(Written in the shadow of 1872.)
From the rainy hill-heads, where, in starts and in spasms,Leaps wild the white torrent from chasms to chasms—From the home of bold echoes, whose voices of wonderFly out of blind caverns struck black by high thunder—Through gorges august, in whose nether recessesIs heard the far psalm of unseen wildernesses—Like a dominant spirit, a strong-handed sharerOf spoil with the tempest, comes down the Narrara.Yea, where the great sword of the hurricane cleavethThe forested fells that the dark never leaveth—By fierce-featured crags, in whose evil abyssesThe clammy snake coils, and the flat adder hisses—Past lordly rock temples, where Silence is rivenBy the anthems supreme of the four winds of heaven—It speeds, with the cry of the streams of the fountainsIt chained to its sides, and dragged down from the mountains!But when it goes forth from the slopes with a sally—Being strengthened with tribute from many a valley—It broadens and brightens, and thereupon marchesAbove the stream sapphires and under green arches,With the rhythm of majesty—careless of cumber—Its might in repose and its fierceness in slumber—Till it beams on the plains, where the wind is a bearerOf words from the sea to the stately Narrara!Narrara! grand son of the haughty hill torrent,Too late in my day have I looked at thy current—Too late in my life to discern and inheritThe soul of thy beauty, the joy of thy spirit!With the years of the youth and the hairs of the hoary,I sit like a shadow outside of thy glory;Nor look with the morning-like feelings, O river,That illumined the boy in the days gone for ever!Ah! sad are the sounds of old ballads which borrowOne-half of their grief from the listener's sorrow;And sad are the eyes of the pilgrim who tracesThe ruins of Time in revisited places;But sadder than all is the sense of his lossesThat cometh to one when a sudden age crossesAnd cripples his manhood. So, stricken by fate, IFelt older at thirty than some do at eighty.Because I believe in the beautiful story,The poem of Greece in the days of her glory—That the high-seated Lord of the woods and the watersHas peopled His world with His deified daughters—That flowerful forests and waterways streamingAre gracious with goddesses glowing and gleaming—I pray that thy singing divinity, fairerThan wonderful women, may listen, Narrara!O spirit of sea-going currents!—thou, beingThe child of immortals, all-knowing, all-seeing—Thou hast at thy heart the dark truth that I borrowFor the song that I sing thee, no fanciful sorrow;In the sight of thine eyes is the history writtenOf Love smitten down as the strong leaf is smitten;And before thee there goeth a phantom beseechingFor faculties forfeited—hopes beyond reaching.. . . . .Thou knowest, O sister of deities blazingWith splendour ineffable, beauty amazing,What life the gods gave me—what largess I tasted—The youth thrown away, and the faculties wasted.I might, as thou seest, have stood in high places,Instead of in pits where the brand of disgrace is,A byword for scoffers—a butt and a caution,With the grave of poor Burns and Maginn for my portion.But the heart of the Father Supreme is offended,And my life in the light of His favour is ended;And, whipped by inflexible devils, I shiver,With a hollow "Too late" in my hearing for ever;But thou—being sinless, exalted, supernal,The daughter of diademed gods, the eternal—Shalt shine in thy waters when time and existenceHave dwindled, like stars, in unspeakable distance.But the face of thy river—the torrented powerThat smites at the rock while it fosters the flower—Shall gleam in my dreams with the summer-look splendid,And the beauty of woodlands and waterfalls blended;And often I'll think of far-forested noises,And the emphasis deep of grand sea-going voices,And turn to Narrara the eyes of a lover,When the sorrowful days of my singing are over.
