The bard who is singing of Wollombi JimIs hardly just now in the requisite trimTo sit on his Pegasus fairly;Besides, he is bluntly informed by the MuseThat Jim is a subject no singer should choose;For Jim is poetical rarely.But being full up of the myths that are Greek—Of the classic, and noble, and nude, and antique,Which means not a rag but the pelt on;This poet intends to give Daphne the slip,For the sake of a hero in moleskin and kip,With a jumper and snake-buckle belt on.No party is Jim of the Pericles type—He is modern right up from the toe to the pipe;And being no reader or roamer,He hasn't Euripides much in the head;And let it be carefully, tenderly said,He never has analysed Homer.He can roar out a song of the twopenny kind;But, knowing the beggar so well, I'm inclinedTo believe that a "par" about Kelly,The rascal who skulked under shadow of curse,Is more in his line than the happiest verseOn the glittering pages of Shelley.You mustn't, however, adjudge him in haste,Because a red robber is more to his tasteThan Ruskin, Rossetti, or Dante!You see, he was bred in a bangalow wood,And bangalow pith was the principal foodHis mother served out in her shanty.His knowledge is this—he can tell in the darkWhat timber will split by the feel of the bark;And rough as his manner of speech is,His wits to the fore he can readily bringIn passing off ash as the genuine thingWhen scarce in the forest the beech is.In girthing a tree that he sells in the round,He assumes, as a rule, that the body is sound,And measures, forgetting to bark it!He may be a ninny, but still the old dogCan plug to perfection the pipe of a logAnd palm it away on the market.He splits a fair shingle, but holds to the ruleOf his father's, and, haply, his grandfather's school;Which means that he never has blundered,When tying his shingles, by slinging in moreThan the recognized number of ninety and fourTo the bundle he sells for a hundred!When asked by the market for ironbark red,It always occurs to the Wollombi headTo do a "mahogany" swindle.In forests where never the ironbark grew,When Jim is at work, it would flabbergast youTo see how the ironbarks dwindle.He can stick to the saddle, can Wollombi Jim,And when a buckjumper dispenses with him,The leather goes off with the rider.And, as to a team, over gully and hillHe can travel with twelve on the breadth of a quillAnd boss the unlucky offsider.He shines at his best at the tiller of saw,On the top of the pit, where his whisper is lawTo the gentleman working below him.When the pair of them pause in a circle of dust,Like a monarch he poses—exalted, august—There's nothing this planet can show him!For a man is amanwho can sharpen and set,Andheis the only thing masculine yetAccording to sawyer and splitter—Or rather according to Wollombi Jim;And nothing will tempt me to differ from him,For Jim is a bit of a hitter.But, being full up, we'll allow him to rip,Along with his lingo, his saw, and his whip—He isn't the classical notion.And, after a night in his humpy, you see,A person of orthodox habits would beRefreshed by a dip in the ocean.To tot him right up from the heel to the head,He isn't the Grecian of whom we have read—His face is a trifle too shady.The nymph in green valleys of Thessaly dimWould never "jack up" her old lover for him,For she has the tastes of a lady.So much for our hero! A statuesque footWould suffer by wearing that heavy-nailed boot—Its owner is hardly Achilles.However, he's happy! He cuts a great "fig"In the land where a coat is no part of the rig—In the country of damper and billies.
(Written in the shadow of 1872.)
