Stand out, swift-footed leaders of the horns,And draw strong breath, and fill the hollowy cliffWith shocks of clamour,—let the chasm takeThe noise of many trumpets, lest the huntShould die across the dim Aonian hills,Nor break through thunder and the surf-white caveThat hems about the old-eyed OgygesAnd bars the sea-wind, rain-wind, and the sea!Much fierce delight hath old-eyed Ogyges(A hairless shadow in a lion's skin)In tumult, and the gleam of flying spears,And wild beasts vexed to death; "for," sayeth he,"Here lying broken, do I count the daysFor every trouble; being like the tree—The many-wintered father of the trunksOn yonder ridges: wherefore it is wellTo feel the dead blood kindling in my veinsAt sound of boar or battle; yea to findA sudden stir, like life, about my feet,And tingling pulses through this frame of mineWhat time the cold clear dayspring, like a birdAfar off, settles on the frost-bound peaks,And all the deep blue gorges, darkening down,Are filled with men and dogs and furious dust!"So in the time whereof thou weetest well—The melancholy morning of the World—He mopes or mumbles, sleeps or shouts for glee,And shakes his sides—a cavern-hutted King!But when the ouzel in the gaps at eveDoth pipe her dreary ditty to the surgeAll tumbling in the soft green level light,He sits as quiet as a thick-mossed rock,And dreameth in his cold old savage wayOf gliding barges on the wine-dark waves,And glowing shapes, and sweeter things than sleep,But chiefly, while the restless twofold batGoes flapping round the rainy eaves above,Where one broad opening letteth in the moon,He starteth, thinking of that grey-haired man,His sire: then oftentimes the white-armed childOf thunder-bearing Jove, young Thebe, comesAnd droops above him with her short sweet sighsFor Love distraught—for dear Love's faded sakeThat weeps and sings and weeps itself to deathBecause of casual eyes, and lips of frost,And careless mutterings, and most weary years.Bethink you, doth the wan Egyptian countThis passion, wasting like an unfed flame,Of any worth now; seeing that his thighsAre shrunken to a span and that the blood,Which used to spin tumultuous down his sidesOf life in leaping moments of desire,Is drying like a thin and sluggish streamIn withered channels—think you, doth he pauseFor golden Thebe and her red young mouth?Ah, golden Thebe—Thebe, weeping there,Like some sweet wood-nymph wailing for a rock,If Octis with the Apollonian face—That fair-haired prophet of the sun and stars—Could take a mist and dip it in the WestTo clothe thy limbs of shine about with shineAnd all the wonder of the amethyst,He'd do it—kneeling like a slave for thee!If he could find a dream to comfort thee,He'd bring it: thinking little of his lore,But marvelling greatly at those eyes of thine.Yea, if the Shepherd waiting for thy steps,Pent down amongst the dank black-weeded rims,Could shed his life like rain about thy feet,He'd count it sweetness past all sweets of loveTo die by thee—his life's end in thy sight.Oh, but he loves the hunt, doth Ogyges!And therefore should we blow the horn for him:He, sitting mumbling in his surf-white caveWith helpless feet and alienated eyes,Should hear the noises nathless dawn by dawnWhich send him wandering swiftly through the daysWhen like a springing cataract he leaptFrom crag to crag, the strongest in the chaseTo spear the lion, leopard, or the boar!Oh, but he loves the hunt; and, while the shoutsOf mighty winds are in this mountained World,Behold the white bleak woodman, Winter, haltsAnd bends to him across a beard of snowFor wonder; seeing Summer in his looksBecause of dogs and calls from throats of hairAll in the savage hills of Hyria!And, through the yellow evenings of the year,What time September shows her mooned frontAnd poppies burnt to blackness droop for drouth,The dear Demeter, splashed from heel to thighWith spinning vine-blood, often stoops to himTo crush the grape against his wrinkled lipsWhich sets him dreaming of the thickening wolvesIn darkness, and the sound of moaning seas.So with the blustering tempest doth he findA stormy fellowship: for when the NorthComes reeling downwards with a breath like spears,Where Dryope the lonely sits all nightAnd holds her sorrow crushed betwixt her palms,He thinketh mostly of that time of timesWhen Zeus the Thunderer—broadly-blazing King—Like some wild comet beautiful but fierce,Leapt out of cloud and fire and smote the topsOf black Ogygia with his red right hand,At which great fragments tumbled to the Deeps—The mighty fragments of a mountain-land—And all the World became an awful Sea!But, being tired, the hairless OgygesBest loveth night and dim forgetfulness!"For," sayeth he, "to look for sleep is goodWhen every sleep is as a sleep of deathTo men who live, yet know not why they live,Nor how they live! I have no thought to tellThe people when this time of mine began;But forest after forest grows and falls,And rock by rock is wasted with the rime,While I sit on and wait the end of all;Here taking every footstep for a sign;An ancient shadow whiter than the foam!"