Because this man fulfilled his days,Like one who walks with steadfast gazeAverted from forbidden waysWith lures of fair, false flowerage deep,Behold the Lord whose throne is dimWith fires of flaming seraphim—The Christ that suffered sent for him:"He giveth His beloved sleep."Think not that souls whose deeds augustPut sin to shame and make men justBecome at last the helpless dustThat wintering winds through waste-lands sweep!The higher life within us cries,Like some fine spirit from the skies,"The Father's blessing on us lies—'He giveth His beloved sleep.'"Not human sleep—the fitful restWith evil shapes of dreams distressed,—But perfect quiet, unexpressedBy any worldly word we keep.The dim Hereafter framed in creedsMay not be this; but He who readsOur lives, sets flowers on wayside weeds—"He giveth His beloved sleep."Be sure this hero who has passedThe human space—the outer vast—Who worked in harness to the last,Doth now a hallowed harvest reap.Love sees his grave, nor turns away—The eyes of faith are like the day,And grief has not a word to say—"He giveth His beloved sleep."That fair, rare spirit, Honour, throwsA light, which puts to shame the rose,Across his grave, because she knowsThe son whose ashes it doth keep;And, like far music,thisis heard—"Behold the man who never stirred,By word of his, an angry word!—'He giveth His beloved sleep.'"He earned his place. Within his hands,The power which counsels and commands,And shapes the social life of lands,Became a blessing pure and deep.Through thirty years of turbulenceOur thoughts were sweetened with a senseOf his benignant influence—"He giveth His beloved sleep."No splendid talents, which exciteLike music, songs, or floods of light,Were his; but, rather, all those bright,Calm qualities of soul which reapA mute, but certain, fine respect,Not only from a source elect,But from the hearts of every sect—"He giveth His beloved sleep."He giveth His beloved rest!The faithful soul that onward pressed,Unswerving, from Life's east to west,By paths austere and passes steep,Is past all toil; and, over Death,With reverent hands and prayerful breath,I plant this flower, alive with faith—"He giveth His beloved sleep."
—* Araluen: The poet's daughter, who died in infancy.—
Take this rose, and very gently place it on the tender, deepMosses where our little darling, Araluen, lies asleep.Put the blossom close to baby—kneel with me, my love, and pray;We must leave the bird we've buried—say good-bye to her to-day.In the shadow of our trouble we must go to other lands,And the flowers we have fostered will be left to other hands:Other eyes will watch them growing—other feet will softly treadWhere two hearts are nearly breaking, where so many tears are shed.Bitter is the world we live in: life and love are mixed with pain;We will never see these daisies—never water them again.Ah! the saddest thought in leaving baby in this bush aloneIs that we have not been able on her grave to place a stone:We have been too poor to do it; but, my darling, never mind—God is in the gracious heavens, and His sun and rain are kind:They will dress the spot with beauty, they will make the grasses grow:Many winds will lull our birdie, many songs will come and go.Here the blue-eyed Spring will linger, here the shining month will stay,Like a friend, by Araluen, when we two are far away;But beyond the wild, wide waters, we will tread another shore—We will never watch this blossom, never see it any more.Girl, whose hand at God's high altar in the dear, dead year I pressed,Lean your stricken head upon me—this is still your lover's breast!She who sleeps was first and sweetest—none we have to take her place;Empty is the little cradle—absent is the little face.Other children may be given; but this rose beyond recall,But this garland of your girlhood, will be dearest of them all.None will ever, Araluen, nestle where you used to be,In my heart of hearts, you darling, when the world was new to me;We were young when you were with us, life and love were happy thingsTo your father and your mother ere the angels gave you wings.You that sit and sob beside me—you, upon whose golden headMany rains of many sorrows have from day to day been shed;Who because your love was noble, faced with me the lot austereEver pressing with its hardship on the man of letters here—Let me feel that you are near me, lay your hand within mine own;You are all I have to live for, now that we are left alone.Three there were, but one has vanished. Sins of mine have made you weep;But forgive your baby's father now that baby is asleep.Let us go, for night is falling; leave the darling with her flowers;Other hands will come and tend them—other friends in other hours.
(The poem which won the prize offered by the proprietorsof the "Sydney Morning Herald".)
