"A perfect woman, nobly planned,To warn, to comfort, and command."
The Priests and the Levites went forth, to feast at the courts of the Kings;They were vain of their greatness and worth,and gladdened with glittering things;They were fair in the favour of gold, and they walked on, with delicate feet,Where, famished and faint with the cold, the women fell down in the street.The Priests and the Levites looked round, all vexed and perplexed at the criesOf the maiden who crouched to the ground with the madness of want in her eyes;And they muttered—"Few praises are earnedwhen good hath been wrought in the dark;While the backs of the people are turned, we choose not to loiter nor hark."Moreover they said—"It is fair that our deeds in the daylight should shine:If we feasted you, who would declare that we gave you our honey and wine."They gathered up garments of gold, and they stepped with their delicate feet,And the women who famished with cold, were left with the snow in the street.The winds and the rains were abroad—the homeless looked vainly for alms;And they prayed in the dark to the Lord, with agony clenched in their palms,"There is none of us left that is whole,"they cried, through their faltering breath,"We are clothed with a sickness of soul,and the shape of the shadow of death."He heard them, and turned to the earth!—"I am pained," said the Lord, "at the woeOf my children so smitten with dearth;but the night of their trouble shall go."He called on His Chosen to come: she listened, and hastened to rise;And He charged her to build them a home,where the tears should be dried from their eyes.God's servant came forth from the South: she told of a plentiful land;And wisdom was set in her mouth, and strength in the thews of her hand.She lifted them out of their fear, and they thought her their Moses and said:"We shall follow you, sister, from here to the country of sunshine and bread."She fed them, and led them away, through tempest and tropical heat,Till they reached the far regions of day, and sweet-scented spaces of wheat.She hath made them a home with her hand,and they bloom like the summery vines;For they eat of the fat of the land, and drink of its glittering wines.
(A Fragment)
A mighty theatre of snow and fire,Girt with perpetual Winter, and sublimeBy reason of that lordly solitudeWhich dwells for ever at the world's white ends;And in that weird-faced wilderness of ice,There is no human foot, nor any pawOr hoof of beast, but where the shrill winds driveThe famished birds of storm across the tractsWhose centre is the dim mysterious Pole.Beyond—yea far beyond the homes of man,By water never dark with coming ships,Near seas that know not feather, scale, or fin,The grand volcano, like a weird Isaiah,Set in that utmost region of the Earth,Doth thunder forth the awful utterance,Whose syllables are flame; and when the fierceAntarctic Night doth hold dominionshipWithin her fastnessess, then round the coneOf Erebus a crown of tenfold lightAppears; and shafts of marvellous splendour shootFar out to east and west and south and north,Whereat a gorgeous dome of glory roofsWild leagues of mountain and transfigured waves,And lends all things a beauty terrible.Far-reaching lands, whereon the hand of ChangeHath never rested since the world began,Lie here in fearful fellowship with coldAnd rain and tempest. Here colossal hornsOf hill start up and take the polar fogsShot through with flying stars of fire; and here,Above the dead-grey crescents topped with spiresOf thunder-smoke, one half the heaven flamesWith that supremest light whose glittering lifeIs yet a marvel unto all but One—The Entity Almighty, whom we feelIs nearest us when we are face to faceWith Nature's features aboriginal,And in the hearing of her primal speechAnd in the thraldom of her primal power.While like the old Chaldean king who waxedInsane with pride, we human beings growTo think we are the mightiest of the world,And lords of all terrestrial things, beholdThe sea rolls in with a superb disdainUpon our peopled shores, omnipotent;And while we set up things of clay and callOur idols gods; and while we boast or fumeAbout the petty honours, or the poor,Pale disappointments of our meagre lives,Lo, changeless as Eternity itself,The grand Antarctic mountain looms outsideAll breathing life; and, with its awful speech,Is as an emblem of the Power Supreme,Whose thunders shake the boundless Universe,Whose lightnings make a terror of all Space.
