[Closing of Sydney International Exhibition.]
Encompassed by the psalm of hill and stream,By hymns august with their majestic theme,Here in the evening of exalted daysTo Thee, our Friend, we bow with breath of praise.The great, sublime hosannas of the seaAscend on wings of mighty winds to Thee,And mingled with their stately words are tonesOf human love, O Lord of all the zones!Ah! at the close of many splendid hours,While falls Thy gracious light in radiant showers,We seek Thy face, we praise Thee, bless Thee, singThis song of reverence, Master, Maker, King!To Thee, from whom all shining blessings flow,All gifts of lustre, all the joys we know,To Thee, O Father, in this lordly space,The great world turns with worship in its face.For that glad season which will pass to-dayWith light and music like a psalm away,The gathered nations with a grand accord,In sight of Thy high heaven, thank Thee, Lord!All praise is Thine—all love that we can giveIs also Thine, in whose large grace we live,In whom we find theOnelong-suffering Friend,Whose immemorial mercy has no end.
Sing, mountain-wind, thy strong, superior song—Thy haughty alpine anthem, over tractsWhose passes and whose swift, rock-straitened streamsCatch mighty life and voice from thee, and makeA lordly harmony on sea-chafed heights.Sing, mountain-wind, and take thine ancient tone,The grand, austere, imperial utterance.Which drives my soul before it back to daysIn one dark hour of which, when Storm rode highPast broken hills, and when the polar galeRoared round the Otway with the bitter breathThat speaks for ever of the White South LandAlone with God and Silence in the cold,I heard the touching tale of Basil Moss,A story shining with a woman's love!And who that knows that love can ever doubtHow dear, divine, sublime a thing it is;For while the tale of Basil Moss was oneNot blackened with those stark, satanic sinsWhich call for superhuman sacrifice,Still, from the records of the world's sad life,This great, sweet, gladdening fact at length we've learned,There's not a depth to which a man can fall,No slough of crime in which such one can lieStoned with the scorn and curses of his kind,But that some tender woman can be foundTo love and shield him still.What was the fateOf Basil Moss who, thirty years ago,A brave, high-minded, but impetuous youth,Left happy homesteads in the sweetest isleThat wears the sober light of Northern suns?What happened him, the man who crossed far, fierceSea-circles of the hoarse Atlantic—who,Without a friend to help him in the world,Commenced his battle in this fair young land,A Levite in the Temple BeautifulOf Art, who struggled hard, but found that hereBoth Bard and Painter learn, by bitter ways,That they are aliens in the working world,And that all Heaven's templed clouds at mornAnd sunset do not weigh one loaf of bread!Thiswas his tale. For years he kept himselfErect, and looked his troubles in the faceAnd grappled them; and, being helped at lastBy one who found she loved him, who becameThe patient sharer of his lot austere,He beat them bravely back; but like the headsOf Lerna's fabled hydra, they returnedFrom day to day in numbers multiplied;And so it came to pass that Basil Moss(Who was, though brave, no mental Hercules,Who hid beneath a calmness forced, the keenHeart-breaking sensibility—which isThe awful, wild, specific curse that clingsForever to the Poet's twofold life)Gave way at last; but not before the handOf sickness fell upon him—not beforeThe drooping form and sad averted eyesOf hectic Hope, that figure far and faint,Had given all his later thoughts a tongue—"It is too late—too late!"There is no needTo tell the elders of the English worldWhat followed this. From step to step, the man—Now fairly gripped by fierce Intemperance—Descended in the social scale; and thoughHe struggled hard at times to break away,And take the old free, dauntless stand again,He came to be as helpless as a child,And Darkness settled on