Now, while Orion, flaming south, doth setA shining foot on hills of wind and wet—Far haughty hills beyond the fountains coldAnd dells of glimmering greenness manifold—While August sings the advent of the Spring,And in the calm is heard September's wing,The lordly voice of song I ask of thee,High, deathless radiance—crowned Calliope!What though we never hear the great god's laysWhich made all music the Hellenic days—What though the face of thy fair heaven beamsStill only on the crystal Grecian streams—What though a sky of new, strange beauty shinesWhere no white Dryad sings within the pines:Here is a land whose large, imperial graceMust tempt thee, goddess, in thine holy place!Here are the dells of peace and plenilune,The hills of morning and the slopes of noon;Here are the waters dear to days of blue,And dark-green hollows of the noontide dew;Here lies the harp, by fragrant wood-winds fanned,That waits the coming of thy quickening hand!And shall Australia, framed and set in sea,August with glory, wait in vain for thee?Shall more than Tempe's beauty be unsungBecause its shine is strange—its colours young?No! by the full, live light which puts to shameThe far, fair splendours of Thessalian flame—By yonder forest psalm which sinks and swellsLike that of Phocis, grave with oracles—By deep prophetic winds that come and goWhere whispering springs of pondering mountains flow—By lute-like leaves and many-languaged caves,Where sounds the strong hosanna of the waves,This great new majesty shall not remainUnhonoured by the high immortal strain!Soon, soon, the music of the southern lyreShall start and blossom with a speech like fire!Soon, soon, shall flower and flow in flame divineThy songs, Apollo, and Euterpe, thine!Strong, shining sons of Delphicus shall riseWith all their father's glory in their eyes;And then shall beam on yonder slopes and springsThe light that swims upon the light of things.And therefore, lingering in a land of lawn,I, standing here, a singer of the dawn,With gaze upturned to where wan summits lieAgainst the morning flowing up the sky—Whose eyes in dreams of many colours seeA glittering vision of the years to be—Do ask of thee, Calliope, one hourOf life pre-eminent with perfect power,That I may leave a song whose lonely raysMay shine hereafter from these songless days.For now there breaks across the faint grey rangeThe rose-red dawning of a radiant change.A soft, sweet voice is in the valleys deep,Where darkness droops and sings itself to sleep.The grave, mute woods, that yet the silence holdOf dim, dead ages, gleam with hints of gold.Yon eastern cape that meets the straitened wave—A twofold tower above the whistling cave—Whose strength in thunder shields the gentle lea,And makes a white wrath of a league of sea,Now wears the face of peace; and in the bayThe weak, spent voice of Winter dies away.In every dell there is a whispering wing,On every lawn a glimmer of the Spring;By every hill are growths of tender green—On every slope a fair, new life is seen;And lo! beneath the morning's blossoming fires,The shining city of a hundred spires,In mists of gold, by countless havens furled,And glad with all the flags of all the world!These are the shores, where, in a dream of fear,Cathay saw darkness dwelling half the year!*1*These are the coasts that old fallacious talesChained down with ice and ringed with sleepless gales!This is the land that, in the hour of awe,From Indian peaks the rapt Venetian saw!*2*Here is the long grey line of strange sea wallThat checked the prow of the audacious Gaul,What time he steered towards the southern snow,From zone to zone, four hundred years ago!*3*By yonder gulf, whose marching waters meetThe wine-dark currents from the isles of heat,Strong sons of Europe, in a far dim year,Faced ghastly foes, and felt the alien spear!There, in a later dawn, by shipless waves,The tender grasses found forgotten graves.*4*Far in the west, beyond those hills sublime,Dirk Hartog anchored in the olden time;There, by a wild-faced bay, and in a cleft,His shining name the fair-haired Northman left;*5*And, on those broad imperial waters, farBeneath the lordly occidental star,Sailed Tasman down a great and glowing spaceWhose softer lights were like his lady's face.In dreams of her he roved from zone to zone,And gave her lovely name to coasts unknown*6*And saw, in streaming sunset everywhere,The curious beauty of her golden hair,By flaming tracts of tropic afternoon,Where in low heavens hangs a fourfold moon.Here, on the tides of a resplendent year,By capes of jasper, came the buccaneer.*7*Then, then, the wild men, flying from the beach,First heard the clear, bold sounds of English speech;And then first fell across a Southern plainThe broad, strong shadows of a Saxon train.Near yonder wall of stately cliff, that bravesThe arrogance of congregated waves,The daring son of grey old Yorkshire stoodAnd dreamed in a majestic solitude,What time a gentle April shed its showers,Aflame with sunset, on the Bay of Flowers.