That love of letters which is as the lightOf deathless verse, intense, ineffable,Hath made this scholar's nature like the white,Pure Roman soul of whom the poets tell.He having lived so long with lords of thought,The grand hierophants of speech and song,Hath from the high, august communion caughtSome portion of their inspiration strong.The clear, bright atmosphere through which he looksIs one by no dim, close horizon bound;The power shed as flame from noble booksHath made for him a larger world around.And he, thus strengthened with the fourfold forceWhich scholarship to genius gives, is oneThat liberal thinkers, pausing in their course,With fine esteem are glad to look upon.He, with the faultless intuition bornOf splendid faculties, sees things aright,And all his strong, immeasurable scornFalls like a thunder on the hypocrite.But for the sufferer and the son of shameOn whom remorse—a great, sad burden—lies,His kindness glistens like a morning flame,Immense compassion shines within his eyes.Firm to the Church by which his fathers stood,But tolerant to every form of creed,He longs for universal brotherhood,And is a Christian gentleman indeed.These in his honour. May his life be long,And, like a summer with a brilliant close,As full of music as a perfect song,As radiant as a rich, unhandled rose.
IThe cool grass blowing in a breezeOf April valleys sooms and sways;On slopes that dip to quiet seasThrough far, faint drifts of yellowing haze.I lie like one who, in a dreamOf sounds and splendid coloured things,Seems lifted into life supremeAnd has a sense of waxing wings.For through a great arch-light which floodsAnd breaks and spreads and swims alongHigh royal-robed autumnal woods,I hear a glorious sunset song.But, ah, Euterpe! I that pauseAnd listen to the strain divineCan never learn its words, becauseI am no son of thine.How sweet is wandering where the westIs full of thee, what time the mornLooks from his halls of rosy restAcross green miles of gleaming corn!How sweet are dreams in shady nooks,When bees are out, and day is mute,While down the dell there floats the brook'sFine echo of thy marvellous lute!And oh, how sweet is that sad tuneOf thine, within the evening breeze,Which roams beneath the mirrored moonOn silver-sleeping summer seas!How blest are they whom thou hast crowned,Thy priests—the lords who understandThe deep divinity of sound,And live their lives in Wonderland!These stand within thy courts and seeThe light exceeding round thy throne,But I—an alien unto thee—I faint afar off, and alone.
IIIn hills where the keen ThessalonianMade clamour with horse and with horn,In oracular woods the Dodonian—The mystical maiden was born.And the high, the Olympian seven,Ringed round with ineffable flame,Baptized her in halos of heaven,And gave her her beautiful name.And Delphicus, loving her, brought herImmutable dower of dreams,And clothed her with glory, and taught herThe words of the winds and the streams.She dwelt with the echoes that dwellIn far immemorial hills;She wove of their speeches a spell—She borrowed the songs of the rills;And anthems of forest and fire,And passionate psalms of the rainHad life in the life of the lyre,And breath in its infinite strain.In a fair, in a floral abode,Of purple and yellow and red,The voice of her floated and flowed,The light of her lingered and spread,And ever there slipt through the barsOf the leaves of her luminous bowers,Syllables splendid as stars,And faultless as moon-litten flowers.
IIILady of a land of wonder,Daughter of the hill supernal,Far from frost and far from thunderUnder sons and moons eternal!Long ago the strong ImmortalsTook her hence on wheels of fire,Caught her up and shut their portals—Floral maid with fervent lyre.But stray fallen notes of brightnessYet within our world are ringing,Floating on the winds of lightnessGlorious fragments of her singing.Bud of light, she shines above us;But a few of starry pinions—Passioned souls who are her lovers—Dwell in her divine dominions.Few they are, but in the centricFanes of Beauty hold their station;Kings of music, lords authentic,Of the worlds of Inspiration.These are they to whom are givenEyes to see the singing stream-land,Far from earth and near to heaven,Known to gods and men as Dreamland.Mournful humanity, stricken and worn,Toiling for peace in undignified days,Set in a sphere with the shadows forlorn,Seeing sublimity dimmed by a haze—Mournful humanity wearing the signOf trouble with time and unequable things,Long alienated from spaces divine,Sometimes remembers that once it had wings.Chiefly it is when the song and the lightSweeten the heart of the summering west,Music and glory that lend to the nightGlimpses of marvellous havens of rest.Chiefly it is when the beautiful dayDies with a sound on its lips like a psalm—Anthem of loveliness drifting awayOver a sea of unspeakable calm.Then Euterpe's harmoniesIn the ballad rich and rare,Freighted with old memories,Float upon the evening air—Float, like shine in films of rain,Full of past pathetic themes,Tales of perished joy and pain,Frail and faint as dreams in dreams.Then to far-off homes we rove,Homes of youth and hope and faith,Beautiful with lights of love—Sanctified by shrines of death.Ah! and in that quiet hourSoul by soul is borne awayOver tracts of leaf and flower,Lit with a supernal day;Over Music-world serene,Spheres unknown to woes and wars,Homes of wildernesses green,Silver seas and golden shores;Then, like spirits glorified,Sweet to hear and bright to see,Lords in Eden they abideRobed with strange new majesty.