The caves of the sea have been troubled to-dayWith the water which whitens, and widens, and fills;And a boat with our brother was driven awayBy a wind that came down from the tops of the hills.Behold I have seen on the threshold againA face in a dazzle of hair!Do you know that she watches the rain, and the main,And the waves which are moaning there?Ah, moaning and moaning there!Now turn from your casements, and fasten your doors,And cover your faces, and pray, if you can;There are wails in the wind, there are sighs on the shores,And alas, for the fate of a storm-beaten man!Oh, dark falls the night on the rain-rutted verge,So sad with the sound of the foam!Oh, wild is the sweep and the swirl of the surge;And his boat may never come home!Ah, never and never come home!
With noise of battle and the dust of fray,Half hid in fog, the gloomy mountain lay;But Succoth's watchers, from their outer fields,Saw fits of flame and gleams of clashing shields;For, where the yellow river draws its spring,The hosts of Israel travelled, thundering!There, beating like the storm that sweeps to seaAcross the reefs of chafing Galilee,The car of Abner and the sword of SaulDrave Gaza down Gilboa's southern wall;But swift and sure the spears of Ekron flew,Till peak and slope were drenched with bloody dew."Shout, Timnath, shout!" the blazing leaders cried,And hurled the stone and dashed the stave aside."Shout, Timnath, shout! Let Hazor hold the height,Bend the long bow and break the lords of fight!"From every hand the swarthy strangers sprang,Chief leaped on chief, with buckler buckler rang!The flower of armies! Set in Syrian heat,The ridges clamoured under labouring feet;Nor stayed the warriors till, from Salem's road,The crescent horns of Abner's squadrons glowed.Then, like a shooting splendour on the wing,The strong-armed son of Kish came thundering;And as in Autumn's fall, when woods are bare,Two adverse tempests meet in middle air,So Saul and Achish, grim with heat and hate,Met by the brook and shook the scales of Fate.For now the struggle swayed, and, firm as rocksAgainst the storm-wind of the equinox,The rallied lords of Judah stood and bore,All day, the fiery tides of fourfold war.But he that fasted in the secret caveAnd called up Samuel from the quiet grave,And stood with darkness and the mantled ghostsA bitter night on shrill Samarian coasts,Knew well the end—of how the futile swordOf Israel would be broken by the Lord;How Gath would triumph, with the tawny lineThat bend the knee at Dagon's brittle shrine;And how the race of Kish would fall to wreck,Because of vengeance stayed at Amalek.Yet strove the sun-like king, nor rested handTill yellow evening filled the level land.Then Judah reeled before a biting hailOf sudden arrows shot from Achor's vale,Where Libnah, lapped in blood from thigh to heel,Drew the tense string, and pierced the quivering steel.There fell the sons of Saul, and, man by man,The chiefs of Israel, up to Jonathan;And while swift Achish stooped and caught the spoil,Ten chosen archers, red with sanguine toil,Sped after Saul, who, faint and sick, and soreWith many wounds, had left the thick of war.He, like a baffled bull by hunters pressed,Turned sharp about, and faced the flooded west,And saw the star-like spears and moony spokesGleam from the rocks and lighten through the oaks—A sea of splendour! How the chariots rolledOn wheels of blinding brightness manifold!While stumbling over spike and spine and spurOf sultry lands, escaped the son of NerWith smitten men. At this the front of SaulGrew darker than a blasted tower wall;And seeing how there crouched upon his right,Aghast with fear, a black Amalekite,He called, and said: "I pray thee, man of pain,Red from the scourge, and recent from the chain,Set thou thy face to mine, and stoutly standWith yonder bloody sword-hilt in thy hand,And fall upon me." But the faltering hindStood trembling, like a willow in the wind.Then further Saul: "Lest Ashdod's vaunting hostsShould bear me captive to their bleak-blown coasts,I pray thee, smite me! seeing peace has fled,And rest lies wholly with the quiet dead."At this a flood of sunset broke, and smoteKeen, blazing sapphires round a kingly throat,Touched arm and shoulder, glittered in the crest,And made swift starlights on a jewelled breast.So, starting forward, like a loosened hound,The stranger clutched the sword and wheeled it round,And struck the Lord's Anointed. Fierce and fleetPhilistia came, with shouts and clattering feet;By gaping gorges and by rough defileDark Ashdod beat across a dusty mile;Hot Hazor's bowmen toiled from spire to spire,And Gath sprang upwards, like a gust of fire;On either side did Libnah's lords appear,And brass-clad Timnath thundered in the rear."Mark, Achish, mark!"