the face of things,And Hope fell dead, and Will was paralysed.Yet sometimes, in the gloomy breaks betweenEach fit of madness issuing from his sin,He used to wander through familiar woodsWith God's glad breezes blowing in his face,And try to feel as he was wont to feelIn other years; but never could he findAgain his old enthusiastic senseOf Beauty; never could he exorcizeThe evil spell which seemed to shackle downThe fine, keen, subtle faculty that usedTo see into the heart of loveliness;And therefore Basil learned to shun the hauntsWhere Nature holds her chiefest courts, becauseThey forced upon him in the saddest lightThe fact of what he was, and once had been.So fared the drunkard for five awful years—The last of which, while lighting singing dells,With many a flame of flowers, found Basil MossCooped with his wife in one small wretched room;And there, one night, the man, when ill and weak—A sufferer from his latest bout of sin—Moaned, stricken sorely with a fourfold senseOf all the degradation he had broughtUpon himself, and on his patient wife;And while he wrestled with his strong remorseHe looked upon a sweet but pallid face,And cried, "My God! is this the trusting girlI swore to love, to shield, to cherish soBut ten years back? O, what a liar I am!"She, shivering in a thin and faded dressBeside a handful of pale, smouldering fire,On hearing Basil's words, moved on her chair,And turning to him blue, beseeching eyes,And pinched, pathetic features, faintly said—"O, Basil, love! now that you seem to feelAnd understand how much I've suffered sinceYou first gave way—now that you comprehendThe bitter heart-wear, darling, that has broughtThe swift, sad silver to this hair of mineWhich should have come with Age—which came with Pain,Do make one more attempt to free yourselfFrom what is slowly killing both of us;And if you do the thing I ask of you,If you but try thisonce, we may indeed—We may be happy yet."Then Basil Moss,Remembering in his marvellous agonyHow often he had found her in the deadOf icy nights with uncomplaining eyes,A watcher in a cheerless room for him;And thinking, too, that often, while he threwHis scanty earnings over reeking bars,The darling that he really loved through allWas left without enough to eat—then Moss,I say, sprang to his feet with sinews setAnd knotted brows, and throat that gasped for air,And cried aloud—"My poor, poor girl,I will."And so he did; and fought this time the fightOut to the bitter end; and with the helpOf prayers and unremitting tendernessHe gained the victory at last; but not—No, not before the agony and sweatOf fierce Gethsemanes had come to him;And not before the awful nightly trials,When, set in mental furnaces of flame,With eyes that ached and wooed in vain for sleep,He had to fight the devil holding outThe cup of Lethe to his fevered lips.But still he conquered; and the end was this,That though he often had to face the eyesOf that bleak Virtue which is not of Christ(Because the gracious Lord of Love was one with HimWho blessed the dying thief upon the cross),He held his way with no unfaltering steps,And gathered hope and light, and never missedTo do a thing for the sake of good.And every day that glided through the worldSaw some fine instance of his bright reform,And some assurance he would never fallInto the pits and traps of hell again.And thus it came to pass that Basil's nameGrew sweet with men; and, when he died, his endWas calm—was evening-like, and beautiful.Here ends the tale of Basil Moss. To wivesWho suffer as the Painter's darling did,I dedicate these lines; and hope they'll bearIn mind those efforts of her lovely life,Which saved her husband's soul; and proved that whileA man who sins can entertain remorse,He is not wholly lost. If such as theyBut follow her, they may be sure of this,That Love, that sweet authentic messengerFrom God, can never fail while there is leftWithin the fallen one a single pulseOf what the angels call humanity.