Ah, to be by Mooni now,Where the great dark hills of wonder,Scarred with storm and cleft asunderBy the strong sword of the thunder,Make a night on morning's brow!Just to stand where Nature's face isFlushed with power in forest places—Where of God authentic trace is—Ah, to be by Mooni now!Just to be by Mooni's springs!There to stand, the shining sharerOf that larger life, and rarerBeauty caught from beauty fairerThan the human face of things!Soul of mine from sin abhorrentFain would hide by flashing current,Like a sister of the torrent,Far away by Mooni's springs.He that is by Mooni nowSees the water-sapphires gleamingWhere the River Spirit, dreaming,Sleeps by fall and fountain streamingUnder lute of leaf and bough—Hears, where stamp of storm with stress is,Psalms from unseen wildernessesDeep amongst far hill-recesses—He that is by Mooni now.Yea, for him by Mooni's margeSings the yellow-haired September,With the face the gods rememberWhen the ridge is burnt to ember,And the dumb sea chains the barge!Where the mount like molten brass is,Down beneath fern-feathered passes,Noonday dew in cool green grassesGleams on him by Mooni's marge.Who that dwells by Mooni yet,Feels, in flowerful forest arches,Smiting wings and breath that parchesWhere strong Summer's path of march is,And the suns in thunder set?Housed beneath the gracious kirtleOf the shadowy water myrtle,Winds may hiss with heat, and hurtle—He is safe by Mooni yet!Days there were when he who sings(Dumb so long through passion's losses)Stood where Mooni's water crossesShining tracts of green-haired mosses,Like a soul with radiant wings;Then the psalm the wind rehearses—Then the song the stream dispersesLent a beauty to his verses,Who to-night of Mooni sings.Ah, the theme—the sad, grey theme!Certain days are not above me,Certain hearts have ceased to love me,Certain fancies fail to move meLike the affluent morning dream.Head whereon the white is stealing,Heart whose hurts are past all healing,Where is now the first pure feeling?Ah, the theme—the sad, grey theme!Sin and shame have left their trace!He who mocks the mighty, graciousLove of Christ, with eyes audacious,Hunting after fires fallacious,Wears the issue in his face.Soul that flouted gift and Giver,Like the broken Persian river,Thou hast lost thy strength for ever!Sin and shame have left their trace.In the years that used to be,When the large, supreme occasionBrought the life of inspiration,Like a god's transfigurationWas the shining change in me.Then, where Mooni's glory glances,Clear, diviner countenancesBeamed on me like blessed chances,In the years that used to be.Ah, the beauty of old ways!Then the man who so resembledLords of light unstained, unhumbled,Touched the skirts of Christ, nor trembledAt the grand benignant gaze!Now he shrinks before the splendidFace of Deity offended,All the loveliness is ended!All the beauty of old ways!Still to be by Mooni cool—Where the water-blossoms glister,And, by gleaming vale and vista,Sits the English April's sisterSoft and sweet and wonderful.Just to rest beyond the burningOuter world—its sneers and spurning—Ah! my heart—my heart is yearningStill to be by Mooni cool!Now, by Mooni's fair hill heads,Lo, the gold green lights are glowing,Where, because no wind is blowing,Fancy hears the flowers growingIn the herby watersheds!Faint it is—the sound of thunderFrom the torrents far thereunder,Where the meeting mountains ponder—Now, by Mooni's fair hill heads.Just to be where Mooni is,Even where the fierce fall racesDown august, unfathomed places,Where of sun or moon no trace is,And the streams of shadows hiss!Have I not an ample reasonSo to long for—sick of treason—Something of the grand old season,Just to be where Mooni is?
Gaul whose keel in far, dim ages ploughed wan widths of polar sea—Gray old sailor of Massilia, who hath woven wreath for thee?Who amongst the world's high singers ever breathed the tale sublimeOf the man who coasted England in the misty dawn of time?Leaves of laurel, lights of music—these and these have never shedGlory on the name unheard of, lustre on the vanished head.Lords of song, and these are many, never yet have raised the layFor the white, wind-beaten seaman of a wild, forgotten day.Harp of shining son of Godhead still is as a voice august;But the man who first saw Britain sleeps beneath unnoticed dust.From the fair, calm bays Hellenic, from the crescents and the bends,Round the wall of crystal Athens, glowing in gold evening-ends,Sailed abroad the grand, strong father, with his face towards the snowOf the awful northern mountains, twenty centuries ago.On the seas that none had heard of, by the shores where none had furledWing of canvas, passed this elder to the limits of the world.Lurid limits, loud with thunder and the roar of flaming cone,Ghastly tracts of ice and whirlwind lying in a dim, blind zone,Bitter belts of naked region, girt about by cliffs of fear,Where the Spirit of the Darkness dwells in heaven half the year.Yea, against the wild, weird Thule, steered the stranger through the gatesOpened by a fire eternal, into tempest-trampled straits—Thule, lying like a nightmare on the borders of the Pole:Neither land, nor air, nor water, but a mixture of the whole!Dumb, dead chaos, grey as spectre, now a mist and now a cloud,Where the winds cry out for ever, and the wave is always loud.Here the lord of many waters, in the great exalted years,Saw the sight that no man knows of—heard the sound that no man hears—Felt that God was in the Shadow ere he turned his prow and spedTo the sweet green fields of