—South-west and south there spedA dabbled hireling from the dreadful dead."Mark, Achish, mark!"—The mighty front of Saul,Great in his life and god-like in his fall!This was the arm that broke Philistia's pride,Where Kishon chafes his seaward-going tide;This was the sword that smote till set of sunRed Gath, from Michmash unto Ajalon,Low in the dust. And Israel scattered far!And dead the trumps and crushed the hoofs of war!So fell the king, as it was said by himWho hid his forehead in a mantle dimAt bleak Endor, what time unholy ritesVexed the long sleep of still Samarian heights;For, bowed to earth before the hoary priest,Did he of Kish withstand the smoking feast,To fast, in darkness and in sackcloth rolled,And house with wild things in the biting cold,Because of sharpness lent to Gaza's sword,And Judah widowed by the angry Lord.So silence came. As when the outer vergeOf Carmel takes the white and whistling surge,Hoarse, hollow noises fill the caves, and roarAlong the margin of the echoing shore,Thus war had thundered; but as evening breaksAcross the silver of Assyrian lakes,When reapers rest, and through the level redOf sunset, peace, like holy oil, is shed,Thus silence fell. But Israel's daughters creptOutside their thresholds, waited, watched, and wept.Then they that dwell beyond the flats and fensOf sullen Jordan, and in gelid glensOf Jabesh-Gilead—chosen chiefs and few—Around their loins the hasty girdle drew,And faced the forests, huddled fold on fold,And dells of glimmering greenness manifold.What time Orion in the west did setA shining foot on hills of wind and wet;These journeyed nightly till they reached the capesWhere Ashdod revelled over heated grapes;And while the feast was loud and scouts were turned,From Saul's bound body cord by cord they burned,And bore the king athwart the place of tombs,And hasted eastward through the tufted glooms;Nor broke the cake nor stayed the step till mornShot over Debir's cones and crags forlorn.From Jabesh then the weeping virgins came;In Jabesh then they built the funeral flame;With costly woods they piled the lordly pyre,Brought yellow oils and fed the perfect fire;While round the crescent stately elders spreadThe flashing armour of the mighty dead,With crown and spear, and all the trophies wonFrom many wars by Israel's dreadful son.Thence, when the feet of evening paused and stoodOn shadowy mountains and the roaring flood,(As through a rushing twilight, full of rain,The weak moon looked athwart Gadara's plain),The younger warriors bore the urn, and brokeThe humid turf about a wintering oak,And buried Saul; and, fasting, went their ways,And hid their faces seven nights and days.
Said the yellow-haired Spirit of SpringTo the white-footed Spirit of Snow,"On the wings of the tempest take wing,And leave me the valleys, and go."And, straightway, the streams were unchained,And the frost-fettered torrents broke free,And the strength of the winter-wind wanedIn the dawn of a light on the sea.Then a morning-breeze followed and fell,And the woods were alive and astirWith the pulse of a song in the dell,And a whisper of day in the fir.Swift rings of sweet water were rolledDown the ways where the lily-leaves grew,And the green, and the white, and the gold,Were wedded with purple and blue.But the lips of the flower of the roseSaid, "where is the ending hereof?Is it sweet with you, life, at the close?Is it sad to be emptied of love?"And the voice of the flower of the peachWas tender and touching in tone,"When each has been grafted on each,It is sorrow to live on alone."Then the leaves of the flower of the vineSaid, "what will there be in the dayWhen the reapers are red with my wine,And the forests are yellow and grey?"And the tremulous flower of the quinceMade answer, "three seasons agoMy sisters were star-like, but since,Their graves have been made in the snow."Then the whispering flower of the fernSaid, "who will be sad at the death,When Summer blows over the burn,With the fierceness of fire in her breath?"And the mouth of the flower of the sedgeWas opened to murmur and sigh,"Sweet wind-breaths that pause at the edgeOf the nightfall, and falter, and die."
IA Mountain Spring
Peace hath an altar there. The sounding feetOf thunder and the 'wildering wings of rainAgainst fire-rifted summits flash and beat,And through grey upper gorges swoop and strain;But round that hallowed mountain-spring remain,Year after year, the days of tender heat,And gracious nights, whose lips with flowers are sweet,And filtered lights, and lutes of soft refrain.A still, bright pool. To men I may not tellThe secret that its heart of water knows,The story of a loved and lost repose;Yet this I say to cliff and close-leaved dell:A fitful spirit haunts yon limpid well,Whose likeness is the faithless face of Rose.