Two years had the tiger, whose shape was that of a sinister man,Been out since the night of escape—two years under horror and ban.In a time full of thunder and rain, when hurricanes hackled the tree,He slipt through the sludge of a drain, and swam a fierce fork of the sea.Through the roar of the storm, and the ringand the wild savage whistle of hail,Did this naked, whipt, desperate thingbreak loose from the guards of the gaol.And breasting the foam of the bay, and facing the fangs of the bight,With a great cruel cry on his way, he dashed through the darkness of night.But foiled was the terror of fin, and baffled the strength of the tide,For a devil supported his chin and a fiend kept a watch at his side.And hands of iniquity drest the hellish hyena, and gaveHim food in the hills of the west—in cells of indefinite cave.Then, strengthened and weaponed, this peerof the brute, on the track of its prey,Sprang out, and shed sorrow and fear through the beautiful fields of the day.And pillage and murder, and worse, swept peace from the face of the land—The black, bitter work of this curse with the blood on his infamous hand.But wolf of the hills at the end—chased back to the depths of his lair—Had horror for neighbour and friend—he supped in the dark with despair.A whisper of leaf or a breath of the wind in the watch of the nightWas ever as message of death to this devil bent double with fright.For now were the hunters abroad; and the fiend like an adder at bay,Cast out of the sight of the Lord, in the folds of his fastnesses lay.Yea, skulking in pits of the slime—in venomous dens of eclipse—He cowered and bided his time, with the white malice set on his lips.Two years had his shadow been cast in forest, on highway, and run;But Nemesis tracked him at last, and swept him from under the sun.Foul felons in chains were ashamed to speak of the bloodthirsty thingWho lived, like a panther inflamed, the life that no singer can sing—Who butchered one night in the wild three women, a lad, and a maid,And cut the sweet throat of a child—its mother's pure blood on his blade!But over the plains and away by the range and the forested lake,Rode hard, for a week and a day, the terrible tracker, Dick Blake.Dick Blake had the scent of a hound, the eye of a lynx, and could trackWhere never a sign on the ground or the rock could be seen by the black.A rascal at large, when he heard that Blake was out hard at his heels,Felt just as the wilderness bird, in the snare fettered hopelessly, feels.And, hence, when the wolf with the brand of Cain written thrice on his face,Knew terrible Dick was at hand, he slunk like a snake to his place—To the depths of his kennel he crept, far back in the passages dim;But Blake and his mates never slept; they hunted and listened for him.The mountains were many, but he who had captured big Terrigal Bill,The slayer of Hawkins and Lee, found tracks by a conical hill.There were three in the party—no more: Dick Blake and his brother, and oneWho came from a far-away shore, called here by the blood of his son.Two nights and two days did they wait on the trail of the curst of all men;But on the third morning a fate led Dick to the door of the den;And a thunder ran up from the south and smote all the woods into sound;And Blake, with an oath on his mouth, called out for the fiend underground.But the answer was blue, bitter lead, and the brother of Dick, with a cry,Fell back, and the storm overhead set night like a seal on the sky;And the strength of the hurricane tore asunder hill-turrets uphurled;And a rushing of rain and a roar made wan the green widths of the world.The flame, and the roll, and the ring, and the hiss of the thunder and hailSet fear on the face of the Spring laid bare to the arrow of gale.But here in the flash and the din, in the cry of the mountain and wave,Dick Blake, through the shadow, dashed in and strangled the wolf in his cave.
Just a shell, to which the seaweed glittering yet with greenness clings,Like the song that once I loved so, softly of the old time sings—Softly of the old time speaketh—bringing ever back to meSights of far-off lordly forelands—glimpses of the sounding sea!Now the cliffs are all before me—now, indeed, do I beholdShining growths on wild wet hillheads, quiet pools of green and gold.And, across the gleaming beaches, lo! the mighty flow and fallOf the great ingathering waters thundering under Wamberal!Back there are the pondering mountains; there the dim, dumb ranges loom—Ghostly shapes in dead grey vapour—half-seen peaks august with gloom.There the voice of troubled torrents, hidden in unfathomed deeps,Known to moss and faint green sunlight, wanders down the oozy steeps.There the lake of many runnels nestles in a windless wildFar amongst thick-folded forests, like a radiant human child.And beyond surf-smitten uplands—high above the highest spur—Lo! the clouds like tents of tempest on the crags of Kincumber!Wamberal, the home of echoes! Hard against a streaming strand,Sits the hill of blind black caverns, at the limits of the land.Here the haughty water marches—here the flights of straitened seaMake a noise like that of trumpets, breaking wide across the lea!But behold, in yonder crescent that a ring of island locksAre the gold and emerald cisterns shining moonlike in the rocks!Clear, bright cisterns, zoned by mosses, where the faint wet blossoms dwellWith the leaf of many colours—down beside the starry shell.Friend of mine beyond the mountains, here and here the perished daysCome like sad reproachful phantoms, in the deep grey evening haze—Come like ghosts, and sit beside me when the noise of day is still,And the rain is on the window, and the wind is on the hill.Then they linger, but they speak not, while my memory roams and roamsOver scenes by death made sacred—other lands and other homes!Places sanctified by sorrow—sweetened by the face of yore—Face that you and I may look on (friend and brother) nevermore!Seasons come with tender solace—time lacks neither light nor rest;But the old thoughts were suchdearones, and the old days seem the best.And to those who've loved and suffered, every pulse of wind or rain—Every song with sadness in it, brings the peopled Past again.Therefore, just this shell yet dripping, with this weed of green and grey,Sets me thinking—sets me dreaming of the places far away;Dreaming of the golden rockpools—of the foreland and the fall;And the home behind the mountains looming over Wamberal.