England with the sunshine overhead.In the day when pallid Persia fled before the Thracian steel,By the land that now is London passed the strange Hellenic keel.Up the bends of quiet river, hard by banks of grove and flower,Sailed the father through a silence in the old majestic hour.Not a sound of fin or feather, not a note of wave or breeze,Vext the face of sleeping streamlets, broke the rest of stirless trees.Not a foot was in the forest, not a voice was in the wood,When the elder from Massilia over English waters stood.All was new, and hushed, and holy—all was pure untrodden space,When the lord of many oceans turned to it a reverent face.Man who knew resplendent Athens, set and framed in silver sea,Did not dream a dream of England—England of the years to be!Friend of fathers like to Plato—bards august and hallowed seers—Did not see that tenfold glory, Britain of the future years!Spirit filled with Grecian music, songs that charm the dark away,On that large, supreme occasion, did not note diviner lay—Did not hear the voice of Shakespeare—all the mighty life was still,Down the slopes that dipped to seaward, on the shoulders of the hill;But the gold and green were brighter than the bloom of Thracian springs,And a strange, surpassing beauty shone upon the face of things.In a grave that no man thinks of—back from far-forgotten bays—Sleeps the grey, wind-beaten sailor of the old exalted days.He that coasted Wales and Dover, he that first saw Sussex plains,Passed away with head unlaurelled in the wild Thessalian rains.In a space by hand untended, by a fen of vapours blind,Lies the king of many waters—out of sight and out of mind!No one brings the yearly blossom—no one culls the flower of grace,For the shell of mighty father buried in that lonely place;But the winds are low and holy, and the songs of sweetness flow,Where he fell asleep for ever, twenty centuries ago.
The leaders of millions, the lords of the lands,Who sway the wide world with their willAnd shake the great globe with the strength of their hands,Flash past us—unnoticed by Bill.The elders of science who measure the spheresAnd weigh the vast bulk of the sun—Who see the grand lights beyond aeons of years,Are less than a bullock toone.The singers that sweeten all time with their song—Pure voices that make us forgetHumanity's drama of marvellous wrong—To Bill are as mysteries yet.By thunders of battle and nations uphurled,Bill's sympathies never were stirred:The helmsmen who stand at the wheel of the worldBy him are unknown and unheard.What trouble has Bill for the ruin of lands,Or the quarrels of temple and throne,So long as the whip that he holds in his handsAnd the team that he drives are his own?As straight and as sound as a slab without crack,Our Bill is a king in his way;Though he camps by the side of a shingle track,And sleeps on the bed of his dray.A whip-lash to him is as dear as a roseWould be to a delicate maid;He carries his darlings wherever he goes,In a pocket-book tattered and frayed.The joy of a bard when he happens to writeA song like the song of his dreamIs nothing at all to our hero's delightIn the pluck and the strength of his team.For the kings of the earth, for the faces augustOf princes, the millions may shout;To Bill, as he lumbers along in the dust,A bullock's the grandest thing out.His four-footed friends are the friends of his choice—No lover is Bill of your dames;But the cattle that turn at the sound of his voiceHave the sweetest of features and names.A father's chief joy is a favourite son,When he reaches some eminent goal,But the pride of Bill's heart is the hairy-legged oneThat pulls with a will at the pole.His dray is no living, responsible thing,But he gives it the gender of life;And, seeing his fancy is free in the wing,It suits him as well as a wife.He thrives like an Arab. Between the two wheelsIs his bedroom, where, lying up-curled,He thinks for himself, like a sultan, and feelsThat his home is the best in the world.For, even though cattle, like subjects, will breakAt times from the yoke and the band,Bill knows how to act when his rule is at stake,And is therefore a lord of the land.Of course he must dream; but be sure that his dreams,If happy, must compass, alas!Fat bullocks at feed by improbable streams,Knee-deep in improbable grass.No poet is Bill, for the visions of nightTo him are as visions of day;And the pipe that in sleep he endeavours to lightIs the pipe that he smokes on the dray.To the mighty, magnificent temples of God,In the hearts of the dominant hills,Bill's eyes are as blind as the fire-blackened clodThat burns far away from the rills.Through beautiful, bountiful forests that screenA marvel of blossoms from heat—Whose lights are the mellow and golden and green—Bill walks with irreverent feet.The manifold splendours of mountain and woodBy Bill like nonentities slip;He loves the black myrtle because it is goodAs a handle to lash to his whip.And thus through the world, with a swing in his tread,Our hero self-satisfied goes;With his cabbage-tree hat on the back of his head,And the string of it under his nose.Poor bullocky Bill! In the circles selectOf the scholars he hasn't a place;But he walks like aman, with his forehead erect,And he looks at God's day in the face.For, rough as he seems, he would shudder to wrongA dog with the loss of a hair;And the angels of shine and superlative songSee his heart and the deity there.Few know him, indeed; but the beauty that glowsIn the forest is loveliness still;And Providence helping the life of the roseIs a Friend and a Father to Bill.