Twelve years ago our Jack was lost. All night,Twelve years ago, the Spirit of the StormSobbed round our camp. A wind of northern hillsThat hold a cold companionship with cloudsCame down, and wrestled like a giant withThe iron-featured woods; and fall and ford,The night our Jack was lost, sent forth a cryOf baffled waters, where the Murray suckedThe rain-replenished torrents at his source,And gathered strength, and started for the sea.We took our Jack from Melbourne just two weeksBefore this day twelve years ago. He leftA home where Love upon the threshold paused,And wept across the shoulder of the lad,And blest us when we said we'd take good careTo keep the idol of the house from harm.We were a band of three. We started thenceTo look for watered lands and pastures new,With faces set towards the down beyondWhere cool Monaro's topmost mountain breaksThe wings of many a seaward-going storm,And shapes them into wreaths of subtle fire.We were, I say, a band of three in all,With brother Tom for leader. Bright-eyed Jack,Who thought himself as big a man as Tom,Was self-elected second in command,And I was cook and groom. A week slipt by,Brimful of life—of health, and happiness;For though our progress northward had been slow,Because the country on the track was rough,No one amongst us let his spirits flag;Moreover, being young, and at the stageWhen all things novel wear a fine romance,We found in ridge and glen, and wood and rockAnd waterfall, and everything that dwellsOutside with nature, pleasure of that kindWhich only lives for those whose hearts are tiredOf noisy cities, and are fain to feelThe peace and power of the mighty hills.The second week we crossed the upper forkWhere Murray meets a river from the east;And there one evening dark with coming storm,We camped a furlong from the bank. Our Jack,The little man that used to sing and shoutAnd start the merry echoes of the cliffs,And gravely help me to put up the tent,And try a thousand tricks and offices,That made me scold and laugh by turns—the petOf sisters, and the youngest hope of oneWho grew years older in a single night—Our Jack, I say, strayed off into the dusk,Lured by the noises of a waterfall;And though we hunted, shouting right and left,The whole night long, through wind and rain, and searchedFor five days afterwards, we never sawThe lad again.I turned to Tom and said,That wild fifth evening, "Which of us has heartEnough to put the saddle on our swiftest horse,And post away to Melbourne, there to meetAnd tell his mother we have lost her son?Or which of us can bear to stand and seeThe white affliction of a faded face,Made old by you and me? O, Tom, my boy,Her heart will break!" Tom moaned, but did not speakA word. He saddled horse, and galloped off.O, Jack! Jack! Jack! When bright-haired BenjaminWas sent to Egypt with his father's sons,Those rough half-brothers took more care of himThan we of you! But shall we never seeYour happy face, my brave lad, any more?Nor hear you whistling in the fields at eve?Nor catch you up to mischief with your knifeAmongst the apple trees? Nor find you outA truant playing on the road to school?Nor meet you, boy, in any other guiseYou used to take? Is this worn cap I holdThe only thing you've left us of yourself?Are we to sit from night to night deceivedThrough rainy seasons by presentimentsThat make us start at shadows on the pane,And fancy that we hear you in the dark,And wonder that your step has grown so slow,And listen for your hand upon the door?
"All day a strong sun has been drinkingThe ponds in the Wattletree Glen;And now as they're puddles, I'm thinkingWe were wise to head hitherwards, men!The country is heavy to nor'ard,But Lord, how you rattled along!Jack's chestnut's best leg was put for'ard,And the bay from the start galloped strong;But for bottom, I'd stake my existence,There's none of the lot like the mare;For look! she has come the whole distanceWith never the 'turn of a hair'."But now let us stop, for the 'super'Will want us to-morrow by noon;And as he can swear like a trooper,We can't be a minute too soon.Here, Dick, you can hobble the fillyAnd chestnut, but don't take a week;And, Jack, hurry off with the billyAnd fill it. We'll camp by the creek."So spoke the old stockman, and quicklyWe made ourselves snug for the night;The smoke-wreaths above us curled thickly,For our pipes were the first thing a-light!As we sat round a fire that onlyA well-seasoned bushman can make,Far forests grew silent and lonely,Though the paw was astir in the brake,But not till our supper was ended,And not till old Bill was asleep,Did wild things by wonder attendedIn shot of our camping-ground creep.Scared eyes from thick tuft and tree-hollowGleamed out thro' the forest-boles stark;And ever a hurry would followOf fugitive feet in the dark.While Dick and I yarned and talked overOld times that had gone like the sun,The wail of the desolate ploverCame up from the swamps in the run.And sniffing our supper, elated,From his den the red dingo crawled out;But skulked in the darkness, and waited,Like a cunning but cowardly scout.Thereafter came sleep that soon falls onA man who has ridden all day;And when midnight had deepened the palls onThe hills, we were snoring away.But ere we dozed off, the wild noisesOf forest, of fen, and of stream,Grew strange, and were one with the voicesThat died with a sweet semi-dream.And the tones of the waterfall, blendedWith the song of the wind on the shore,Became a soft psalm that ascended,Grew far, and we heard it no more.