IILaura
If Laura—lady of the flower-soft face—Should light upon these verses, she may takeThe tenderest line, and through its pulses traceWhat man can suffer for a woman's sake.For in the nights that burn, the days that break,A thin pale figure stands in Passion's place,And peace comes not, nor yet the perished graceOf youth, to keep old faiths and fires awake.Ah! marvellous maid. Life sobs, and sighing saith,"She left me, fleeting like a fluttered dove;But I would have a moment of her breath,So I might taste the sweetest sense thereof,And catch from blossoming, honeyed lips of loveSome faint, some fair, some dim, delicious death."
IIIBy a River
By red-ripe mouth and brown, luxurious eyesOf her I love, by all your sweetness shedIn far, fair days, on one whose memory fliesTo faithless lights, and gracious speech gainsaid,I pray you, when yon river-path I tread,Make with the woodlands some soft compromise,Lest they should vex me into fruitless sighsWith visions of a woman's gleaming head!For every green and golden-hearted thingThat gathers beauty in that shining place,Beloved of beams and wooed by wind and wing,Is rife with glimpses of her marvellous face;And in the whispers of the lips of SpringThe music of her lute-like voice I trace.
IVAttila
What though his feet were shod with sharp, fierce flame,And death and ruin were his daily squires,The Scythian, helped by Heaven's thunders, came:The time was ripe for God's avenging fires.Lo! loose, lewd trulls, and lean, luxurious liarsHad brought the fair, fine face of Rome to shame,And made her one with sins beyond a name—That queenly daughter of imperial sires!The blood of elders like the blood of sheep,Was dashed across the circus. Once while dinAnd dust and lightnings, and a draggled heapOf beast-slain men made lords with laughter leap,Night fell, with rain. The earth, so sick of sin,Had turned her face into the dark to weep.
VA Reward
Because a steadfast flame of clear intentGave force and beauty to full-actioned life;Because his way was one of firm ascent,Whose stepping-stones were hewn of change and strife;Because as husband loveth noble wifeHe loved fair Truth; because the thing he meantTo do, that thing he did, nor paused, nor bentIn face of poor and pale conclusions; yea!Because of this, how fares the Leader dead?What kind of mourners weep for him to-day?What golden shroud is at his funeral spread?Upon his brow what leaves of laurel, say?About his breast is tied a sackcloth grey,And knots of thorns deface his lordly head.
VITo——
A handmaid to the genius of thy songIs sweet, fair Scholarship. 'Tis she suppliesThe fiery spirit of the passioned eyesWith subtle syllables, whose notes belongTo some chief source of perfect melodies;And glancing through a laurelled, lordly throngOf shining singers, lo! my vision fliesTo William Shakespeare! He it is whose strong,Full, flute-like music haunts thy stately verse.A worthy Levite of his court thou art!One sent among us to defeat the curseThat binds us to the Actual. Yea, thy part,Oh, lute-voiced lover! is to lull the heartOf love repelled, its darkness to disperse.
VIIThe Stanza of Childe Harold
Who framed the stanza of Childe Harold? HeIt was who, halting on a stormy shore,Knew well the lofty voice which evermore,In grand distress, doth haunt the sleepless seaWith solemn sounds. And as each wave did rollTill one came up, the mightiest of the whole,To sweep and surge across the vacant lea,Wild words were wedded to wild melody.This poet must have had a speechless senseOf some dead summer's boundless affluence;Else, whither can we trace the passioned loreOf Beauty, steeping to the very coreHis royal verse, and that rare light which liesAbout it, like a sunset in the skies?
VIIIA Living Poet
He knows the sweet vexation in the strifeOf Love with Time, this bard who fain would strayTo fairer place beyond the storms of life,With astral faces near him day by day.In deep-mossed dells the mellow waters flowWhich best he loves; for there the echoes, rifeWith rich suggestions of his long ago,Astarte, pass with thee! And, far away,Dear southern seasons haunt the dreamy eye:Spring, flower-zoned, and Summer, warbling lowIn tasselled corn, alternate come and go,While gypsy Autumn, splashed from heel to thighWith vine-blood, treads the leaves; and, halting nigh,Wild Winter bends across a beard of snow.
IXDante and Virgil
When lost Francesca sobbed her broken taleOf love and sin and boundless agony,While that wan spirit by her side did wailAnd bite his lips for utter misery—The grief which could not speak, nor hear, nor see—So tender grew the superhuman faceOf one who listened, that a mighty traceOf superhuman woe gave way, and paleThe sudden light up-struggled to its place;While all his limbs began to faint and failWith such excess of pity. But, behind,The Roman Virgil stood—the calm, the wise—With not a shadow in his regal eyes,A stately type of all his stately kind.