Years fifty, and seven to boot, have smitten the children of menSince sound of a voice or a foot came out of the head of that glen.The brand of black devil is there—an evil wind moaneth around—There is doom, there is death in the air: a curse groweth up from the ground!No noise of the axe or the saw in that hollow unholy is heard,No fall of the hoof or the paw, no whirr of the wing of the bird;But a grey mother down by the sea, as wan as the foam on the strait,Has counted the beads on her knee these forty-nine winters and eight.Whenever an elder is asked—a white-headed man of the woods—Of the terrible mystery masked where the dark everlastingly broods,Be sure he will turn to the bay, with his back to the glen in the range,And glide like a phantom away, with a countenance pallid with change.From the line of dead timber that lies supine at the foot of the glade,The fierce-featured eaglehawk flies—afraid as a dove is afraid;But back in that wilderness dread are a fall and the forks of a ford—Ah! pray and uncover your head, and lean like a child on the Lord.A sinister fog at the wane—at the change of the moon cometh forthLike an ominous ghost in the train of a bitter, black storm of the north!At the head of the gully unknown it hangs like a spirit of bale.And the noise of a shriek and a groan strikes up in the gusts of the gale.In the throat of a feculent pit is the beard of a bloody-red sedge;And a foam like the foam of a fit sweats out of the lips of the ledge.But down in the water of death, in the livid, dead pool at the base—Bow low, with inaudible breath, beseech with the hands to the face!A furlong of fetid, black fen, with gelid, green patches of pond,Lies dumb by the horns of the glen—at the gates of the horror beyond;And those who have looked on it tell of the terrible growths that are there—The flowerage fostered by hell, the blossoms that startle and scare.If ever a wandering bird should light on Gehennas like thisBe sure that a cry will be heard, and the sound of the flat adder's hiss.But hard by the jaws of the bend is a ghastly Thing matted with moss—Ah, Lord! be a father, a friend, for the sake of the Christ of the Cross.Black Tom, with the sinews of five—that never a hangman could hang—In the days of the shackle and gyve, broke loose from the guards of the gang.Thereafter, for seasons a score, this devil prowled under the ban;A mate of red talon and paw, a wolf in the shape of a man.But, ringed by ineffable fire, in a thunder and wind of the north,The sword of Omnipotent ire—the bolt of high Heaven went forth!But, wan as the sorrowful foam, a grey mother waits by the seaFor the boys that have never come home these fifty-four winters and three.From the folds of the forested hills there are ravelled and roundabout tracks,Because of the terror that fills the strong-handed men of the axe!Of the workers away in the range there is none that will wait for the night,When the storm-stricken moon is in change and the sinister fog is in sight.And later and deep in the dark, when the bitter wind whistles about,There is never a howl or a bark from the dog in the kennel without,But the white fathers fasten the door, and often and often they start,At a sound like a foot on the floor and a touch like a hand on the heart.