—* A cantata, set to music by C. E. Horsley, and sung at the openingof the Melbourne Town Hall, 1870.—
Argument.Hail to thee, Sound!—The power of Euterpe in all the scenes of life—in religion; in works of charity; in soothing troubles by means of music;in all humane and high purposes; in war; in grief; in the social circle;the children's lullaby; the dance; the ballad; in conviviality;when far from home; at evening—the whole ending with an allegorical chorus,rejoicing at the building of a mighty hall erected for the recreationof a nation destined to take no inconsiderable part in the future historyof the world.
Overture
No. 1 ChorusAll hail to thee, Sound! Since the timeCalliope's son took the lyre,And lulled in the heart of their climeThe demons of darkness and fire;Since Eurydice's lover brought tearsTo the eyes of the Princes of Night,Thou hast been, through the world's weary years,A marvellous source of delight—Yea, a marvellous source of delight!In the wind, in the wave, in the fallOf the water, each note of thine dwells;But Euterpe hath gathered from allThe sweetest to weave into spells.She makes a miraculous powerOf thee with her magical skill;And gives us, for bounty or dower,The accents that soothe us or thrill!Yea, the accents that soothe us or thrill!All hail to thee, Sound! Let us thankThe great Giver of light and of lifeFor the music divine that we've drank,In seasons of peace and of strife,Let us gratefully think of the balmThat falls on humanity tired,At the tones of the song or the psalmFrom lips and from fingers inspired—Yea, from lips and from fingers inspired.
No. 2 Quartette and ChorusWhen, in her sacred fanesGod's daughter, sweet Religion, prays,Euterpe's holier strainsHer thoughts from earth to heaven raise.The organ notes sublimePut every worldly dream to flight;They sanctify the time,And fill the place with hallowed light.
No. 3 Soprano SoloYea, and when that meek-eyed maidenMen call Charity, comes fainTo raise up spirits, ladenWith bleak poverty and pain:Often, in her cause enlisted,Music softens hearts like stones;And the fallen are assistedThrough Euterpe's wondrous tones.
No. 4 Orchestral Intermezzo
No. 5 ChorusBeautiful is Sound devotedTo all ends humane and high;And its sweetness never floatedLike a thing unheeded by.Power it has on souls encrustedWith the selfishness of years;Yea, and thousands Mammon-rusted,Hear it, feel it, leave in tears.
No. 6 Choral Recitative(Men's voices only)When on the battlefield, and in the sightOf tens of thousands bent to smite and slayTheir human brothers, how the soldier's heartMust leap at sounds of martial music, firedWith all that spirit that the patriot lovesWho seeks to win, or nobly fall, for home!
No. 7 Triumphal March
No. 8 Funeral ChorusSlowly and mournfully moves a procession,Wearing the signsOf sorrow, through loss, and it halts like a shadowOf death in the pines.Come from the fane that is filled with God's presence,Sad sounds and deep;Holy Euterpe, she sings of our brother,We listen and weep.Death, like the Angel that passed over Egypt,Struck at us sore;Never again shall we turn at our loved one'sStep at the door.
No. 9 Chorus(Soprano voices only)But, passing from sorrow, the spiritOf Music, a glory, doth roveWhere it lightens the features of beauty,And burns through the accents of love—The passionate accents of love.
No. 10 Lullaby Song—ContraltoThe night-shades gather, and the seaSends up a sound, sonorous, deep;The plover's wail comes down the lea;By slope and vale the vapours weep,And dew is on the tree;And now where homesteads be,The children fall asleep,Asleep.A low-voiced wind amongst the leaves,The sighing leaves that mourn the Spring,Like some lone spirit, flits and grieves,And grieves and flits on fitful wing.But where Song is a guest,A lulling dreamy thing,The children fall to rest,To rest.
No. 11 Waltz ChorusWhen the summer moon is beamingOn the stirless waters dreaming,And the keen grey summits gleaming,Through a silver starry haze;In our homes to strains entrancingTo the steps, the quickly glancingSteps of youths and maidens dancing,Maidens light of foot as fays.Then the waltz, whose rhythmic pacesMake melodious happy places,Brings a brightness to young faces,Brings a sweetness to the eyes.Sounds that move us like enthrallingAccents, where the runnel falling,Sends out flute-like voices calling,Where the sweet wild moss-bed lies.