*8*The noble seaman who withheld the hand,And spared the Hector of his native land—The single savage, yelling on the beachThe dark, strange curses of barbaric speech.Exalted sailor! whose benignant phraseShines full of beauty in these latter days;Who met the naked tribes of fiery skiesWith great, divine compassion in his eyes;Who died, like Him of hoary Nazareth,That death august—the radiant martyr's death;Who in the last hour showed the Christian faceWhose crumbling beauty shamed the alien race.In peace he sleeps where deep eternal calmsLie round the land of heavy-fruited palms.Lo! in that dell, behind a singing bar,Where deep, pure pools of glittering waters are,Beyond a mossy, yellow, gleaming glade,The last of Forby Sutherland was laid—The blue-eyed Saxon from the hills of snowWho fell asleep a hundred years ago.In flowerful shades, where gold and green are rife,Still rests the shell of his forgotten life.Far, far away, beneath some northern skyThe fathers of his humble household lie;But by his lonely grave are sapphire streams,And gracious woodlands, where the fire-fly gleams;And ever comes across a silver leaThe hymn sublime of the eternal sea.—*1* According to Mr. R. H. Major, and others, the Great Southern Landis referred to in old Chinese records as a polar continent,subject to the long polar nights.*2* Marco Polo mentions a large land called by the Malays Lochac.The northern coast was supposed to be in latitude 10 Degrees S.*3* Mr. R. H. Major discovered a map of Terra Australisdated A.D. 1555 and bearing the name of Le Testu, a French pilot.Le Testu must have visited these coasts some years beforethe date of the chart.*4* The sailors of theDuyfken, a Dutch vessel which enteredthe Gulf of Carpentaria in A.D. 1606, were attacked by the natives.In the fray some of the whites were killed. No doubt theseunlucky adventurers were the first Europeans buried in Australia.*5* Dirk Hartog left a tin plate, bearing his name, in Shark Bay,Western Australia.*6* The story of Tasman's love for Maria, the daughter of Governor Van Diemen,was generally accepted at the time Kendall wrote; but it has sincebeen disproved. Maria was the wife of Antony Van Diemen,Governor of Batavia, who had no children.—Ed.*7* Dampier.*8* Botany Bay.—On that bold hill, against a broad blue stream,Stood Arthur Phillip in a day of dream:What time the mists of morning westward rolled,And heaven flowered on a bay of gold!Here, in the hour that shines and sounds afar,Flamed first old England's banner like a star;Here, in a time august with prayer and praise,Was born the nation of these splendid days;And here this land's majestic yesterdayOf immemorial silence died away.Where are the woods that, ninety summers back,Stood hoar with ages by the water-track?Where are the valleys of the flashing wing,The dim green margins and the glimmering spring?Where now the warrior of the forest race,His glaring war-paint and his fearless face?The banks of April and the groves of bird,The glades of silence and the pools unstirred,The gleaming savage and the whistling spear,Passed with the passing of a wild old year!A single torrent singing by the wave,A shadowy relic in a mountain cave,A ghost of fire in immemorial hills,The whittled tree by folded wayside rills,The call of bird that hides in hollows far,Where feet of thunder, wings of winter are—Of all that Past, these wrecks of wind and rain,These touching memories—these alone remain!What sun is this that beams and broadens west?What wonder this, in deathless glory dressed?What strange, sweet harp of highest god took flameAnd gave this Troy its life, its light, its name?What awful lyre of marvellous power and rangeUpraised this Ilion—wrought this dazzling change?No shining singer of Hellenic dreamsSet yonder splendour by the morning streams!No god who glimmers in a doubtful sphereShed glory there—created beauty here!This is the city that our fathers framed—These are the crescents by the elders named!The human hands of strong, heroic menBroke down the mountain, filled the gaping glen,Ran streets through swamp, built banks against the foam,And bent the arch and raised the lordly dome!Here are the towers that the founders made!Here are the temples where these Romans prayed!Here stand the courts in which their leaders met!Here are their homes, and here their altars yet!Here sleep the grand old men whose lives sublimeOf thought and action shine and sound through time!Who worked in darkness—onward fought their waysTo bring about these large majestic days—Who left their sons the hearts and high desiresWhich built this city of the hundred spires!A stately Morning rises on the wing,The hills take colour, and the valleys sing.A strong September flames beyond the lea—A silver vision on a silver sea.A new Age, "cast in a diviner mould",Comes crowned with lustre, zoned and shod with gold!What dream is this on lawny spaces set?What miracle of dome and minaret?What great mute majesty is this that takesThe first of morning ere the song-bird wakes?Lo, this was built to honour gathering landsBy Celtic, Saxon, Australasian hands!These are the halls where all the flags unfurledBreak into speech that welcomes all the world.And lo, our friends are here from every zone—From isles we dream of and from tracts unknown!Here are the fathers from the stately spaceWhere Ireland is and England's sacred face!Here are the Norsemen from their strong sea-wall,The grave, grand Teuton and the brilliant Gaul!From green, sweet groves the dark-eyed Lusians sail,And proud Iberia leaves the grape-flushed vale.Here are the lords whose starry banner shinesFrom fierce Magellan to the Arctic pines.Here come the strangers from the gates of day—From hills of sunrise and from white Cathay.The spicy islands send their swarthy sons,The lofty North its mailed and mighty ones.Venetian keels are floating on our sea;Our eyes are glad with radiant Italy!Yea, North and South, and glowing West and East,Are gathering here to grace our splendid feast!The chiefs from peaks august with Asian snow,The elders born where regal roses grow,Come hither, with the flower of that fair landThat blooms