When underneath the brown dead grassMy weary bones are laid,I hope I shall not see the glassAt ninety in the shade.I trust indeed that, when I lieBeneath the churchyard pine,I shall not hear that startling cry"'Thermom' is ninety-nine!"If one should whisper through my sleep"Come up and be alive,"I'd answer—No, unless you'll keepThe glass at sixty-five.Imightbe willing if allowedTo wear old Adam's rig,And mix amongst the city crowdLike Polynesian "nig".Far better in the sod to lie,With pasturing pig above,Than broil beneath a copper sky—In sight of all I love!Far better to be turned to grassTo feed the poley cow,Than be the half boiled bream, alas,That I am really now!For cow and pig I would not hear,And hoof I would not see;But if these items did appearThey wouldn't trouble me.For ah! the pelt of mortal manWeighs less than half a ton,And any sight is better thanA sultry southern sun.
(Written in the shadow of 1872.)
Twelve years ago, when I could faceHigh heaven's dome with different eyes—In days full-flowered with hours of grace,And nights not sad with sighs—I wrote a song in which I stroveTo shadow forth thy strain of woe,Dark widowed sister of the grove!—Twelve wasted years ago.But youth was then too young to findThose high authentic syllables,Whose voice is like the wintering windBy sunless mountain fells;Nor had I sinned and suffered thenTo that superlative degreeThat I would rather seek, than men,Wild fellowship with thee!But he who hears this autumn dayThy more than deep autumnal rhyme,Is one whose hair was shot with greyBy Grief instead of Time.He has no need, like many a bard,To sing imaginary pain,Because he bears, and finds it hard,The punishment of Cain.No more he sees the affluenceWhich makes the heart of Nature glad;For he has lost the fine, first senseOf Beauty that he had.The old delight God's happy breezeWas wont to give, to Grief has grown;And therefore, Niobe of trees,His song is like thine own!But I, who am that perished soul,Have wasted so these powers of mine,That I can never write that whole,Pure, perfect speech of thine.Some lord of words august, supreme,The grave, grand melody demands;The dark translation of thy themeI leave to other hands.Yet here, where plovers nightly callAcross dim, melancholy leas—Where comes by whistling fen and fallThe moan of far-off seas—A grey, old Fancy often sitsBeneath thy shade with tired wings,And fills thy strong, strange rhyme by fitsWith awful utterings.Then times there are when all the wordsAre like the sentences of oneShut in by Fate from wind and birdsAnd light of stars and sun,No dazzling dryad, but a darkDream-haunted spirit doomed to beImprisoned, crampt in bands of bark,For all eternity.Yea, like the speech of one aghastAt Immortality in chains,What time the lordly storm rides pastWith flames and arrowy rains:Some wan Tithonus of the wood,White with immeasurable years—An awful ghost in solitudeWith moaning moors and meres.And when high thunder smites the hillAnd hunts the wild dog to his den,Thy cries, like maledictions, shrillAnd shriek from glen to glen,As if a frightful memory whippedThy soul for some infernal crimeThat left it blasted, blind, and stript—A dread to Death and Time!But when the fair-haired August dies,And flowers wax strong and beautiful,Thy songs are stately harmoniesBy wood-lights green and cool—Most like the voice of one who showsThrough sufferings fierce, in fine relief,A noble patience and repose—A dignity in grief.But, ah! conceptions fade away,And still the life that lives in thee—The soul of thy majestic lay—Remains a mystery!And he must speak the speech divine—The language of the high-throned lords—Who'd give that grand old theme of thineIts sense in faultless words.By hollow lands and sea-tracts harsh,With ruin of the fourfold gale,Where sighs the sedge and sobs the marsh,Still wail thy lonely wail;And, year by year, one step will breakThe sleep of far hill-folded streams,And seek, if only for thy sakeThy home of many dreams.
