately spires and peaks supreme!
Here he found a larger beauty--here the lovely lights were new
On the slopes of many flowers, down the gold-green dells of dew.
In the great august cathedral of his holy lady, he
Daily worshipped at her altars, nightly bent the reverent knee--
Heard the hymns of night and morning, learned the psalm of solitudes;
Knew that God was very near him--felt His presence in the woods!

But the starry angel, Science, from the home of glittering wings,
Came one day and talked to Nature by melodious mountain springs:
"Let thy son be mine," she pleaded; "lend him for a space," she said,
"So that he may earn the laurels I have woven for his head!"
And the lady, Nature, listened; and she took her loyal son
From the banks of moss and myrtle--led him to the Shining One!
Filled his lordly soul with gladness--told him of a spacious zone
Eye of man had never looked at, human foot had never known.
Then the angel, Science, beckoned, and he knelt and whispered low--
"I will follow where you lead me"--two-and-thirty years ago.

On the tracts of thirst and furnace--on the dumb, blind, burning plain,
Where the red earth gapes for moisture, and the wan leaves hiss for rain,
In a land of dry, fierce thunder, did he ever pause and dream
Of the cool green German valley and the singing German stream?
When the sun was as a menace, glaring from a sky of brass,
Did he ever rest, in visions, on a lap of German grass?
Past the waste of thorny terrors, did he reach a sphere of rills,
In a region yet untravelled, ringed by fair untrodden hills?
Was the spot where last he rested pleasant as an old-world lea?
Did the sweet winds come and lull him with the music of the sea?

Let us dream so--let us hope so! Haply in a cool green glade,
Far beyond the zone of furnace, Leichhardt's sacred shell was laid!
Haply in some leafy valley, underneath blue, gracious skies,
In the sound of mountain water, the heroic traveller lies!
Down a dell of dewy myrtle, where the light is soft and green,
And a month like English April sits, an immemorial queen,
Let us think that he is resting--think that by a radiant grave
Ever come the songs of forest, and the voices of the wave!
_Thus_ we want our sons to find him--find him under floral bowers,
Sleeping by the trees he loved so, covered with his darling flowers!

After Many Years