The song that is last of the manyWhose music is full of thy name,Is weaker, O father! than any,Is fainter than flickering flame.But far in the folds of the mountainsWhose bases are hoary with sea,By lone immemorial fountainsThis singer is mourning for thee.Because thou wert chief and a giantWith those who fought on for the rightA hero determined, defiant;As flame was the sleep of thy might.Like Stephen in days that are olden,Thy lot with a rabble was cast,But seasons came on that were golden,And Peace was thy mother at last.I knew of thy fierce tribulation,Thou wert ever the same in my thought—The father and friend of a nationThrough good and through evil report.At Ephesus, fighting in fetters,Paul drove the wild beasts to their pen;So thou with the lash of thy lettersWhipped infamy back to its den.The noise of thy battle is over,Thy sword is hung up in its sheath;Thy grave has been decked by its loverWith beauty of willowy wreath.The winds sing about thee for ever,The voices of hill and of sea;But the cry of the conflict will neverBring sorrow again unto thee.
[Lines sent to a Young Mother.]
A grace that was lent for a very few hours,By the bountiful Spirit above us;She sleeps like a flower in the land of the flowers,She went ere she knew how to love us.Her music of Heaven was strange to this sphere,Her voice is a silence for ever;In the bitter, wild fall of a sorrowful year,We buried our bird by the river.But the gold of the grass, and the green of the vine,And the music of wind and of water,And the torrent of song and superlative shine,Are close to our dear little daughter.The months of the year are all gracious to her,A winter breath visits her never;She sleeps like a bird in a cradle of myrrh,By the banks of the beautiful river.
In dark wild woods, where the lone owl broodsAnd the dingoes nightly yell—Where the curlew's cry goes floating by,We splitters of shingles dwell.And all day through, from the time of the dewTo the hour when the mopoke calls,Our mallets ring where the woodbirds singSweet hymns by the waterfalls.And all night long we are lulled by the songOf gales in the grand old trees;And in the brakes we can hear the lakesAnd the moan of the distant seas.For afar from heat and dust of street,And hall and turret and dome,In forest deep, where the torrents leap,Is the shingle-splitter's home.The dweller in town may lie upon down,And own his palace and park:We envy him not his prosperous lot,Though we slumber on sheets of bark.Our food is rough, but we have enough;Our drink is better than wine:For cool creeks flow wherever we go,Shut in from the hot sunshine.Though rude our roof, it is weather-proof,And at the end of the daysWe sit and smoke over yarn and joke,By the bush-fire's sturdy blaze.For away from din and sorrow and sin,Where troubles but rarely come,We jog along, like a merry song,In the shingle-splitter's home.What though our work be heavy, we shirkFrom nothing beneath the sun;And toil is sweet to those who can eatAnd rest when the day is done.In the Sabbath-time we hear no chime,No sound of the Sunday bells;But yet Heaven smiles on the forest aisles,And God in the woodland dwells.We listen to notes from the million throatsOf chorister birds on high,Our psalm is the breeze in the lordly trees,And our dome is the broad blue sky.Oh! a brave, frank life, unsmitten by strife,We live wherever we roam,And our hearts are free as the great strong sea,In the shingle-splitter's home.