XRest
Sometimes we feel so spent for want of rest,We have no thought beyond. I know to-day,When tired of bitter lips and dull delayWith faithless words, I cast mine eyes uponThe shadows of a distant mountain-crest,And said "That hill must hide within its breastSome secret glen secluded from the sun.Oh, mother Nature! would that I could runOutside to thee; and, like a wearied guest,Half blind with lamps, and sick of feasting, layAn aching head on thee. Then down the streamsThe moon might swim, and I should feel her grace,While soft winds blew the sorrows from my face,So quiet in the fellowship of dreams."
XIAfter Parting
I cannot tell what change hath come to youTo vex your splendid hair. I only knowOnegrief. The passion left betwixt us two,Like some forsaken watchfire, burneth low.'Tis sad to turn and find it dying so,Without a hope of resurrection! Yet,O radiant face that found me tired and lone!I shall not for the dear, dead past forgetThe sweetest looks of all the summers gone.Ah! time hath made familiar wild regret;For now the leaves are white in last year's bowers,And now doth sob along the ruined leasThe homeless storm from saddened southern seas,While March sits weeping over withered flowers.
XIIAlfred Tennyson
The silvery dimness of a happy dreamI've known of late. Methought where Byron moans,Like some wild gulf in melancholy zones,I passed tear-blinded. Once a lurid gleamOf stormy sunset loitered on the sea,While, travelling troubled like a straitened stream,The voice of Shelley died away from me.Still sore at heart, I reached a lake-lit lea.And then the green-mossed glades with many a grove,Where lies the calm which Wordsworth used to love,And, lastly, Locksley Hall, from whence did riseA haunting song that blew and breathed and blewWith rare delights. 'TwasthereI woke and knewThe sumptuous comfort left in drowsy eyes.
—* Sutherland: Forby Sutherland, one of Captain Cook's seamen,who died shortly after theEndeavouranchored in Botany Bay, 1770.He was the first Englishman buried in Australia.—
All night long the sea out yonder—all night long the wailful sea,Vext of winds and many thunders, seeketh rest unceasingly!Seeketh rest in dens of tempest, where, like one distraught with pain,Shouts the wild-eyed sprite, Confusion—seeketh rest, and moans in vain:Ah! but you should hear it calling, calling when the haggard skyTakes the darks and damps of Winter with the mournful marsh-fowl's cry;Even while the strong, swift torrents from the rainy ridges comeLeaping down and breaking backwards—million-coloured shapes of foam!Then, and then, the sea out yonder chiefly looketh for the boonPortioned to the pleasant valleys and the grave sweet summer moon:Boon of Peace, the still, the saintly spirit of the dew-dells deep—Yellow dells and hollows haunted by the soft, dim dreams of sleep.All night long the flying water breaks upon the stubborn rocks—Ooze-filled forelands burnt and blackened,smit and scarred with lightning shocks;But above the tender sea-thrift, but beyond the flowering fern,Runs a little pathway westward—pathway quaint with turn on turn—Westward trending, thus it leads to shelving shores and slopes of mist:Sleeping shores, and glassy bays of green and gold and amethyst!Theretread gently—gently, pilgrim;therewith thoughtful eyes look round;Cross thy breast and bless the silence: lo, the place is holy ground!Holy ground for ever, stranger! All the quiet silver lightsDropping from the starry heavens through the soft Australian nights—Dropping on those lone grave-grasses—come serene, unbroken, clear,Like the love of God the Father, falling, falling, year by year!Yea, and like a Voice supernal,therethe daily wind doth blowIn the leaves above the sailor buried ninety years ago.
A heap of low, dark, rocky coast,Unknown to foot or feather!A sea-voice moaning like a ghost;And fits of fiery weather!The flying Syrinx turned and spedBy dim, mysterious hollows,Where night is black, and day is red,And frost the fire-wind follows.Strong, heavy footfalls in the wakeCame up with flights of water:The gods were mournful for the sakeOf Ladon's lovely daughter.For when she came to spike and spine,Where reef and river gather,Her feet were sore with shell and chine;She could not travel farther.Across a naked strait of landBlown sleet and surge were humming;But trammelled with the shifting sand,She heard the monster coming!A thing of hoofs and horns and lust:A gaunt, goat-footed stranger!She bowed her body in the dustAnd called on Zeus to change her;And called on Hermes, fair and fleet,And her of hounds and quiver,To hide her in the thickets sweetThat sighed above the river.So he that sits on flaming wheels,And rules the sea and thunder,Caught up the satyr by the heelsAnd tore his skirts asunder.While Arcas, of the glittering plumes,Took Ladon's daughter lightly,And set her in the gracious gloomsThat mix with moon-mist nightly;And touched her lips with wild-flower wine,And changed her body slowly,Till, in soft reeds of song and shine,Her life was hidden wholly.