—* Daughter of Nicol Drysdale Stenhouse.—
The grand, authentic songs that rollAcross grey widths of wild-faced sea,The lordly anthems of the Pole,Are loud upon the lea.Yea, deep and full the South Wind singsThe mighty symphonies that makeA thunder at the mountain springs—A whiteness on the lake.And where the hermit hornet hums,When Summer fires his wings with gold,The hollow voice of August comes,Across the rain and cold.Now on the misty mountain tops,Where gleams the crag and glares the fell,Wild Winter, like one hunted, stopsAnd shouts a fierce farewell.Keen fitful gusts shoot past the shoreAnd hiss by moor and moody mere—The heralds bleak that come beforeThe turning of the year.A sobbing spirit wanders whereBy fits and starts the wild-fire shines;Like one who walks in deep despair,With Death amongst the pines.And ah! the fine, majestic griefWhich fills the heart of forests lone,And makes a lute of limb and leafIs human in its tone.Too human for the thought to slip—How every song that sorrow singsBetrays the broad relationshipOf all created things.Man's mournful speech, the wail of tree,The words the winds and waters say,Make up that general elegy,Whose burden is decay.To-night my soul looks back and sees,Across wind-broken wastes of wave,A widow on her bended kneesBeside a new-made grave.A sufferer with a touching faceBy love and grief made beautiful;Whose rapt religion lights the placeWhere death holds awful rule.The fair, tired soul whose twofold griefFor child and father lends a toneOf pathos to the pallid leafThat sighs above the stone.The large beloved heart whereonShe used to lean, lies still and cold,Where, like a seraph, shines the sunOn flowerful green and gold.I knew him well—the grand, the sweet,Pure nature past all human praise;The dear Gamaliel at whose feetI sat in other days.He, glorified by god-like lore,First showed my soul Life's highest aim;When, like one winged, I breathed—beforeThe years of sin and shame.God called him Home. And, in the calmBeyond our best possessions priced,He passed, as floats a faultless psalm,To his fair Father, Christ.But left as solace for the hoursOf sorrow and the loss thereof;A sister of the birds and flowers,The daughter of his love.She, like a stray sweet seraph, shedA healing spirit, that flamed and flowedAs if about her bright young headA crown of saintship glowed.Suppressing, with sublime self-slight,The awful face of that distressWhich fell upon her youth like blight,She shone like happiness.And, in the home so sanctifiedBy death in its most noble guise,She kissed the lips of love, and driedThe tears in sorrow's eyes.And helped the widowed heart to lean,So broken up with human cares,On one who must be felt and seenBy such pure souls as hers.Moreover, having lived, and learnedThe taste of Life's most bitter spring,For all the sick this sister yearned—The poor and suffering.But though she had for every oneThe phrase of comfort and the smile,This shining daughter of the sunWas dying all the while.Yet self-withdrawn—held out of reachWas grief; except when music blentIts deep, divine, prophetic speechWith voice and instrument.Then sometimes would escape a cryFrom that dark other life of hers—The half of her humanity—And sob through sound and verse.At last there came the holy touch,With psalms from higher homes and hours;And she who loved the flowers so muchNow sleeps amongst the flowers.By hearse-like yews and grey-haired moss,Where wails the wind in starts and fits,Twice bowed and broken down with loss,The wife, the mother sits.God help her soul! She cannot see,For very trouble, anythingBeyond this wild GethsemaneOf swift, black suffering;Except it be that faltering faithWhich leads the lips of life to say:"There must be something past this death—Lord, teach me how to pray!"Ah, teach her, Lord! And shed through griefThe clear full light, the undefiled,The blessing of the bright beliefWhich sanctified her child.Let me, a son of sin and doubt,Whose feet are set in ways amiss—Who cannot read Thy riddle out,Just plead, and ask Thee this;Give her the eyes to see the things—The Life and Love I cannot see;And lift her with the helping wingsThou hast denied to me.Yea, shining from the highest blueOn those that sing by Beulah's streams,Shake on her thirsty soul the dewWhich brings immortal dreams.So that her heart may find the great,Pure faith for which it looks so long;And learn the noble way to wait,To suffer, and be strong.