I dread that street—its haggard faceI have not seen for eight long years;A mother's curse is on the place,(There's blood, my reader, in her tears).No child of man shall ever track,Through filthy dust, the singer's feet—A fierce old memory drags me back;I hate its name—I dread that street.Upon the lap of green, sweet lands,Whose months are like your English Mays,I try to hide in Lethe's sandsThe bitter, old Bohemian days.But sorrow speaks in singing leaf,And trouble talketh in the tide;The skirts of a stupendous griefAre trailing ever at my side.I will not say who suffered there,'Tis best the name aloof to keep,Because the world is very fair—Its light should sing the dark to sleep.But, let me whisper, in that streetA woman, faint through want of bread,Has often pawned the quilt and sheetAnd wept upon a barren bed.How gladly would I change my theme,Or cease the song and steal away,But on the hill and by the streamA ghost is with me night and day!A dreadful darkness, full of wild,Chaotic visions, comes to me:I seem to hear a dying child,Its mother's face I seem to see.Here, surely, on this bank of bloom,My verse with shine would ever flow;But ah! it comes—the rented room,With man and wife who suffered so!From flower and leaf there is no hint—I only see a sharp distress—A lady in a faded print,A careworn writer for the press.I only hear the brutal curseOf landlord clamouring for his pay;And yonder is the pauper's hearseThat comes to take a child away.Apart, and with the half-grey headOf sudden age, again I seeThe father writing by the deadTo earn the undertaker's fee.No tear at all is asked for him—A drunkard well deserves his life;But voice will quiver, eyes grow dim,For her, the patient, pure young wife,The gentle girl of better days,As timid as a mountain fawn,Who used to choose untrodden ways,And place at night her rags in pawn.She could not face the lighted square,Or show the street her poor, thin dress;In one close chamber, bleak and bare,She hid her burden of distress.Her happy schoolmates used to drive,On gaudy wheels, the town about;The meat that keeps a dog aliveShe often had to go without.I tell you, this is not a taleConceived by me, but bitter truth;Bohemia knows it, pinched and pale,Beside the pyre of burnt-out youth:These eyes of mine have often seenThe sweet girl-wife, in winters rude,Steal out at night, through courts unclean,To hunt about for chips of wood.Have I no word at all for himWho used down fetid lanes to slink,And squat in tap-room corners grim,And drown his thoughts in dregs of drink?This much I'll say, that when the flameOf reason reassumed its force,The hell the Christian fears to name,Was heaven to his fierce remorse.Just think of him—beneath the ban,And steeped in sorrow to the neck,Without a friend—a feeble man,In failing health—a human wreck.With all his sense and scholarship,How could he face his fading wife?The devil never lifted whipWith thongs like those that scourged his life.But He in whom the dying thiefUpon the Cross did place his trust,Forgets the sin and feels the grief,And lifts the sufferer from the dust.And now, because I have a dream,The man and woman found the light;A glory burns upon the stream,With gold and green the woods are bright.But still I hate that haggard street,Its filthy courts, its alleys wild;In dreams of it I always meetThe phantom of a wailing child.The name of it begets distress—Ah, song, be silent! show no moreThe lady in the perished dress,The scholar on the tap-room floor.
Here, where the great hills fall awayTo bays of silver sea,I hold within my hand to-dayA wild thing, strange to me.Behind me is the deep green dellWhere lives familiar light;The leaves and flowers I know so wellAre gleaming in my sight.And yonder is the mountain glen,Where sings in trees unstirredBy breath of breeze or axe of menThe shining satin-bird.The old weird cry of plover comesAcross the marshy ways,And here the hermit hornet hums,And here the wild bee strays.No novel life or light I see,On hill, in dale beneath:All things around are known to meExcept this bit of heath.This touching growth hath made me dream—It sends my soul afarTo where the Scottish mountains gleamAgainst the Northern star.It droops—this plant—like one who grieves;But, while my fancy glows,There is that glory on its leavesWhich never robed the rose.For near its wind-blown native spotWere born, by crags uphurled,The ringing songs of Walter ScottThat shook the whole wide world.There haply by the sounding streams,And where the fountains break,He saw the darling of his dreams,The Lady of the Lake.And on the peaks where never leafOf lowland beauty grew,Perhaps he met Clan Alpine's chief,The rugged Roderick Dhu.Not far, perchance, this heather throve(Above fair banks of ferns),From that green place of stream and groveThat knew the voice of Burns.Against the radiant river waysStill waves the noble wood,Where in the old majestic daysThe Scottish poet stood.Perhaps my heather used to beamIn robes of morning frost,By dells which saw that lovely dream—The Mary that he lost.I hope, indeed, the singer knewThe little spot of landOn which the mountain beauty grewThat withers in my hand.A Highland sky my vision fills;I feel the great, strong North—The hard grey weather of the hillsThat brings men-children forth.The peaks of Scotland, where the dinAnd flame of thunders go,Seem near me, with the masculine,Hale sons of wind and snow.So potent is this heather here,That under skies of blue,I seem to breathe the atmosphereThat William Wallace knew.And under windy mountain wall,Where breaks the torrent loose,I fancy I can hear the callOf grand old Robert Bruce.