No song is this of leaf and bird,And gracious waters flowing;I'm sick at heart, for I have heardBig Billy Vickers "blowing".He'd never take a leading placeIn chambers legislative:This booby with the vacant face—This hoddy-doddy native!Indeed, I'm forced to say aside,To you, O reader, solely,He only wants the horns and hideTo be a bullock wholly.But, like all noodles, he is vain;And when his tongue is wagging,I feel inclined to copy Cain,And "drop" him for his bragging.He, being Bush-bred, stands, of course,Six feet his dirty socks in;His lingo is confined to horseAnd plough, and pig and oxen.Two years ago he'd less to sayWithin his little circuit;But now he has, besides a dray,A team of twelve to work it.No wonder is it that he feelsInclined to clack and rattleAbout his bullocks and his wheels—He owns a dozen cattle.In short, to be exact and blunt,In his own estimationHe's "out and out" the head and frontTop-sawyer of creation!For, mark me, he can "sit a buck"For hours and hours together;And never horse has had the luckTo pitch him from the leather.If ever he should have a "spill"Upon the grass or gravel,Be sure of this, the saddle willWith Billy Vickers travel.At punching oxen you may guessThere's nothing out can "camp" him:He has, in fact, the slouch and dressWhich bullock-driver stamp him.I do not mean to give offence,But I have vainly strivenTo ferret out the difference'Twixt driver and the driven.Of course, the statements herein madeIn every other stanzaAre Billy's own; and I'm afraidThey're stark extravaganza.I feel constrained to treat as trashHis noisy fiddle-faddleAbout his doings with the lash,His feats upon the saddle.But grant he "knows his way about",Or grant that he is silly,There cannot be the slightest doubtOf Billy's faith in Billy.Of all the doings of the dayHis ignorance is utter;But he can quote the price of hay,The current rate of butter.His notions of our leading menAre mixed and misty very:He knows a cochin-china hen—He never speaks of Berry.As you'll assume, he hasn't heardOf Madame Patti's singing;But I will stake my solemn wordHe knows what maize is bringing.Surrounded by majestic peaks,By lordly mountain ranges,Where highest voice of thunder speaksHis aspect never changes.The grand Pacific there beyondHis dirty hut is glowing:He only sees a big salt pond,O'er which his grain is going.The sea that covers half the sphere,With all its stately speeches,Is held by Bill to be a mereBroad highway for his peaches.Through Nature's splendid temples hePlods, under mountains hoary;But he has not the eyes to seeTheir grandeur and their glory.A bullock in a biped's boot,I iterate, is Billy!He crushes with a careless footThe touching water-lily.I've said enough—I'll let him go!If he could read these verses,He'd pepper me for hours, I know,With his peculiar curses.But this is sure, he'll never changeHis manners loud and flashy,Nor learn with neatness to arrangeHis clothing, cheap and trashy.Like other louts, he'll jog along,And swig at shanty liquors,And chew and spit. Here ends the songOf Mr. Billy Vickers.
I am writing this song at the closeOf a beautiful day of the springIn a dell where the daffodil growsBy a grove of the glimmering wing;From glades where a musical wordComes ever from luminous fall,I send you the song of a birdThat I wish to be dear to you all.I have given my darling the nameOf a land at the gates of the day,Where morning is always the same,And spring never passes away.With a prayer for a lifetime of light,I christened her Persia, you see;And I hope that some fathers to-nightWill kneel in the spirit with me.She is only commencing to lookAt the beauty in which she is set;And forest and flower and brook,To her are all mysteries yet.I know that to many my wordsWill seem insignificant things;Butyouwho are mothers of birdsWill feel for the father who sings.For all of you doubtless have beenWhere sorrows are many and wild;And youknowwhat a beautiful sceneOf this world can be made by a child:I am sure, if they listen to this,Sweet women will quiver, and longTo tenderly stoop to and kissThe Persia I've put in a song.And I'm certain the critic will pause,And excuse, for the sake of my bird,My sins against critical laws—The slips in the thought and the word.And haply some dear little faceOf his own to his mind will occur—Some Persia who brightens his place—And I'll be forgiven for her.A life that is turning to greyHas hardly been happy, you see;But the rose that has dropped on my wayIs morning and music to me.Yea, she that I hold by the handIs changing white winter to green,And making a light of the land—All fathers will know what I mean:All women and men who have knownThe sickness of sorrow and sin,Will feel—having babes of their own—My verse and the pathos therein.For that must be touching which showsHow a life has been led from the wildTo a garden of glitter and rose,By the flower-like hand of a child.She is strange to this wonderful sphere;One summer and winter have setSince God left her radiance here—Her sweet second year is not yet.The world is so lovely and newTo eyes full of eloquent light,And, sisters, I'm hoping that youWill pray for my Persia to-night.For I, who have suffered so much,And know what the bitterness is,Am sad to think sorrow must touchSome day even darlings like this!But sorrow is part of this life,And, therefore, a father doth longFor the blessing of mother and wifeOn the bird he has put in a song.