No. 12 Ballad—TenorWhen twilight glides with ghostly treadAcross the western heights,And in the east the hills are redWith sunset's fading lights;Then music floats from cot and hallWhere social circles met,By sweet Euterpe held in thrall—Their daily cares forget.What joy it is to watch the shineThat hallows beauty's faceWhen woman sings the strains divine,Whose passion floods the place!Then how the thoughts and feelings roveAt song's inspiring breath,In homes made beautiful by love,Or sanctified by death.What visions come, what dreams arise,What Edens youth will limn,When leaning over her whose eyesHave sweetened life for him!For while she sings and while she plays,And while her voice is low,His fancy paints diviner daysThan any we can know.
No. 13 Drinking Song(Men's voices only)But, hurrah! for the table that heavily groansWith the good things that keep in the life:When we sing and we dance, and we drink to the tonesThat are masculine, thorough and blithe.Good luck to us all! Over walnuts and wineWe hear the rare songs that we knowAre as brimful of mirth as the spring is of shine,And as healthy and hearty, we trow.Then our glasses we charge to the ring of the staveThat the flush to our faces doth send;For though life is a thing that winds up with the grave,We'll be jolly, my boys, to the end.Hurrah! Hurrah!Yes, jolly, my boys, to the end!
No. 14 Recitative—BassWhen far from friends, and home, and all the thingsThat bind a man to life, how dear to himIs any old familiar sound that takesHim back to spots where Love and HopeIn past days used to wander hand in handAcross high-flowered meadows, and the pathsWhose borders shared the beauty of the spring,And borrowed splendour from autumnal suns.
No. 15 Chorus(The voices accompanied only by the violins playing"Home, Sweet Home".)Then at sea, or in wild wood,Then ashore or afloat,All the scenes of his childhoodCome back at a note;At the turn of a ballad,At the tones of a song,Cometh Memory, pallidAnd speechless so long;And she points with her fingerTo phantom-like years,And loveth to lingerIn silence, in tears.
No. 16 Solo—BassIn the yellow flame of evening sounds of music come and go,Through the noises of the river, and the drifting of the snow;In the yellow flame of evening, at the setting of the day,Sounds that lighten, fall, and lighten, flicker, faint, and fade away;What they are, behold, we know not, but their honey slakes and slaysHalf the want which whitens manhood in the stress of alien days.Even as a wondrous woman, struck with love and great desire,Hast thou been to us, EUTERPE, half of tears and half of fire;But thy joy is swift and fitful, and a subtle sense of painSighs through thy melodious breathings, takes the rapture from thy strain.In the yellow flame of evening sounds of music come and go.Through the noises of the river, and the drifting of the snow.
No. 17 Recitative—SopranoAnd thus it is that Music manifold,In fanes, in Passion's sanctuaries, or whereThe social feast is held, is still the powerThat bindeth heart to heart; and whether Grief,Or Love, or Pleasure form the link, we know'Tis still a bond that makes Humanity,That wearied entity, a single whole,And soothes the trouble of the heart bereaved,And lulls the beatings in the breast that yearns,And gives more gladness to the gladdest things.
No. 18 Finale—ChorusNow a vision comes, O brothers, blendedWith supremest sounds of harmony—Comes, and shows a temple, stately, splendid,In a radiant city by the sea.Founders, fathers of a mighty nation,Raised the walls, and built the royal dome,Gleaming now from lofty, lordly station,Like a dream of Athens, or of Rome!And a splendour of sound,A thunder of song,Rolls sea-like around,Comes sea-like along.The ringing, and ringing, and ringing,Of voices of choristers singing,Inspired by a national joy,Strike through the marvellous hall,Fly by the aisle and the wall,While the organ notes roamFrom basement to dome—Now low as a wail,Now loud as a gale,And as grand as the music that builded old Troy.
Another battle! and the sounds have rolledBy many a gloomy gorge and wasted plainO'er huddled hills and mountains manifold,Like winds that run before a heavy rainWhen Autumn lops the leaves and drooping grain,And earth lies deep in brown and cloudy gold.My brothers, lo! our grand old England stands,With weapons gleaming in her ready hands,Outside the tumult! Let us watch and trustThat she will never darken in the dustAnd drift of wild contention, but remainThe hope and stay of many troubled lands,Where so she waits the issue of the fight,Aloof; but praying "God defend the Right!"