beyond the fiery tracts of sandWhere Syrian suns their angry lustres flingAcross blind channels of the bygone spring.And on this great, auspicious day, the flowersOf labour glorify majestic hours.The singing angel from the starry sphereOf dazzling Science shows his wonders here;And Art, the dream-clad spirit, starts, and bringsFrom Fairyland her strange, sweet, glittering things.Here are the works man did, what time his faceWas touched by God in some exalted place;Here glows the splendour—here the marvel wroughtWhen Heaven flashed upon the maker's thought!Yea, here are all the miracles sublime—The lights of Genius and the stars of Time!And, being lifted by this noble noon,Australia broadens like a tropic moon.Her white, pure lustre beams across the zones;The nations greet her from their awful thrones.From hence the morning beauty of her nameWill shine afar, like an exceeding flame.Her place will be with mighty lords, whose swayControls the thunder and the marching day.Her crown will shine beside the crowns of kingsWho shape the seasons, rule the course of things,The fame of her across the years to beWill spread like light on a surpassing sea;And graced with glory, girt with power august,Her life will last till all things turn to dust.To Thee the face of song is lifted now,O Lord! to whom the awful mountains bow;Whose hands, unseen, the tenfold storms control;Whose thunders shake the spheres from pole to pole;Who from Thy highest heaven lookest down,The sea Thy footstool, and the sun Thy crown;Around whose throne the deathless planets singHosannas to their high, eternal King.To Thee the soul of prayer this morning turns,With faith that glitters, and with hope that burns!And, in the moments of majestic calmThat fill the heart in pauses of the psalm,She asks Thy blessing for this fair young landThat flowers within the hollow of Thine hand!She seeks of Thee that boon, that gift sublime,The Christian radiance, for this hope of Time!And Thou wilt listen! and Thy face will bendTo smile upon us—Master, Father, Friend!The Christ to whom pure pleading heart hath creptWas human once, and in the darkness wept;The gracious love that helped us long agoWill on us like a summer sunrise flow,And be a light to guide the nation's feetOn holy paths—on sacred ways and sweet.
Phantom streams were in the distance—mocking lights of lake and pool—Ghosts of trees of soft green lustre—groves of shadows deep and cool!Yea, some devil ran before them changing skies of brass to blue,Setting bloom where curse is planted, where a grass-blade never grew.Six there were, and high above them glared a wild and wizened sun,Ninety leagues from where the waters of the singing valleys run.There before them, there behind them, was the great, stark, stubborn plain,Where the dry winds hiss for ever, and the blind earth moans for rain!Ringed about by tracks of furnace, ninety leagues from stream and tree,Six there were, with wasted faces, working northwards to the sea!. . . . .Ah, the bitter, hopeless desert! Here these broken human wrecksTrod the wilds where sand of fire is with the spiteful spinifex,Toiled through spheres that no bird knows of, where with fiery emphasisHell hath stamped its awful mint-mark deep on every thing that is!Toiled and thirsted, strove and suffered!Thiswas where December's breathAs a wind of smiting flame is on weird, haggard wastes of death!Thiswas where a withered moan is, and the gleam of weak, wan star,And a thunder full of menace sends its mighty voices far!Thiswas where black execrations, from some dark tribunal hurled,Set the brand of curse on all things in the morning of the world!. . . . .One man yielded—then another—then a lad of nineteen yearsReeled and fell, with English rivers singing softly in his ears,English grasses started round him—then the grace of Sussex leaCame and touched him with the beauty of a green land by the sea!Old-world faces thronged about him—old-world voices spoke to him;But his speech was like a whisper, and his eyes were very dim.In a dream of golden evening, beaming on a quiet strand,Lay the stranger till a bright One came and took him by the hand.England vanished; died the voices; but he heard a holier tone,And an angel that we know not led him to the lands unknown!. . . . .Six there were, but three were taken! Three were left to struggle still;But against the red horizon flamed a horn of brindled hill!But beyond the northern skyline, past a wall of steep austere,Lay the land of light and coolness in an April-coloured year!"Courage, brothers!" cried the leader. "On the slope of yonder peakThere are tracts of herb and shadow, and the channels of the creek!"So they made one last great effort—haled their beasts through brake and briar,Set their feet on spurs of furnace, grappled spikes and crags of fire,Fought the stubborn mountain forces, smote down naked, natural powers,Till they gazed from thrones of Morning on a sphere of streams and flowers.Out behind them was the desert, glaring like a sea of brass!Here before them were the valleys, fair with moonlight-coloured grass!At their backs were haggard waste-lands, bickering in a wicked blaze!In their faces beamed the waters, marching down melodious ways!Touching was the cool, soft lustre over laps of lawn and lea;And majestic was the great road Morning made across the sea.On the sacred day of Christmas, after seven months of grief,Rested three of six who started, on a bank of moss and leaf—Rested by a running river, in a hushed, a holy week;And they named the stream that saved them—named it fitly—"Christmas Creek".