Strange is the song, and the soul that is singingFalters because of the vision it sees;Voice that is not of the living is ringingDown in the depths where the darkness is clinging,Even when Noon is the lord of the leas,Fast, like a curse, to the ghosts of the trees!Here in a mist that is parted in sunder,Half with the darkness and half with the day;Face of a woman, but face of a wonder,Vivid and wild as a flame of the thunder,Flashes and fades, and the wail of the greyWater is loud on the straits of the bay!Father, whose years have been many and weary—Elder, whose life is as lovely as lightShining in ways that are sterile and dreary—Tell me the name of this beautiful peri,Flashing on me like the wonderful whiteStar, at the meeting of morning and night.Look to thy Saviour, and down on thy knee, man,Lean on the Lord, as the Zebedee leaned;Daughter of hell is the neighbour of thee, man—Lilith, of Adam the luminous leman!Turn to the Christ to be succoured and screened,Saved from the eyes of a marvellous fiend!Serpent she is in the shape of a woman,Brighter than woman, ineffably fair!Shelter thyself from the splendour, and sue, man;Light that was never a loveliness humanLives in the face of this sinister snare,Longing to strangle thy soul with her hair!Lilith, who came to the father and bound himFast with her eyes in the first of the springs;Lilith she is, but remember she drowned him,Shedding her flood of gold tresses around him—Lulled him to sleep with the lyric she sings:Melody strange with unspeakable things!Low is her voice, but beware of it ever,Swift bitter death is the fruit of delay;Never was song of its beauty—ah! never—Heard on the mountain, or meadow, or river,Not of the night is it, not of the day—Fly from it, stranger, away and away.Back on the hills are the blossom and feather,Glory of noon is on valley and spire;Here is the grace of magnificent weather,Where is the woman from gulfs of the nether?Where is the fiend with the face of desire?Gone, with a cry, in miraculous fire!Sound that was not of this world, or the spaciousSplendid blue heaven, has passed from the lea;Dead is the voice of the devil audacious:Only a dream is her music fallacious,Here, in the song and the shadow of tree,Down by the green and the gold of the sea.
Singer of songs of the hills—Dreamer, by waters unstirred,Back in a valley of rills,Home of the leaf and the bird!—Read in this fall of the yearJust the compassionate phrase,Faded with traces of tear,Written in far-away days:"Gone is the light of my lap(Lord, at Thy bidding I bow),Here is my little one's cap,He has no need of it now,Give it to somebody's boy—Somebody's darling"—she wrote.Touching was Bob in his joy—Bob without boots or a coat.Only a cap; but it gaveCapless and comfortless oneHappiness, bright as the brave,Beautiful light of the sun.Soft may the sanctified sodRest on the father who ledBob from the gutter, unshod—Covered his cold little head!Bob from the foot to the crownMeasured a yard, and no more—Baby alone in the town,Homeless, and hungry, and sore—Child that was never a child,Hiding away from the rain,Draggled and dirty and wild,Down in a pipe of the drain.Poor little beggar was Bob—Couldn't afford to be sick,Getting a penny a job,Sometimes a curse and a kick.Father was killed by the drink;Mother was driven to shame;Bob couldn't manage to think—He had forgotten their name.God was in heaven above,Flowers illumined the ground,Women of infinite loveLived in the palaces round—Saints with the character sweetFound in the fathers of old,Laboured in alley and street—Baby slept out in the cold.Nobody noticed the child—Nobody knew of the miteCreeping about like a wildThing in the shadow of night.Beaten by drunkards and cowed—Frightened to speak or to sob—How could he ask you aloud,"Have you a penny for Bob?"Few were the pennies he got—Seldom could hide them away,Watched by the ravenous sotEver at wait for his prey.Poor little man! He would weepOft for a morsel of bread;Coppers he wanted to keepWent to the tavern instead.This was his history, friend—Ragged, unhoused, and alone;How could the child comprehendLove that he never had known?Hunted about in the world,Crouching in crevices dim,Crust with a curse at him hurledStood for a kindness with him.Little excited his joy—Bun after doing a job;Mother of bright-headed boy,Think of the motherless Bob!High in the heavens augustProvidence saw him, and said—"Out of the pits of the dustLift him, and cover his head."Ah, the ineffable grace,Father of children, in Thee!Boy in a radiant place,Fanned by the breeze of the sea—Child on a lullaby lapSaid, in the pause of his pain,"Mother, don't bury my cap—Give it to Bob in the lane."Beautiful bidding of Death!What could she do but obey,Even when suffering FaithHadn't the power to pray?So, in the fall of the year,Saint with the fatherly headHunted for somebody's dear—"Somebody's darling," he said.Bob, who was nobody's child,Sitting on nobody's lap,Draggled and dirty and wild—Bob got the little one's cap.Strange were compassionate words!Waif of the alley and laneDreamed of the music of birdsFloating about in the rain.White-headed father in God,Over thy beautiful graveGreen is the grass of the sod,Soft is the sound of the wave.Down by the slopes of the seaOften and often will sobBoy who was fostered by thee—This is the story of Bob.