[End of Early Poems, 1859-70.]
At rest! Hard by the margin of that seaWhose sounds are mingled with his noble verseNow lies the shell that never more will houseThe fine strong spirit of my gifted friend.Yea, he who flashed upon us suddenly,A shining soul with syllables of fire,Who sang the first great songs these lands can claimTo be their own; the one who did not seemTo know what royal place awaited himWithin the Temple of the Beautiful,Has passed away; and we who knew him sitAghast in darkness, dumb with that great griefWhose stature yet we cannot comprehend;While over yonder churchyard, hearsed with pines,The night wind sings its immemorial hymn,And sobs above a newly-covered grave.The bard, the scholar, and the man who livedThat frank, that open-hearted life which keepsThe splendid fire of English chivalryFrom dying out; the one who never wrongedA fellow man; the faithful friend who judgedThe many, anxious to be loved of himBy what he saw, and not by what he heard,As lesser spirits do; the brave, great soulThat never told a lie, or turned asideTo fly from danger—he, as I say, was oneOf that bright company this sin-stained worldCan ill afford to lose.They did not know,The hundreds who had read his sturdy verseAnd revelled over ringing major notes,The mournful meaning of the undersongWhich runs through all he wrote, and often takesThe deep autumnal, half-prophetic toneOf forest winds in March; nor did they thinkThat on that healthy-hearted man there layThe wild specific curse which seems to clingForever to the Poet's twofold life!To Adam Lindsay Gordon, I who laidTwo years ago on Lionel Michael's graveA tender leaf of my regard; yea, IWho culled a garland from the flowers of songTo place where Harpur sleeps; I, left alone,The sad disciple of a shining bandNow gone—to Adam Lindsay Gordon's nameI dedicate these lines; and if 'tis trueThat, past the darkness of the grave, the soulBecomes omniscient, then the bard may stoopFrom his high seat to take the offering,And read it with a sigh for human friends,In human bonds, and grey with human griefs.And having wove and proffered this poor wreath,I stand to-day as lone as he who sawAt nightfall, through the glimmering moony mist,The last of Arthur on the wailing mere,And strained in vain to hear the going voice.
A voice of grave, deep emphasisIs in the woods to-night;No sound of radiant day is this,No cadence of the light.Here in the fall and flights of leavesAgainst grey widths of sea,The spirit of the forests grievesFor lost Persephone.The fair divinity that rovesWhere many waters singDoth miss her daughter of the groves—The golden-headed Spring.She cannot find the shining handThat once the rose caressed;There is no blossom on the land,No bird in last year's nest.Here, where this strange Demeter weeps—This large, sad life unseen—Where July's strong, wild torrent leapsThe wet hill-heads between,I sit and listen to the grief,The high, supreme distress,Which sobs above the fallen leafLike human tenderness!Where sighs the sedge and moans the marsh,The hermit plover calls;The voice of straitened streams is harshBy windy mountain walls;There is no gleam upon the hillsOf last October's wings;The shining lady of the rillsIs with forgotten things.Now where the land's worn face is greyAnd storm is on the wave,What flower is left to bear awayTo Edward Butler's grave?What tender rose of song is hereThat I may pluck and sendAcross the hills and seas austereTo my lamented friend?There is no blossom left at all;But this white winter leaf,Whose glad green life is past recall,Is token of my grief.Where love is tending growths of grace,The first-born of the Spring,Perhaps there may be found a placeFor my pale offering.For this heroic Irish heartWe miss so much to-day,Whose life was of our lives a part,What words have I to say?Because I know the noble woeThat shrinks beneath the touch—The pain of brothers stricken low—I will not say too much.But often in the lonely spaceWhen night is on the land,I dream of a departed face—A gracious, vanished hand.And when the solemn waters rollAgainst the outer steep,I see a great, benignant soulBeside me in my sleep.Yea, while the frost is on the waysWith barren banks austere,The friend I knew in other daysIs often very near.I do not hear a single tone;But where this brother gleams,The elders of the seasons flownAre with me in my dreams.The saintly face of Stenhouse turns—His kind old eyes I see;And Pell and Ridley from their urnsArise and look at me.By Butler's side the lights revealThe father of his fold,I start from sleep in tears, and feelThat I am growing old.Where Edward Butler sleeps, the waveIs hardly ever heard;But now the leaves above his graveBy August's songs are stirred.The slope beyond is green and still,And in my dreams I dreamThe hill is like an Irish hillBeside an Irish stream.