—* Orara: A tributary of the river Clarence.—
The strong sob of the chafing streamThat seaward fights its wayDown crags of glitter, dells of gleam,Is in the hills to-day.But far and faint, a grey-winged formHangs where the wild lights wane—The phantom of a bygone storm,A ghost of wind and rain.The soft white feet of afternoonAre on the shining meads,The breeze is as a pleasant tuneAmongst the happy reeds.The fierce, disastrous, flying fire,That made the great caves ring,And scarred the slope, and broke the spire,Is a forgotten thing.The air is full of mellow sounds,The wet hill-heads are bright,And down the fall of fragrant grounds,The deep ways flame with light.A rose-red space of stream I see,Past banks of tender fern;A radiant brook, unknown to meBeyond its upper turn.The singing, silver life I hear,Whose home is in the green,Far-folded woods of fountains clear,Where I have never been.Ah, brook above the upper bend,I often long to standWhere you in soft, cool shades descendFrom the untrodden land!Ah, folded woods, that hide the graceOf moss and torrents strong,I often wish to know the faceOf that which sings your song!But I may linger, long, and lookTill night is over all:My eyes will never see the brook,Or sweet, strange waterfall.The world is round me with its heat,And toil, and cares that tire;I cannot with my feeble feetClimb after my desire.But, on the lap of lands unseen,Within a secret zone,There shine diviner gold and greenThan man has ever known.And where the silver waters singDown hushed and holy dells,The flower of a celestial Spring—A tenfold splendour, dwells.Yea, in my dream of fall and brookBy far sweet forests furled,I see that light for which I lookIn vain through all the world—The glory of a larger skyOn slopes of hills sublime,That speak with God and morning, highAbove the ways of Time!Ah! haply in this sphere of changeWhere shadows spoil the beam,It would not do to climb that rangeAnd test my radiant Dream.The slightest glimpse of yonder place,Untrodden and alone,Might wholly kill that nameless grace,The charm of the unknown.And therefore, though I look and long,Perhaps the lot is brightWhich keeps the river of the songA beauty out of sight.
Wizened the wood is, and wan is the way through it;White as a corpse is the face of the fen;Only blue adders abide in and stray through it—Adders and venom and horrors to men.Here is the "ghost of a garden" whose ministerFosters strange blossoms that startle and scare.Red as man's blood is the sun that, with sinisterFlame, is a menace of hell in the air.Wrinkled and haggard the hills are—the jags of themGape like to living and ominous things:Storm and dry thunder cry out in the crags of them—Fire, and the wind with a woe in its wings.Never a moon without clammy-cold shroud on itHitherward comes, or a flower-like star!Only the hiss of the tempest is loud on it—Hiss, and the moan of a bitter sea bar.Here on this waste, and to left and to right of it,Never is lisp or the ripple of rain:Fierce is the daytime and wild is the night of it,Flame without limit and frost without wane!Trees half alive, with the sense of a curse on them,Shudder and shrink from the black heavy gale;Ghastly, with boughs like the plumes of a hearse on them:Barren of blossom and blasted with bale.Under the cliff that stares down to the south of it—Back by the horns of a hazardous hill,Dumb is the gorge with a grave in the mouth of itStill, as a corpse in a coffin is still.Never there hovers a hope of the Spring by it—Never a glimmer of yellow and green:Only the bat with a whisper of wing by itFlits like a life out of flesh and unseen.Here are the growths that are livid and glutinous,Speckled, and bloated with poisonous blood:This is the haunt of the viper-breed mutinous:Cursed with the curse of weird Catherine Flood.He that hath looked on it—hurried aghast from it,Hair of him frozen with horror straightway,Chased by a sudden strange pestilent blast from it—Where is the speech of him—what can he say?Hath he not seen the fierce ghost of a hag in it?Heard maledictions that startle the stars?Dumb is his mouth as a mouth with a gag in it—Mute is his life as a life within bars.Just the one glimpse of that grey, shrieking woman thereRinged by a circle of furnace and fiend!He that went happy and healthy and human there—Where shall the white leper fly to be cleaned?Here, in a pit with indefinite doom on it,Here, in the fumes of a feculent moat,Under an alp with inscrutable gloom on it,Squats the wild witch with a ghoul at her throat!Black execration that cannot be spoken of—Speech of red hell that would suffocate Song,Starts from this terror with never a token ofDay and its loveliness all the year long.Sin without name to it—man never heard of it—Crime that would startle a fiend from his lair,Blasted this Glen, and the leaf and the bird of it—Where is there hope for it, Father, O where?Far in the days of our fathers, the life in itBlossomed and beamed in the sight of the sun:Yellow and green and the purple were rife in it,Singers of morning and waters that run.Storm of the equinox shed no distress on it,Thunder spoke softly, and summer-time leftSunset's forsaken bright beautiful dress on it—Blessing that shone half the night in the cleft.Hymns of the highlands—hosannas from hills by it,Psalms of great forests made holy the spot:Cool were the mosses and clear were the rills by it—Far in the days when the Horror was not.Twenty miles south is the strong, shining Hawkesbury—Spacious and splendid, and lordly with blooms.There, between mountains magnificent, walks buryMiles of their beauty in green myrtle glooms.There, in the dell, is the fountain with falls by it—Falls, and a torrent of summering stream:There is the cave with the hyaline halls by it—Haunt of the echo and home of the dream.Over the hill, by the marvellous base of it,Wanders the wind with a song in its breathOut to the sea with the gold on the face of it—Twenty miles south of the Valley of Death.