JanuaryThe first fair month! In singing Summer's sphereShe glows, the eldest daughter of the year.All light, all warmth, all passion, breaths of myrrh,And subtle hints of rose-lands, come with her.She is the warm, live month of lustre—sheMakes glad the land and lulls the strong, sad sea.The highest hope comes with her. In her faceOf pure, clear colour lives exalted grace;Her speech is beauty, and her radiant eyesAre eloquent with splendid prophecies.
FebruaryThe bright-haired, blue-eyed last of Summer. Lo,Her clear song lives in all the winds that blow;The upland torrent and the lowland rill,The stream of valley and the spring of hill,The pools that slumber and the brooks that runWhere dense the leaves are, green the light of sun,Take all her grace of voice and colour. She,With rich warm vine-blood splashed from heel to knee,Comes radiant through the yellow woodlands. FarAnd near her sweet gifts shine like star by star.She is the true Demeter. Life of rootGlows under her in gardens flushed with fruit;She fills the fields with strength and passion—makesA fire of lustre on the lawn-ringed lakes;Her beauty awes the great wild sea; the heightOf grey magnificence takes strange delightAnd softens at her presence, at the dearSweet face whose memory beams through all the year.
MarchClear upland voices, full of wind and stream,Greet March, the sister of the flying beamAnd speedy shadow. She, with rainbow crowned,Lives in a sphere of songs of mazy sound.The hymn of waters and the gale's high tone,With anthems from the thunder's mountain throne,Are with her ever. This, behold, is sheWho draws its great cry from the strong, sad sea;She is the month of majesty. Her forceIs power that moves along a stately course,Within the lines of order, like no wildAnd lawless strength of winter's fiercest child.About her are the wind-whipped torrents; farAbove her gleams and flies the stormy star,And round her, through the highlands and their rocks,Rings loud the grand speech from the equinox.
AprilThe darling of Australia's Autumn—nowDown dewy dells the strong, swift torrents flow!This is the month of singing waters—hereA tender radiance fills the Southern year;No bitter winter sets on herb and root,Within these gracious glades, a frosty foot;The spears of sleet, the arrows of the hail,Are here unknown. But down the dark green daleOf moss and myrtle, and the herby streams,This April wanders in a home of dreams;Her flower-soft name makes language falter. AllHer paths are soft and cool, and runnels fallIn music round her; and the woodlands singFor evermore, with voice of wind and wing,Because this is the month of beauty—thisThe crowning grace of all the grace that is.
MayNow sings a cool, bland wind, where falls and flowsThe runnel by the grave of last year's rose;Now, underneath the strong perennial leaves,The first slow voice of wintering torrent grieves.Now in a light like English August's day,Is seen the fair, sweet, chastened face of May;She is the daughter of the year who standsWith Autumn's last rich offerings in her hands;Behind her gleams the ghost of April's noon,Before her is the far, faint dawn of June;She lingers where the dells and dewy leasCatch stormy sayings from the great bold seas;Her nightly raiment is the misty foldThat zones her round with moonlight-coloured gold;And in the day she sheds, from shining wings,A tender heat that keeps the life in things.
JuneNot like that month when, in imperial space,The high, strong sun stares at the white world's face;Not like that haughty daughter of the yearWho moves, a splendour, in a splendid sphere;But rather like a nymph of afternoon,With cool, soft sunshine, comes Australian June.She is the calm, sweet lady, from whose lipsNo breath of living passion ever slips;The wind that on her virgin forehead blowsWas born too late to speak of last year's rose;She never saw a blossom, but her eyesOf tender beauty see blue, gracious skies;She loves the mosses, and her feet have beenIn woodlands where the leaves are always green;Her days pass on with sea-songs, and her nightsShine, full of stars, on lands of frosty lights.