—* Introductory verses for "The Sydney University Review", 1881.—
Where in a green, moist, myrtle dellThe torrent voice rings strongAnd clear, above a star-bright well,I write this woodland song.The melodies of many leavesFloat in a fragrant zone;And here are flowers by deep-mossed eavesThat day has never known.I'll weave a garland out of these,The darlings of the birds,And send it over singing seasWith certain sunny words—With certain words alive with lightOf welcome for a thingOf promise, born beneath the white,Soft afternoon of Spring.The faithful few have waited longA life like this to see;And they will understand the songThat flows to-day from me.May every page within this bookBe as a radiant hour;Or like a bank of mountain brook,All flower and leaf and flower.May all the strength and all the graceOf Letters make it beamAs beams a lawn whose lovely faceIs as a glorious dream.And may that strange divinityThat men call Genius writeSome deathless thing in days to be,To fill those days with light.Here where the free, frank waters run,I pray this book may growA sacred candour like the sunAbove the morning snow.May noble thoughts in faultless words—In clean white diction—makeIt shine as shines the home of birdsAnd moss and leaf and lake.This fair fresh life with joy I hail,And this belief express,Its days will be a brilliant taleOf effort and success.Here ends my song; I have a dreamOf beauty like the graceWhich lies upon the land of streamIn yonder mountain place.
—* Roman Catholic Archbishop of Sydney—
With reverent eyes and bowed, uncovered head,A son of sorrow kneels by fanes you knew;But cannot say the words that should be saidTo crowned and winged divinities like you.The perfect speech of superhuman spheresMan has not heard since He of Nazareth,Slain for the sins of twice two thousand years,Saw Godship gleaming through the gates of Death.And therefore he who in these latter daysHas lost a Father—falling by the shrine,Can only use the world's ephemeral phrase,Not, Lord, the faultless language that is Thine.But he, Thy son upon whose shoulders shoneSo long Elisha's gleaming garments, mayBe pleased to hear a pleading human toneTo sift the spirit of the words I say.O, Master, since the gentle Stenhouse diedAnd left the void that none can ever fill,One harp at least has sorrow thrown aside,Its strings all broken, and its notes all still.Some lofty lord of music yet may findIts pulse of passion. I can never touchThe chords again—my life has been too blind;I've sinned too long and suffered far too much.But you will listen to the voice, althoughThe harp is silent—you who glorifiedYour great, sad gift of life, because you knowHow souls are tempted and how hearts are tried.O marvellous follower in the steps of Christ,How pure your spirit must have been to seeThat light beyond our best expression pricedThe effluence of benignant Deity.You saw it, Father? Let me think you didBecause I, groping in the mists of Doubt,Am sometimes fearful that God's face is hidFrom all—that none can read His riddle out!A hope from lives like yours must everywhereBecome like faith—that blessing undefiled,The refuge of the grey philosopher—The consolation of the simple child.Here in a land of many sects, where GodAs shaped by man in countless forms appears,Few comprehend how carefully you trodWithout a slip for two and forty years.How wonderful the self-repression mustHave been, that made you to the lovely closeThe Christian crowned with universal trust,The foe-less Father in a land of foes.How patiently—with how divine a strengthOf tolerance you must have watched the fraysOf fighting churches—warring through the lengthOf your bright, beautiful, unruffled days!Because men strove you did not love them less;You felt for each—for everyone and all—With that same apostolic