—* The name of a watercourse, often dry, which in flood-timereaches the river Darling.—
As when the strong stream of a wintering seaRolls round our coast, with bodeful breaks of storm,And swift salt rain, and bitter wind that saithWild things and woeful of the White South LandAlone with God and silence in the cold—As when this cometh, men from dripping doorsLook forth, and shudder for the marinersAbroad, so we for absent brothers lookedIn days of drought, and when the flying floodsSwept boundless; roaring down the bald, black plainsBeyond the farthest spur of western hills.For where the Barwon cuts a rotten land,Or lies unshaken, like a great blind creek,Between hot mouldering banks, it came to this,All in a time of short and thirsty sighs,That thirty rainless months had left the poolsAnd grass as dry as ashes: then it wasOur kinsmen started for the lone Paroo,From point to point, with patient strivings, sheerAcross the horrors of the windless downs,Blue gleaming like a sea of molten steel.But never drought had broke them: never floodHad quenched them: they with mighty youth and health,And thews and sinews knotted like the trees—They, like the children of the native woods,Could stem the strenuous waters, or outliveThe crimson days and dull, dead nights of thirstLike camels: yet of what avail was strengthAlone to them—though it was like the rocksOn stormy mountains—in the bloody timeWhen fierce sleep caught them in the camps at rest,And violent darkness gripped the life in themAnd whelmed them, as an eagle unawaresIs whelmed and slaughtered in a sudden snare.All murdered by the blacks; smit while they layIn silver dreams, and with the far, faint fallOf many waters breaking on their sleep!Yea, in the tracts unknown of any manSave savages—the dim-discovered waysOf footless silence or unhappy winds—The wild men came upon them, like a fireOf desert thunder; and the fine, firm lipsThat touched a mother's lips a year before,And hands that knew a dearer hand than life,Were hewn—a sacrifice before the stars,And left with hooting owls and blowing clouds,And falling leaves and solitary wings!Aye, you may see their graves—you who have toiledAnd tripped and thirsted, like these men of ours;For, verily, I say thatnotso deepTheir bones are that the scattered drift and dustOf gusty days will never leave them bare.O dear, dead, bleaching bones! I know of thoseWho have the wild, strong will to go and sitOutside all things with you, and keep the waysAloof from bats, and snakes, and trampling feetThat smite your peace and theirs—who have the heart,Without the lusty limbs, to face the fireAnd moonless midnights, and to be, indeed,For very sorrow, like a moaning windIn wintry forests with perpetual rain.Because of this—because of sisters leftWith desperate purpose and dishevelled hair,And broken breath, and sweetness quenched in tears—Because of swifter silver for the head,And furrows for the face—because of theseThat should have come with age, that come with pain—O Master! Father! sitting where our eyesAre tired of looking, say for once are we—Areweto set our lips with weary smilesBefore the bitterness of Life and Death,And call it honey, while we bear awayA taste like wormwood?Turn thyself, and sing—Sing, Son of Sorrow! Is there any gainFor breaking of the loins, for melting eyes,And knees as weak as water?—any peace,Or hope for casual breath and labouring lips,For clapping of the palms, and sharper sighsThan frost; or any light to come for thoseWho stand and mumble in the alien streetsWith heads as grey as Winter?—any balmFor pleading women, and the love that knowsOf nothing left to love?They sleep a sleepUnknown of dreams, these darling friends of ours.And we who taste the core of many talesOf tribulation—we whose lives are saltWith tears indeed—we therefore hide our eyesAnd weep in secret, lest our grief should riskThe rest that hath no hurt from daily racksOf fiery clouds and immemorial rains.
Have faith in God. For whosoever listsTo calm conviction in these days of strife,Will learn that in this steadfast stand existsThe scholarship severe of human life.This face to face with doubt! I know how strongHis thews must be who fights and falls and bears,By sleepless nights and vigils lone and long,And many a woeful wraith of wrestling prayers.Yet trust in Him! Not in an old man thronedWith thunders on an everlasting cloud,But in that awful Entity enzonedBy no wild wraths nor bitter homage loud.When from the summit of some sudden steepOf speculation you have strength to turnTo things too boundless for the broken sweepOf finer comprehension, wait and learnThat God hath been "His own interpreter"From first to last. So you will understandThe tribe who best succeed, when men most err,To suck through fogs the fatness of the land.One thing is surer than the autumn tintsWe saw last week in yonder river bend—That all our poor expression helps and hints,However vaguely, to the solemn endThat God is truth; and if our dim idealFall short of fact—so short that we must weep—Why shape specific sorrows, though the realBe not the song which erewhile made us sleep?Remember, truth draws upward. This to usOf steady happiness should be a causeBeyond the differential calculusOr Kant's dull dogmas and mechanic laws.A man is manliest when he wisely knowsHow vain it is to halt and pule and pine;Whilst under every mystery haply flowsThe finest issue of a love divine.