JulyHigh travelling winds, filled with the strong storm's soul,Are here, with dark, strange sayings from the Pole;Now is the time when every great cave ringsWith sharp, clear echoes caught from mountain springs;This is the season when all torrents runBeneath no bright, glad beauty of the sun.Here, where the trace of last year's green is lost,Are haughty gales, and lordships of the frost.Far down, by fields forlorn and forelands bleak,Are wings that fly not, birds that never speak;But in the deep hearts of the glens, unseen,Stand grave, mute forests of eternal green;And here the lady, born in wind and rain,Comes oft to moan and clap her palms with pain.This is our wild-faced July, in whose breastIs never faultless light or perfect rest.
AugustAcross the range, by every scarred black fell,Strong Winter blows his horn of wild farewell;And in the glens, where yet there moves no wing,A slow, sweet voice is singing of the Spring.Yea, where the bright, quick woodland torrents run,A music trembles under rain and sun.The lips that breathe it are the lips of herAt whose dear touch the wan world's pulses stir—The nymph who sets the bow of promise highAnd fills with warm life-light the bleak grey sky.She is the fair-haired August. Ere she leavesShe brings the woodbine blossom round the eaves;And where the bitter barbs of frost have beenShe makes a beauty with her gold and green;And, while a sea-song floats from bay and beach,She sheds a mist of blossoms on the peach.
[For September, see p. 70.] {In this etext, search for"September in Australia", in "Leaves from Australian Forests".—A. L.}
OctoberWhere fountains sing and many waters meet,October comes with blossom-trammelled feet.She sheds green glory by the wayside rillsAnd clothes with grace the haughty-featured hills.This is the queen of all the year. She bringsThe pure chief beauty of our southern springs.Fair lady of the yellow hair! Her breathStarts flowers to life, and shames the storm to death;Through tender nights and days of generous sunBy prospering woods her clear strong torrents run;In far deep forests, where all life is mute,Of leaf and bough she makes a touching lute.Her life is lovely. Stream, and wind, and birdHave seen her face—her marvellous voice have heard;And, in strange tracts of wildwood, all day long,They tell the story in surpassing song.
NovemberNow beats the first warm pulse of Summer—nowThere shines great glory on the mountain's brow.The face of heaven in the western sky,When falls the sun, is filled with Deity!And while the first light floods the lake and lea,The morning makes a marvel of the sea;The strong leaves sing; and in the deep green zonesOf rock-bound glens the streams have many tones;And where the evening-coloured waters pass,Now glides November down fair falls of grass.She is the wonder with the golden wings,Who lays one hand in Summer's—one in Spring's;About her hair a sunset radiance glows;Her mouth is sister of the dewy rose;And all the beauty of the pure blue skiesHas lent its lustre to her soft bright eyes.
DecemberThe month whose face is holiness! She bringsWith her the glory of majestic things.What words of light, what high resplendent phraseHave I for all the lustre of her days?She comes, and carries in her shining sphereAugust traditions of the world's great year;The noble tale which lifts the human raceHas made a morning of her sacred face.Now in the emerald home of flower and wingClear summer streams their sweet hosannas sing;The winds are full of anthems, and a luteSpeaks in the listening hills when night is muteAnd through dim tracks where talks the royal treeThere floats a grand hymn from the mighty sea;And where the grey, grave, pondering mountains standHigh music lives—the place is holy land!
Feet of the flying, and fierceTops of the sharp-headed spear,Hard by the thickets that pierce,Lo! they are nimble and near.Women are we, and the wivesStrong Arrawatta hath won;Weary because of our lives,Sick of the face of the sun.Koola, our love and our light,What have they done unto you?Man of the star-reaching sight,Dipped in the fire and the dew.Black-headed snakes in the grassStruck at the fleet-footed lord—Still is his voice at the pass,Soundless his step at the ford.Far by the forested glen,Starkly he lies in the rain;Kings of the council of menShout for their leader in vain.Yea, and the fish-river clearNever shall blacken belowSpear and the shadow of spear,Bow and the shadow of bow.Hunter and climber of trees,Now doth his tomahawk rust,(Dread of the cunning wild bees),Hidden in hillocks of dust.We, who were followed and bound,Dashed under foot by the foe,Sit with our eyes to the ground,Faint from the brand and the blow.Dumb with the sorrow that kills,Sorrow for brother and chief,Terror of thundering hills,Having no hope in our grief,Seeing the fathers are farSeeking the spoils of the deadLeft on the path of the war,Matted and mangled and red.
