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~~~ To Henry Halloran ~~~
It seems to me, my friend (and this wild thought
A splendid creed! But let me even turn
Remembering you in ardent autumn nights,
Then hold me firm. I cannot choose but long
For now my soul goes drifting back again,
The time I, loitering by untrodden fens,
And caught seductive tokens of a voice
That last was yours! And if you sometimes find
Yea, though the heavy Earth wears sackcloth now
Be faithful yet for all, my brave bright peer, ~~~ Lost in the Flood ~~~
Dark thoughts live when tears won't gather;
Often doth she sit and ponder
"Darling!" saith she, wildly moaning ~~~ Eighteen Hundred and Sixty-Four ~~~
But you are with us! and our patient land
Ah! marvel not; the days and nights were long
Indeed, we've said, "The royal son of Time,
We'll follow him! Beyond the waves and wrecks
But now our fainting feet are loth to stray
Our human speech is dim. Yet, latest born
O, Rachael! Rachael! We have heard the cries
Then lead us gently! It must come to pass
I know, for one, I need a subtle strength
My mourning brothers! in the long, still nights,
Then, though you cannot shut a stricken face
So you may find in every afterthought ~~~ To ---- ~~~
I know she loved to rest her feet
I've never reached her shining place,
But you may climb, her happy Choice!
How sweet to rest on breezy crest
How sweet to find a leafy nook,
Or, turning from the sunken sun,
Or through the Night's mysterious noon,
Oh, vain regret! why should I stay ~~~ At Long Bay ~~~
Five years ago! I hardly know
And saw, with eyes of little faith,
For Love and Youth were vext with doubt,
But let it be! I've often said
Who never turned a face of light
So take my faith, and let it stand
Of seacliff took our troubled talk --
Here first we learned the Love which leaves
And roves with runnels in the dell,
A Love, you know, that lives and lies
Here first we faced a briny breeze,
And here we heard the plovers call
Here grebe and gull and heavy glede
And here our friendship, like a tree, ~~~ For Ever ~~~
Lost in dim, horrible blankness;
Helpless, unfriended, forsaken;
One saith -- "It is well that he goeth
"Hark! how he crieth, my brothers,
"This Soul hath been one of the idlers
"Now, had he been faithful in striving,
A second: "Lo, Passion was wilful;
"She bound him, the woman resplendent;
"Was it well, O you wandering wailer,
And another: "Behold, he was careful:
"If the way had been shorter and greener
Beyond the wild haunts of the mockers --
Pale phantoms fly past it, like shadows:
"Soul that hath ruined us, shiver
Drifting from starless abysses
Out of the Body for ever ~~~ Sonnets ~~~
Dark days have passed, but you who taught me then ~~~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning ~~~
~~~ Sir Walter Scott ~~~
(Let me here endeavour to draw the fair distinctions between the great writers, ~~~ The Bereaved One ~~~
I had thought in this life not to travel alone,
There are those that may vent all their grief in their tears ~~~ Dungog ~~~
I would not ask you, friends, to brook
He saith to me, this Poet saith,
He telleth me, this Poet tells,
From many a black Gethsemane,
To where I feel the wind, which brings
I'll shut mine eyes, my Poet choice,
And far beyond these office walls
For, if I know not of thy deeds,
Then, ho! for beaming bank and brake,
(* A tributary of the river Hunter, after Hunter, on which Dungog stands.)
And ho! for stormy mountain cones,
~There~, friends, are spots of sleepy green,
(The sea that breaks, and beats and shakes
(* A chain of lakes near Port Stephens, N.S.W.
There, through the fretful autumn days,
While rattles over riven rocks
And then the gloom doth vex the sight
But here are shady tufts and turns,
And here, another getteth ease --
What time the flapping bats have trooped
Ah, Dungog, dream of darling days,
For, let me say that when I look ~~~ Deniehy's Lament ~~~
Sinning, I've searched for thee, Heart of my heart!
Much have I lost for thee, Heart of my heart!
Mighty and mournful now, Heart of my heart!
To: The List of Poetic Works of Henry Kendall
To: Australian Master Poets Menu
And those weird ways I knew so well and long,
Dishevelled with their sloping sidelong growth
Of twisted thorn and kurrajong.
Of all wild thoughts, doth chiefly make me bleed),
That in those hills and valleys wonder-fraught,
I loved and lost a noble creed.
And hide myself from what I've seen, and try
To fathom certain truths you know, and learn
The Beauty shining in your sky:
And Stenhouse near you, like a fine stray guest
Of other days, with all his lore of lights
So manifold and manifest!
For that which lies and burns beyond my reach,
Suggested in your steadfast, subtle song
And his most marvellous speech!
Ay, drifting, drifting, like the silent snow
While scattered sheddings, in a fall of rain,
Revive the dear lost Long Ago!
Intent upon low-hanging lustrous skies,
Heard mellowed psalms from sounding southern glens --
Euroma, dear to dreaming eyes!