In the beams of a beautiful day,Made soft by a breeze from the sea,The horses were started away,The fleet-footed thirty and three;Where beauty, with shining attire,Shed more than a noon on the land,Like spirits of thunder and fireThey flashed by the fence and the stand.And the mouths of pale thousands were hushedWhen Somnus, a marvel of strength,Past Bowes like a sudden wind rushed,And led the bay colt by a length;But a chestnut came galloping through,And, down where the river-tide steals,O'Brien, on brave Waterloo,Dashed up to the big horse's heels.But Cracknell still kept to the fore,And first by the water bend wheeled,When a cry from the stand, and a roarRan over green furlongs of field;Far out by the back of the course—A demon of muscle and pluck—Flashed onward the favourite horse,With his hoofs flaming clear of the ruck.But the wonderful Queenslander came,And the thundering leaders were three;And a ring, and a roll of acclaim,Went out, like a surge of the sea:"An Epigram! Epigram wins!"—"The Colt of the Derby"—"The bay!"But back where the crescent beginsThe favourite melted away.And the marvel that came from the North,With another, was heavily thrown;And here at the turning flashed forthTo the front a surprising unknown;By shed and by paddock and gateThe strange, the magnificent black,Led Darebin a length in the straight,With thirty and one at his back.But the Derby colt tired at the rails,And Ivory's marvellous bayPassed Burton, O'Brien, and Hales,As fleet as a flash of the day.But Gough on the African starCame clear in the front of his "field",Hard followed by Morrison's CzarAnd the blood unaccustomed to yield.Yes, first from the turn to the end,With a boy on him paler than ghost,The horse that had hardly a friendShot flashing like fire by the post.When Graham was "riding" 'twas lateFor his friends to applaud on the stands,The black, through the bend and "the straight",Had the race of the year in his hands.In a clamour of calls and acclaim,He landed the money—the horseWith the beautiful African name,That rang to the back of the course.Hurrah for the Hercules race,And the terror that came from his stall,With the bright, the intelligent face,To show the road home to them all!
The dauntless three! For twenty days and nightsThese heroes battled with the haughty heights;For twenty spaces of the star and sunThese Romans kept their harness buckled on;By gaping gorges, and by cliffs austere,These fathers struggled in the great old year.Their feet they set on strange hills scarred by fire,Their strong arms forced a path through brake and briar;They fought with Nature till they reached the throneWhere morning glittered on the great UNKNOWN!There, in a time with praise and prayer supreme,Paused Blaxland, Lawson, Wentworth, in a dream;There, where the silver arrows of the daySmote slope and spire, they halted on their way.Behind them were the conquered hills—they facedThe vast green West, with glad, strange beauty graced;And every tone of every cave and treeWas as a voice of splendid prophecy.
—* Son of Sir Henry Parkes.—
High travelling winds by royal hillTheir awful anthem sing,And songs exalted flow and fillThe caverns of the spring.To-night across a wild wet plainA shadow sobs and strays;The trees are whispering in the rainOf long departed days.I cannot say what forest saith—Its words are strange to me:I only know that in its breathAre tones that used to be.Yea, in these deep dim solitudesI hear a sound I know—The voice that lived in Penrith woodsTwelve weary years ago.And while the hymn of other yearsIs on a listening land,The Angel of the Past appearsAnd leads me by the hand;And takes me over moaning wave,And tracts of sleepless change,To set me by a lonely graveWithin a lonely range.The halo of the beautifulIs round the quiet spot;The grass is deep and green and cool,Where sound of life is not.Here in this lovely lap of bloom,The grace of glen and glade,That tender days and nights illume,My gentle friend was laid.I do not mark the shell that liesBeneath the touching flowers;I only see the radiant eyesOf other scenes and hours.I only turn, by grief inspired,Like some forsaken thing,To look upon a life retiredAs hushed Bethesda's spring.The glory of unblemished daysIs on the silent mound—The light of years, too pure for praise;I kneel on holy ground!Here is the clay of one whose mindWas fairer than the dew,The sweetest nature of his kindI haply ever knew.This Christian, walking on the whiteClear paths apart from strife,Kept far from all the heat and lightThat fills his father's life.The clamour and exceeding flameWere never in his days:A higher object was his aimThan thrones of shine and praise.Ah! like an English April psalm,That floats by sea