tendernessWhich Samuel felt when yearning over Saul.A crowned hierophant—a high Chief-PriestOn flame with robes of light, you used to be;But yet you were as humble as the leastOf those who followed Him of Galilee.'Mid splendid forms of faith which flower and fillGod's oldest Church with gleams ineffableYou stand, Our Lord's serene disciple still,In all the blaze which on your pallium fell.The pomp of altars, chasubles, and firesOf incense, moved you not; nor yet the domeOf haughty beauty—follower of the Sires—Who made a holiness of elder Rome.A lord of scholarship whose knowledge ranThrough every groove of human history, youWere this and more—a Christian gentleman;A fount of learning with a heart like dew.O Father! I who at your feet have knelt,On wings of singing fall, and fail to sing,Remembering the immense compassion feltBy you for every form of suffering.As dies a gentle April in a skyOf faultless beauty—after many daysOf loveliness and grand tranquillity—So passed your presence from our human gaze.But though your stately face is as the dustThat windy hills to wintering hollows give,Your memory like a deity augustIs with us still, to teach us how to live.Ah! may it teach us—may the lives that areTake colour from the life that was; and mayThose souls be helped that in the dark so farHave strayed, and have forgotten how to pray!Let one of these at least retain the hopeThat fine examples, like a blessed dewOf summer falling in a fruitful scope,Give birth to issues beautiful and true.Such hope, O Master, is a light indeedTo him that knows how hard it is to saveThe spirit resting on no certain creedWho kneels to plant this blossom on your grave.
I see, as one in dreaming,A broad, bright, quiet sea;Beyond it lies a haven—The only home for me.Some men grow strong with trouble,But all my strength is past,And tired and full of sorrow,I long to sleep at last.By force of chance and changesMan's life is hard at best;And, seeing rest is voiceless,The dearest thing is rest.Beyond the sea—behold it,The home I wish to seekThe refuge of the weary,The solace of the weak!Sweet angel fingers beckon,Sweet angel voices askMy soul to cross the waters;And yet I dread the task.God help the man whose trialsAre tares that he must reap;He cannot face the future—His only hope is sleep.Across the main a visionOf sunset coasts and skies,And widths of waters gleaming,Enchant my human eyes.I, who have sinned and suffered,Have sought—with tears have sought—To rule my life with goodness,And shape it to my thought;And yet there is no refugeTo shield me from distress,Except the realm of slumberAnd great forgetfulness.
[End of Other Poems, 1871-82.]
Note on corrections made: Less than a dozen errors were corrected, mostly punctuation, and one incorrect letter. However, one correction is in question. On p. 339 of this 1920 edition, or in this etext, the 1st line of the 9th stanza of "On a Street", the copy reads:I tell you, this not a talewhich is neither grammatically nor rhythmically correct, for the poem in question. It has been corrected as:I tell you, this is not a talewhich is probably correct. As this is the most serious error noticed in the text, I trust the reader will find the whole to be satisfactory.—A. L.
Note on corrections made: Less than a dozen errors were corrected, mostly punctuation, and one incorrect letter. However, one correction is in question. On p. 339 of this 1920 edition, or in this etext, the 1st line of the 9th stanza of "On a Street", the copy reads:
I tell you, this not a tale
which is neither grammatically nor rhythmically correct, for the poem in question. It has been corrected as:
I tell you, this is not a tale
which is probably correct. As this is the most serious error noticed in the text, I trust the reader will find the whole to be satisfactory.—A. L.