Where Hornby, like a mighty fallen star,Burns through the darkness with a splendid ringOf tenfold light, and where the awful faceOf Sydney's northern headland stares all nightO'er dark, determined waters from the east,From year to year a wild, Titanic voiceOf fierce aggressive sea shoots up and makes,—When storm sails high through drifts of driving sleet,And in the days when limpid waters glassDecember's sunny hair and forest face,—A roaring down by immemorial caves,A thunder in the everlasting hills.But calm and lucid as an English lake,Beloved by beams and wooed by wind and wing,Shut in from tempest-trampled wastes of wave,And sheltered from white wraths of surge by walls—Grand ramparts founded by the hand of God,The lordly Harbour gleams. Yea, like a shieldOf marvellous gold dropped in his fiery flightBy some lost angel in the elder days,When Satan faced and fought Omnipotence,It shines amongst fair, flowering hills, and flowsBy dells of glimmering greenness manifold.And all day long, when soft-eyed Spring comes roundWith gracious gifts of bird and leaf and grass—And through the noon, when sumptuous Summer sleepsBy yellowing runnels under beetling cliffs,This royal water blossoms far and wideWith ships from all the corners of the world.And while sweet Autumn with her gipsy faceStands in the gardens, splashed from heel to thighWith spinning vine-blood—yea, and when the mild,Wan face of our Australian Winter looksAcross the congregated southern fens,Then low, melodious, shell-like songs are heardBeneath proud hulls and pompous clouds of sail,By yellow beaches under lisping leavesAnd hidden nooks to Youth and Beauty dear,And where the ear may catch the counter-voiceOf Ocean travelling over far, blue tracts.Moreover, when the moon is gazing downUpon her lovely reflex in the wave,(What time she, sitting in the zenith, makesA silver silence over stirless woods),Then, where its echoes start at sudden bells,And where its waters gleam with flying lights,The haven lies, in all its beauty clad,More lovely even than the golden lakesThe poet saw, while dreaming splendid dreamsWhich showed his soul the far Hesperides.
Here in this gold-green evening end,While air is soft and sky is clear,What tender message shall I sendTo her I hold so dear?What rose of song with breath like myrrh,And leaf of dew and fair pure beamsShall I select and give to her—The lady of my dreams?Alas! the blossom I would take,The song as sweet as Persian speech,And carry for my lady's sake,Is not within my reach.I have no perfect gift of words,Or I would hasten now to sendA ballad full of tunes of birdsTo please my lovely friend.But this pure pleasure is my own,That I have power to waft awayA hope as bright as heaven's zoneOn this her natal day.May all her life be like the lightThat softens down in spheres divine,"As lovely as a Lapland night,"All grace and chastened shine!
In the roar of the storm, in the wild bitter voice of the tempest-whipped sea,The cry of my darling, my child, comes ever and ever to me;And I stand where the haggard-faced wood stares down on a sinister shore,But all that is left is the hood of the babe I can cherish no more.A little blue hood, with the shawl of the girl that I took for my wifeIn a happy old season, is all that remains of the light of my life;The wail of a woman in pain, and the sob of a smothering bird,They come through the darkness again—in the wind and the rain they are heard.Oh, women and men who have known the perils of weather and wave,It is sad that my sweet ones are blown under sea without shelter of grave;I sob like a child in the night, when the gale on the waters is loud—My darlings went down in my sight, with neither a coffin nor shroud.In the whistle of wind, and the whirl of ominous fragments of wreck,The wife, with her poor little girl, saw death on the lee of the deck;But, sirs, she depended on me—she trusted my comforting word;She is down in the depths of the sea—my love, with her beautiful bird.In the boat I was ordered to go—I was not more afraid than the rest,But a husband will falter, you know, with the love of his life at his breast;My captain was angry a space, but soon he grew tender in tone—Perhaps there had flashed by his face a wife and a child of his own.I was weak for some moments, and cried; but only one hope was in life;The hood upon baby I tied—I fastened the shawl on my wife.The skipper took charge of the child—he stuck to his word till the last;But only this hood on the wild, bitter shore of the sea had been cast.In the place of a coward, who shook like a leaf in the quivering boat,A seat by the rowlocks I took; but the