—* Every happy expression in these stanzas may fairly be claimedby the Hon. W. B. Dalley (Author's note).—
Deep under the spires of a hill, by the feet of the thunder-cloud trod,I pause in a luminous, still, magnificent temple of God!At the steps of the altar august—a vision of angels in stone—I kneel, with my head to the dust, on the floors by the seraphim known.No father in Jesus is near, with the high, the compassionate face;But the glory of Godhead is here—its presence transfigures the place!Behold in this beautiful fane, with the lights of blue heaven impearled,I think of the Elders of Spain, in the deserts—the wilds of the world!I think of the wanderers poor who knelt on the flints and the sands,When the mighty and merciless Moor was lord of the Lady of Lands.Where the African scimitar flamed, with a swift, bitter death in its kiss,The fathers, unknown and unnamed, found God in cathedrals like this!The glow of His Spirit—the beam of His blessing—made lords of the menWhose food was the herb of the stream, whose roof was the dome of the den.And, far in the hills by the sea, these awful hierophants prayedFor Rome and its temples to be—in a temple by Deity made.Who knows of their faith—of its power?Perhaps, with the light in their eyes,They saw, in some wonderful hour, the marvel of centuries rise!Perhaps in some moment supreme, when the mountains were holy and still,They dreamed the magnificent dream that came to the monks of Seville!Surrounded by pillars and spires whose summits shone out in the glareOf the high, the omnipotent fires, who knows what was seen by them there?Be sure, if they saw, in the noon of their faith, some ineffable fane,They looked on the church like a moon dropped down by the Lord into Spain.And the Elders who shone in the time when Christ over Christendom beamedMay have dreamed at their altars sublimethe dream that their fathers had dreamed,By the glory of Italy moved—the majesty shining in Rome—They turned to the land that they loved,and prayed for a church in their home;And a soul of unspeakable fire descended on them, and they foughtAnd laboured a life for the spire and tower and dome of their thought!These grew under blessing and praise, as morning in summertime grows—As Troy in the dawn of the days to the music of Delphicus rose.In a land of bewildering light, where the feet of the season are Spring's,They worked in the day and the night, surrounded by beautiful things.The wonderful blossoms in stone—the flower and leaf of the Moor,On column and cupola shone, and gleamed on the glimmering floor.In a splendour of colour and form, from the marvellous African's handsYet vivid and shining and warm, they planted the Flower of the Lands.Inspired by the patience supreme of the mute, the magnificent past,They toiled till the dome of their dream in the firmament blossomed at last!Just think of these men—of their time—of the days of their deed, and the scene!How touching their zeal—how sublimetheir suppression of self must have been!In a city yet hacked by the sword and scarred by the flame of the Moor,They started the work of their Lord, sad, silent, and solemnly poor.These fathers, how little they thought of themselves, and how much of the daysWhen the children of men would be brought to pray in their temple, and praise!Ah! full of the radiant, still, heroic old life that has flown,The merciful monks of Seville toiled on, and died bare and unknown.The music, the colour, the gleam of their mighty cathedral will beHereafter a luminous dream of the heaven I never may see;To a spirit that suffers and seeks for the calm of a competent creed,This temple, whose majesty speaks, becomes a religion indeed;The passionate lights—the intense, the ineffable beauty of sound—Go straight to the heart through the sense,as a song would of seraphim crowned.And lo! by these altars august, the life that is highest we live,And are filled with the infinite trustand the peace that the world cannot give.They have passed, have the elders of time—they have gone; but the work of their hands,Pre-eminent, peerless, sublime, like a type of eternity stands!They are mute, are the fathers who made this church in the century dim;But the dome with their beauty arrayed remains, a perpetual hymn.Their names are unknown; but so long as the humble in spirit and pureAre worshipped in speech and in song, our love for these monks will endure;And the lesson by sacrifice taught will live in the light of the yearsWith a reverence not to be bought, and a tenderness deeper than tears.