It lies amongst the sleeping stones,Far down the hidden mountain glade;And past its brink the torrent moansFor ever in a dreamy shade.A little patch of dark-green moss,Whose softness grew of quiet ways(With all its deep, delicious floss)In slumb'rous suns of summer days.You know the place? With pleasant tintsThe broken sunset lights the bowers;And then the woods are full with hintsOf distant, dear, voluptuous flowers!'Tis often now the pilgrim turnsA faded face towards that seat,And cools his brow amongst the ferns;The runnel dabbling at his feet.There fierce December seldom goes,With scorching step and dust and drouth;But, soft and low, October blowsSweet odours from her dewy mouth.And Autumn, like a gipsy bold,Doth gather near it grapes and grain,Ere Winter comes, the woodman old,To lop the leaves in wind and rain.O, greenest moss of mountain glen,The face of Rose is known to thee;But we shall never share with menA knowledge dear to love and me!For are they not between us saved,The words my darling used to say,What time the western waters lavedThe forehead of the fainting day?Cool comfort had we on your breastWhile yet the fervid noon burned muteO'er barley field and barren crest,And leagues of gardens flushed with fruit.Oh, sweet and low, we whispered so,And sucked the pulp of plum and peach;But it was many years ago,When each, you know, was loved of each.
A sky of wind! And while these fitful gustsAre beating round the windows in the cold,With sullen sobs of rain, behold I shapeA settler's story of the wild old times:One told by camp-fires when the station draysWere housed and hidden, forty years ago;While swarthy drivers smoked their pipes, and drew,And crowded round the friendly gleaming flameThat lured the dingo, howling, from his caves,And brought sharp sudden feet about the brakes.A tale of Love and Death. And shall I sayA tale of loveindeath—for all the patient eyesThat gathered darkness, watching for a sonAnd brother, never dreaming of the fate—The fearful fate he met alone, unknown,Within the ruthless Australasian wastes?For in a far-off, sultry summer, rimmedWith thundercloud and red with forest fires,All day, by ways uncouth and ledges rude,The wild men held upon a stranger's trail,Which ran against the rivers and athwartThe gorges of the deep blue western hills.And when a cloudy sunset, like the flameIn windy evenings on the Plains of ThirstBeyond the dead banks of the far Barcoo,Lay heavy down the topmost peaks, they came,With pent-in breath and stealthy steps, and crouched,Like snakes, amongst the grasses, till the nightHad covered face from face, and thrown the gloomOf many shadows on the front of things.There, in the shelter of a nameless glen,Fenced round by cedars and the tangled growthsOf blackwood, stained with brown and shot with grey,The jaded white man built his fire, and turnedHis horse adrift amongst the water-poolsThat trickled underneath the yellow leavesAnd made a pleasant murmur, like the brooksOf England through the sweet autumnal noons.Then, after he had slaked his thirst and usedThe forest fare, for which a healthful dayOf mountain life had brought a zest, he tookHis axe, and shaped with boughs and wattle-forksA wurley, fashioned like a bushman's roof:The door brought out athwart the strenuous flameThe back thatched in against a rising wind.And while the sturdy hatchet filled the cliftsWith sounds unknown, the immemorial hauntsOf echoes sent their lonely dwellers forth,Who lived a life of wonder: flying roundAnd round the glen—what time the kangarooLeapt from his lair and huddled with the bats—Far scattering down the wildly startled fells.Then came the doleful owl; and evermoreThe bleak morass gave out the bittern's call,The plover's cry, and many a fitful wailOf chilly omen, falling on the earLike those cold flaws of wind that come and goAn hour before the break of day.AnonThe stranger held from toil, and, settling down,He drew rough solace from his well-filled pipe,And smoked into the night, revolving thereThe primal questions of a squatter's life;For in the flats, a short day's journey pastHis present camp, his station yards were kept,With many a lodge and paddock jutting forthAcross the heart of unnamed prairie-lands,Now loud with bleating and the cattle bells,And misty with the hut-fire's daily smoke.Wide spreading flats, and western spurs of hillsThat dipped to plains of dim perpetual blue;Bold summits set against the thunder heaps;And slopes behacked and crushed by battling kine,Where now the furious tumult of their feetGives back the dust, and up from glen and brakeEvokes fierce clamour, and becomes indeedA token of the squatter's daring life,Which, growing inland—growing year by year—Doth set us thinking in these latter days,And makes one ponder of the lonely landsBeyond the lonely tracks of Burke and Wills,Where, when the wandering Stuart fixed his campsIn central wastes, afar from any homeOr haunt of man, and in the changeless midstOf sullen deserts and the footless milesOf