sea had me soon by the throat,The surge gripped me fast by the neck—in a ring, and a roll, and a roar,I was cast like a piece of the wreck, on a bleak, beaten, shelterless shore.And there were my darlings on board for the rest of that terrible day,And I watched and I prayed to the Lord, as never before I could pray.The windy hills stared at the black, heavy clouds coming over the wave;My girl was expecting me back, but where was my power to save?Ah! where was my power, when Death was glaring at me from the reef?I cried till I gasped for my breath, aloof with a maddening grief.We couldn't get back to the deck: I wanted to go, but the seaDashed over the sides of the wreck, and carried my darling from me.Oh, girl that I took by the hand to the altar two summers ago,I would you were buried on land—my dear, it would comfort me so!I would you were sleeping where grows the grass and the musical reed!For how can you find a repose in the toss of the tangle and weed?The night sped along, and I strained to the shadow and saw to the endMy captain and bird—he remained to the death a superlative friend:In the face of the hurricane wild, he clung with the babe to the mast;To the last he was true to my child—he was true to my child to the last.The wind, like a life without home, comes mocking at door and at paneIn the time of the cry of the foam—in the season of thunder and rain,And, dreaming, I start in the bed, and feel for my little one's brow—But lost is the beautiful head; the cradle is tenantless now!My home was all morning and glow when wife and her baby were there,But, ah! it is saddened, you know, by dresses my girl used to wear.I cannot re-enter the door; its threshold can never be crossed,For fear I should see on the floor the shoes of the child I have lost.There were three of us once in the world; but two are deep down in the sea,Where waif and where tangle are hurled—the two that were portions of me;They are far from me now, but I hear, when hushed are the night and the tide,The voice of my little one near—the step of my wife by my side.
Part I
ChorusSongs of morning, with your breathSing the darkness now to death;Radiant river, beaming bay,Fair as Summer, shine to-day;Flying torrent, falling slope,Wear the face as bright as Hope;Wind and woodland, hill and sea,Lift your voices—sing for glee!Greet the guests your fame has won—Put your brightest garments on.
Recitative and ChorusLo, they come—the lords unknown,Sons of Peace, from every zone!See above our waves unfurledAll the flags of all the world!North and south and west and eastGather in to grace our feast.Shining nations! let them seeHow like England we can be.Mighty nations! let them viewSons of generous sires in you.
Solo—TenorBy the days that sound afar,Sound, and shine like star by star;By the grand old years aflameWith the fires of England's fame—Heirs of those who fought for rightWhen the world's wronged face was white—Meet these guests your fortune sends,As your fathers met their friends;Let the beauty of your raceGlow like morning in your face.
Part II
Solo—BassWhere now a radiant city stands,The dark oak used to wave,The elfin harp of lonely landsAbove the wild man's grave;Through windless woods, one clear, sweet stream(Sing soft and very low)Stole like the river of a dreamA hundred years ago.
Solo—AltoUpon the hills that blaze to-dayWith splendid dome and spire,The naked hunter tracked his prey,And slumbered by his fire.Within the sound of shipless seasThe wild rose used to blowAbout the feet of royal trees,A hundred years ago.
Solo—SopranoAh! haply on some mossy slope,Against the shining springs,In those old days the angel HopeSat down with folded wings;Perhaps she touched in dreams sublime,In glory and in glow,The skirts of this resplendent time,A hundred years ago.
Part III
ChildrenA gracious morning on the hills of wetAnd wind and mist her glittering feet has set;The life and heat of light have chased awayAustralia's dark, mysterious yesterday.A great, glad glory now flows down and shinesOn gold-green lands where waved funereal pines.
Solo—SopranoAnd hence a fair dream goes before our gaze,And lifts the skirts of the hereafter days,And sees afar, as dreams alone can see,The splendid marvel of the years to be.
Part IV
Basses and ChorusFather, All-Bountiful, humbly we bend to Thee;Heads are uncovered in sight of Thy face.Here, in the flow of the psalms that ascend to Thee,Teach us to live for the light of Thy grace.Here, in the pause of the anthems of praise to Thee,Master and Maker—pre-eminent Friend—Teach us to look to Thee—give all our days to Thee,Now and for evermore, world without end!