Half maddened with the dim, delirious themes
Of perfect Love, and the immortal choice
Of starry faces -- Astral dreams!
An alien darkness on the front of things,
Sing none the less for Life, nor fall behind,
Like me, with trailing, tired wings!
Because she hath the great prophetic grief
Which makes me set my face one way, and bow
And falter for a far belief,
In that rare light you hold so true and good;
And find me something clearer than the clear
White spaces of Infinitude.
From our cornfields to the sea,
Came she where our wives and daughters
Sobbed their thanks on bended knee.
Hidden faces! there ye found her
Mute as death, and staring wild
At the shadow waxing round her
Like the presence of her child --
Of her drenched and drowning child!
Who can tell us what she felt?
It was human, O my Father,
If she blamed Thee while she knelt!
Ever, as a benediction
Fell like balm on all and each,
Rose a young face whose affliction
Choked and stayed the founts of speech --
Stayed and shut the founts of speech!
Over gleams of happy hair!
How her white hands used to wander,
Like a flood of moonlight there!
Lord -- our Lord! Thou know'st her weakness:
Give her faith that she may pray;
And the subtle strength of meekness,
Lest she falter by the way --
Falter, fainting, by the way!
Where the grass-grown silence lies,
"Is there rest from sobs and groaning --
Rest with you beyond the skies?
Child of mine, so far above me!
Late it waxeth -- dark and late;
Will the love with which I love thee,
Lift me where you sit and wait --
Darling! where you sit and wait?"
A lonely gust is loitering at the pane;
There is no sound within these forests stark
Beyond a splash or two of sullen rain;
Is filled with long-expected change at last,
Though we have scarce the heart to lift a hand
Of welcome, after all the yearning past!
And cold and dull and dashed with many tears;
And lately there hath been a doleful song,
Of "Mene, Mene," in our restless ears!
Whose feet will shortly cross our threshold floor,
May lead us to those outer heights sublime
Our Sires have sold their lives to see before!
Of years fulfilled, some fine results must lie;
We'll pass the last of all wild things that vex
The pale, sad face of our Humanity!"
From trodden paths; our eyes with pain are blind!
We've lost fair treasures by the weary way;
We cry, like children, to be left behind.
Of God's Eternity, there came to me,
In saddened streets last week, from lips forlorn
A sound more solemn than the sleepless sea!
In Rama, stranger, o'er our darling dead;
And seen our mothers with the heavy eyes,
Who would not hearken to be comforted!
That some of us shall halt and faint and fall;
For we are looking through a darkened glass,
And Heaven seems far, and faith grows cold and pale.
I have not yet to hold me from a fall;
What time I cry to God within the length
Of weary hours; my face against the wall!
When sleep is wilful, and the lone moon shines,
Bethink you of the silent, silver lights,
And darks with Death amongst the moody pines!
Away from you, this hope will come about
That Christ hath sent again throughout the place
Some signs of Love to worst and weaken doubt.
A peace beyond your best expression dear;
And haply hearken to the Voice which wrought
Such strength in Peter on the seas of fear!
And look up, straining through the Real
With longing eyes, my friend, to catch
Faint glimpses of your white Ideal.
By slumbrous seas and hidden strand;
But mostly hints of her I meet
On moony spots of mountain land.
And only cross at times a gleam;
As one might pass a fleeting face
Just on the outside of a Dream.
She knows your step, the maiden true,
And ever when she hears your voice,
She turns and sits and waits for you.
With such a Love, what time the Morn
Looks from his halls of rosy rest,
Across green miles of gleaming corn!
When bees are out, and Day burns mute,
Where you may hear a passion'd brook
Play past you, like a mellow flute!
On fields of dim delight to lie --
To close your eyes and muse upon
The twilight's strange divinity!
While Sound lies hushed among the trees,
To sit and watch a mirror'd moon
Float over silver-sleeping seas!
To think and dream of joys unknown?
You walk with her from day to day,
I faint afar off -- and alone.
But know the face of change,
Though July sleeps and Spring renews
The gloss in gorge and range.
How they have slipped away,
Since here we watched at ebb and flow
The waters of the Bay;
From cumbered summits fade
The rainbow and the rainbow wraith,
That shadow of a shade.
Like ships on driving seas,
And in those days the heart gave out
Unthankful similes.
His lot was hardly cast
Who never turned a happy head
To an unhappy Past --
To cares beyond recall:
He only fares in sorer plight
Who hath no Past at all!
Between us for a sign
That five bright years have known the land
Since yonder tumbled line
The words at random thrown,
And Echo lived about this walk
Of gap and slimy stone.
No lack or loss behind,
The dark, sweet Love which woos the eves
And haunts the morning wind.
And houses by the wave
What time the storm hath struck the fell
And Terror fills the cave --
For moments past control,
And mellows through the Poet's eyes
And sweetens in his soul.
What time the middle gale
Went shrilling over whitened seas
With flying towers of sail.
As shattered pauses came,
When Heaven showed a fiery wall
With sheets of wasted flame.