sultry silence, all the ways aboutGrew strangely vocal, and a marvellous noiseBecame the wonder of the waxing glooms.Now, after darkness, like a mighty spellAmongst the hills and dim, dispeopled dells,Had brought a stillness to the soul of things,It came to pass that, from the secret depthsOf dripping gorges, many a runnel-voiceCame, mellowed with the silence, and remainedAbout the caves, a sweet though alien sound;Now rising ever, like a fervent fluteIn moony evenings, when the theme is love;Now falling, as ye hear the Sunday bellsWhile hastening fieldward from the gleaming town.Then fell a softer mood, and memory pausedWith faithful love, amidst the sainted shrinesOf youth and passion in the valleys pastOf dear delights which never grow again.And if the stranger (who had left behindFar anxious homesteads in a wave-swept isle,To face a fierce sea-circle day by day,And hear at night the dark Atlantic's moan)Nowtook a hope and planned a swift return,With wealth and health and with a youth unspent,To those sweet ones that stayed with want at home,Saywhoshall blame him—though the years are long,And life is hard, and waiting makes the heart grow old?Thus passed the time, until the moon sereneStood over high dominion like a dreamOf peace: within the white, transfigured woods;And o'er the vast dew-dripping wildernessOf slopes illumined with her silent fires.Then, far beyond the home of pale red leavesAnd silver sluices, and the shining stemsOf runnel blooms, the dreamy wanderer saw,The wilder for the vision of the moon,Stark desolations and a waste of plain,All smit by flame and broken with the storms;Black ghosts of trees, and sapless trunks that stoodHarsh hollow channels of the fiery noise,Which ran from bole to bole a year before,And grew with ruin, and was like, indeed,The roar of mighty winds with wintering streamsThat foam about the limits of the landAnd mix their swiftness with the flying seas.Now, when the man had turned his face aboutTo take his rest, behold the gem-like eyesOf ambushed wild things stared from bole and brakeWith dumb amaze and faint-recurring glance,And fear anon that drove them down the brush;While from his den the dingo, like a scoutIn sheltered ways, crept out and cowered nearTo sniff the tokens of the stranger's feastAnd marvel at the shadows of the flame.Thereafter grew the wind; and chafing depthsIn distant waters sent a troubled cryAcross the slumb'rous forest; and the chillOf coming rain was on the sleeper's brow,When, flat as reptiles hutted in the scrub,A deadly crescent crawled to where he lay—A band of fierce, fantastic savagesThat, starting naked round the faded fire,With sudden spears and swift terrific yells,Came bounding wildly at the white man's head,And faced him, staring like a dream of Hell!Here let me pass! I would not stay to tellOf hopeless struggles under crushing blows;Of how the surging fiends, with thickening strokes,Howled round the stranger till they drained his strength;How Love and Life stood face to face with HateAnd Death; and then how Death was left aloneWith Night and Silence in the sobbing rains.So, after many moons, the searchers foundThe body mouldering in the mouldering dellAmidst the fungi and the bleaching leaves,And buried it, and raised a stony moundWhich took the mosses. Then the place becameThe haunt of fearful legends and the lairOf bats and adders.There he lies and sleepsFrom year to year—in soft Australian nights,And through the furnaced noons, and in the timesOf wind and wet! Yet never mourner comesTo drop upon that grave the Christian's tearOr pluck the foul, dank weeds of death away.But while the English autumn filled her lapWith faded gold, and while the reapers cooledTheir flame-red faces in the clover grass,They looked for him at home: and when the frostHad made a silence in the mourning lanesAnd cooped the farmers by December fires,They looked for him at home: and through the daysWhich brought about the million-coloured Spring,With moon-like splendours, in the garden plots,They looked for him at home: while Summer danced,A shining singer, through the tasselled corn,They looked for him at home. From sun to sunThey waited. Season after season went,And Memory wept upon the lonely moors,And hope grew voiceless, and the watchers passed,Like shadows, one by one away.And heWhose fate was hidden under forest leavesAnd in the darkness of untrodden dellsBecame a marvel. Often by the hearthsIn winter nights, and when the wind was wildOutside the casements, children heard the taleOf how he left their native vales behind(Where he had been a child himself) to shapeNew fortunes for his father's fallen house;Of how he struggled—how his name became,By fine devotion and unselfish zeal,A name of beauty in a selfish land;And then of how the aching hours went by,With patient listeners praying for the stepWhich never crossed the floor again. So passedThe tale to children; but the bitter endRemained a wonder, like the unknown grave,Alone with God and Silence in the hills.