and strand,He passed away into the calmOf the Eternal Land.The chair he filled is set asideUpon his father's floor;In morning hours, at eventide,His step is heard no more.No more his face the forest knows;His voice is of the past;But from his life of beauty flowsA radiance that will last.Yea, from the hours that heard his speechHigh shining mem'ries giveThat fine example which will teachOur children how to live.Here, kneeling in the body, farFrom grave of flower and dew,My friend beyond the path of star,I say these words to you.Though you were as a fleeting flameAcross my road austere,The memory of your face becameA thing for ever dear.I never have forgotten yetThe Christian's gentle touch;And, since the time when last we met,You know I've suffered much.I feel that I have given painBy certain words and deeds,But stricken here with Sorrow's rain,My contrite spirit bleeds.For your sole sake I rue the blow,But this assurance send:I smote, in noon, the public foe,But not the private friend.I know that once I wronged your sire,But since that awful dayMy soul has passed through blood and fire,My head is very grey.Here let me pause! From years like yoursThere ever flows and thrivesThe splendid blessing which enduresBeyond our little lives.From lonely lands across the waveIs sent to-night by meThis rose of reverence for the graveBeside the mountain lea.
To-night a strong south wind in thunder singsAcross the city. Now by salt wet flats,And ridges perished with the breath of drought,Comes up a deep, sonorous, gulf-like voice—Far-travelled herald of some distant storm—That strikes with harsh gigantic wings the cliff,Where twofold Otway meets his straitened surf,And makes a white wrath of a league of sea.To-night the fretted Yarra chafes its banks,And dusks and glistens; while the city showsA ring of windy light. From street to streetThe noise of labour, linked to hurrying wheels,Rolls off, as rolls the stately sound of wave,When he that hears it hastens from the shore.To-night beside a moody window sitsA wife who watches for her absent love;Her home is in a dim suburban street,In which the winds, like one with straitened breath,Now fleet with whispers dry and short half-sobs,Or pause and beat against the showery panesLike homeless mem'ries seeking for a home.There, where the plopping of the guttered rainSounds like a heavy footstep in the dark,Where every shadow thrown by flickering lightSeems like her husband halting at the door,I say a woman sits, and waits, and sits,Then trims her fire, and comes to wait again.The chapel clock strikes twelve! He has not come.The night grows wilder, and the wind dies offThe roads, now turned to thoroughfares of storm,Save when a solitary, stumbling footBreaks through the clamour. Then the watcher starts,And trembles, with her hand upon the key,And flutters, with the love upon her lips;Then sighs, returns, and takes her seat once more.Is this the old, old tale? Ah! do not ask,My gentle reader, but across your doubtsThrow shining reasons on the happier side;Or, if you cannot choose but doubt the man—If you do count him in your thoughts as oneWho leaves a good wife by a lonely hearthFor more than half the night, for scenes (we'll say)Of revelry—I pray you think of howThat wretch must suffer in his waking times(If he be human), when he recollectsThat through the long, long hours of evil feastsWith painted sin, and under glaring gas,His brightest friend was at a window-sillA watcher, seated in a joyless room,And haply left without a loaf of bread.I, having learnt from sources pure and high,From springs of love that make the perfect wife,Can say how much a woman will endureFor one to whom her tender heart has passed.When fortune fails, and friends drop off, and timeHas shadows waiting in predestined ways—When shame that grows from want of money comes,And sets its brand upon a husband's brow,And makes him walk an alien in the streets:One faithful face, on which a light divineBecomes a glory when vicissitudeIs in its darkest mood—one face, I say,Marks not the fallings-off that others see,Seeks not to know the thoughts that others think,Cares not to hear the words that others say:But, through her deep and self-sufficing love,She only sees the bright-eyed youth that wonHer maiden heart in other, happier days,And not the silent, gloomy-featured manThat frets and shivers by a sullen fire.And, therefore, knowing this from you, who've sharedWith me the ordeal of most trying times,I sometimes feel a hot shame flushing up,To think that there are those among my sexWho are so cursed with small-souled selfishnessThat they do give to noble wives like you,For love—that first and final flower of life—The dreadful portion of a drunkard's home.