No classic warrior tempts my penTo fill with verse these pages—No lordly-hearted man of menMy Muse's thought engages.Let others choose the mighty dead,And sing their battles over!My champion, too, has fought and bled—My theme is one-eyed Rover.A grave old dog, with tattered earsToo sore to cock up, reader!—A four-legged hero, full of years,But sturdy as a cedar.Still, age is age; and if my rhymeIs dashed with words pathetic,Don't wonder, friend; I've seen the timeWhen Rove was more athletic.He lies coiled up before me now,A comfortable crescent.His night-black nose and grizzled browFixed in a fashion pleasant.But ever and anon he liftsThe one good eye I mention,And tries a thousand doggish shiftsTo rivet my attention.Just let me name his name, and upYou'll see him start and patterTowards me, like a six-months' pupIn point of speed, but fatter.He pokes his head upon my lap,Nor heeds the whip above him;Because he knows, the dear old chap,His human friends all love him.Our younger dogs cut off from henceAt sight of lash uplifted;But Rove, with grand indifference,Remains, and can't be shifted.And, ah! the set upon his phizAt meals defies expression;For I confess that Rover isA cadger by profession.The lesser favourites of the placeAt dinner keep their distance;But by my chair one grizzled faceBegs on with brave persistence.His jaws present a toothless sight,But still my hearty heroCan satisfy an appetiteWhich brings a bone to zero.And while Spot barks and pussy mews,To move the cook's compassion,He takes his after-dinner snoozeIn genuine biped fashion.In fact, in this, our ancient petSo hits off human nature,That I at times almost forgetHe's but a dog in feature.Between his tail and bright old eyeThe swift communicationsOutstrip the messages which flyFrom telegraphic stations.And, ah! that tail's rich eloquenceConveys too clear a moral,For men who have a grain of senseAbout its drift to quarrel.At night, his voice is only heardWhen it is wanted badly;For Rover is too cute a birdTo follow shadows madly.The pup and Carlo in the darkWill start at crickets chirring;But when we hear the old dog barkWe know there'ssomethingstirring.He knows a gun, does Rover here;And if I cock a trigger,He makes himself from tail to earAn admirable figure.For, once the fowling piece is out,And game is on thetapis,The set upon my hero's snoutWould make a cockle happy.And as for horses, why, betwixtOur chestnut mare and RoverThe mutual friendship is as fixedAs any love of lover.And when his master's hand resignsThe bridle for the paddle,His dogship on the grass reclines,And stays and minds the saddle.Of other friends he has no lack;Grey pussy is his crony,And kittens mount upon his back,As youngsters mount a pony.They talk of man's superior sense,And charge the few with treasonWho think a dog's intelligenceIs very like our reason.But though Philosophy has triedA score of definitions,'Twixt man and dog it can't decideThe relative positions.And I believe upon the whole(Though you my creed deny, sir),That Rove's entitled to a soulAs much as you or I, sir!Indeed, I fail to see the forceOf your derisive laughterBecause I will not say my horseHas not some horse-hereafter.A fig for dogmas—let them pass!There's much in life to grieve us;And what most grieves isthis, alas!That all our best friends leave us.And when I sip my nightly grog,And watch old Rover blinking,This royal ruin of a dogCalls forth some serious thinking.For, though he's lightly touched by Fate,I cannot help remarkingThe step of age is in his gait,Its hoarseness in his barking.He still goes on his rounds at nightTo keep off forest prowlers;But, ah! he has no teeth to biteThe cunning-hearted howlers.Not like the Rover that, erewhile,Gave droves of dingoes battle,And dashed through flood and fierce defile—The friend, but dread, of cattle.Not like to him that, in past years,Won fight by fight, and scatteredWhole tribes of dogs with rags of earsAnd tail-ends torn and tattered.But while time tells upon our pet,And makes him greyer daily,He is a noble fellow yet,And wears his old age gaily.Still, dogs must die; and in the end,When he is past caressing,We'll mourn him like some human friendWhose presence was a blessing.Till then, be bread and peace his lot—A life of calm and clover!The pup may sleep outside with Spot—We'll keep the nook for Rover.