He has a name which can't be broughtWithin the sphere of metre;But, as he's Peter by report,I'll trot him out as Peter.I call him mine; but don't supposeThat I'm his dad, O reader!My wife has got a Norman nose—She reads the tales of Ouida.I never loved a nigger belle—My tastes are too aesthetic!The perfume from a gin is—well,A rather strong emetic.But, seeing that my theme is Pete,This verse will be the neaterIf I keep on the proper beat,And stick throughout to Peter.We picked him up the Lord knows where!At noon we came across himAsleep beside a hunk of bear—His paunch was bulged with 'possum.(Last stanza will not bear, I own,A pressure analytic;But bard whose weight is fourteen stone,Is apt to thump the critic.)We asked the kid to give his name:He didn't seem too willing—The darkey played the darkey's game—We tipped him with a shilling!We tipped him with a shining bob—No Tommy Dodd, believe us.We didn't "tumble" to his job—Ah, why did Pete deceive us!I, being, as I've said, a bard,Resolved at once to fosterThis mite whose length was just a yard—This portable impostor!"This babe"—I spoke in Wordsworth's tone—(See Wordsworth's "Lucy", neighbour)"I'll make a darling of my own;And he'll repay my labour."He'll grow as gentle as a fawn—As quiet as the blossomsThat beautify a land of lawn—He'll eat no more opossums."The child I to myself will takeIn a paternal manner;And ah! he will not swallow snakeIn future, or 'goanna'."Will you reside with me, my dear?"I asked in accents mellow—The nigger grinned from ear to ear,And said, "All right, old fellow!"And so my Pete was taken home—My pretty piccaninny!And, not to speak of soap or comb,His cleansing cost a guinea."But hang expenses!" I exclaimed,"I'll give him education:A 'nig' is better when he's tamed,Perhaps, than a Caucasian."Ethnologists are in the wrongAbout our sable brothers;And I intend to stop the songOf Pickering and others."Alas, I didn't do it though!Old Pickering's conclusionsWere to the point, as issues show,And mine were mere delusions.My inky pet was clothed and fedFor months exceeding forty;But to the end, it must be said,His ways were very naughty.When told about the Land of MornAbove this world of Mammon,He'd shout, with an emphatic scorn,"Ah, gammon, gammon, gammon!"He never lingered, like the bard,To sniff at rose expanding."Me like," he said, "em cattle-yard—Fine smell—de smell of branding!"The soul of man, I tried to show,Went up beyond our vision."You ebber see dat fellow go?"He asked in sheer derision.In short, it soon occurred to meThis kid of six or seven,Who wouldn't learn his A B C,Was hardly ripe for heaven.He never lost his appetite—He bigger grew, and bigger;And proved, with every inch of height,A nigger is a nigger.And, looking from this moment back,I have a strong persuasionThat, after all, a finished blackIs not the "clean"—Caucasian.Dear Peter from my threshold went,One morning in the body:He "dropped" me, to oblige a gent—A gent with spear and waddy!He shelved me for a boomerang—We never had a quarrel;And, if a moral here doth hang,Why let it hang—the moral!My mournful tale its course has run—My Pete, when last I spied him,Was eating 'possum underdone:He had his gin beside him.