Passed eastward far away,
The while the wind, with slackened speed,
Drooped with the dying Day.
Perennial grew and grew,
Till you were glad to live for me,
And I to live for you.
Wearily sobbing, "Oh, whither?"
A Soul that hath wasted its chances
Floats on the limitless ether.
Drifting like wind on a sea,
Untraversed and vacant and moaning,
Nor shallow nor shore on the lee!
Haunted and tracked by the Past,
With fragments of pitiless voices,
And desolate faces aghast!
Naked and fainting with cold,
Who worshipped his sweet-smelling garments,
Arrayed with the cunning of old!
With pain for the glittering things
He saw on the shoulders of Rulers,
And the might in the mouths of the Kings!
Who wait with still hands, when they lack
For Fortune, like Joseph, to throw them
The cup thrust in Benjamin's sack.
And warring with Wrong to the sword,
He must have passed over these spaces
Caught up in the arms of the Lord."
And, glad with voluptuous sighs,
He held it luxurious trouble
To ache for luxurious eyes!
She withered his strength with her stare;
And Faith hath been twisted and strangled
With folds of her luminous hair!
Abandoned in terrible space,
To halt on the highway to Heaven
Because of a glittering face?"
He faltered to think of his Youth,
Dejected and weary and footsore,
Alone on the dim road to Truth.
And brighter, he might have been brave;
But the goal was too far and he fainted,
Like Peter with Christ on the wave!"
Far in the distance and gray,
Floateth that sorrowful spirit
Away, and away, and away.
Dim eyes that are blinded with tears;
Old faces all white with affliction --
The ghosts of the wasted dead years!
And moan when you know us," they cry --
"Behold, I was part of thy substance!" --
"And I" -- saith another -- "and I!"
Into the ether sublime,
Where is no upward nor downward,
Nor region nor record of Time!
No refuge -- no succour nor stay --
Floated that sorrowful Spirit
Away, and away, and away.
To look upon the world with trustful eyes,
Are not forgotten! Quick to sympathise
With noble thoughts, I've dreamt of moments when
Your low voice filled with strains of fairer skies!
Stray breaths of Grecian song that went and came,
Like floating fragrance from some quiet glen
In those far hills which shine with classic fame
Of passioned nymphs and grand-browed god-like men!
I sometimes fear my heart hath lost the same
Sweet sense of harmony; but ~this~ I know
That Beauty waits on you ~where'er~ you go,
Because she loveth child-like Faith! Her bowers
Are rich for it with glad perennial flowers.
My English brothers, though your wayward race
Now slight the Soul that never wore a screen,
And loved too well to keep her noble place!
Ah, bravest Woman that our World hath seen
(A light in spaces wild and tempest-tost),
In every verse of thine, behold, we trace
The full reflection of an earnest face
And hear the scrawling of an eager pen!
O sisters! knowing what you've loved and lost,
I ask where shall we find its like, and when?
That dear heart with its passion sorrow-crost,
And pathos rippling, like a brook in June
Amongst the roses of a windless noon.
He turned, enamoured, to the silent Past;
And searching down its mazes gray and vast,
As you might find the blossom by the thorn,
He found fair things in barren places cast
And brought them up into the light of morn.
Lo! Truth, resplendent, as a tropic dawn,
Shines always through his wond'rous pictures! Hence
The many quick emotions which are born
Of an Imagination so intense!
The chargers' hoofs come tearing up the sward --
The claymores rattle in the restless sheath;
You close his page, and almost look abroad
For Highland glens and windy leagues of heath.
or some of the great writers, of Scott's day; borrowing at the same time
a later name. I shall start with that strange figure, Percy Bysshe Shelley.
He was too subjective to be merely a descriptive poet,
too metaphysical to be vague, and too imaginative to be didactic.
As Scott was the most dramatic, Wordsworth the most profound,
Byron the most passionate, so Shelley was the most spiritual writer
of his time. Scott's poetry was the result of vivid emotion,
Wordsworth's of quiet observation, Byron's of passion,
and Shelley's of passion and reflection. Scott races like a torrent,
Byron rolls like a sea, Wordsworth ripples into a lake,
Tennyson flows like a river, and Shelley gushes like a fountain.
As Tennyson is the most harmonious, so Shelley is the most musical
of modern bards. I fear to touch upon that grand old man, Coleridge;
he appears to me so utterly apart from his contemporaries. He stands,
like Teneriffe, alone. Can I liken him to a magnificent thunder-scorched crag
with its summits eternally veiled in vapour? -- H.K.)
Where the hopes of the past and the dreams that I cherished
In the sunlight of brighter and happier days,
As the mists of the morning, have faded and perished.
She sleeps -- and will waken to bless me no more;
Her life has died out like the gleam on the river,
And the bliss that illumined my bosom of yore
Has fled from its dwelling for ever and ever.
I had hoped for a mate in my joys and my sorrow --
But the face of my idol is colder than stone,
And my path will be lonely without her to-morrow.
I was hoping to bask in the light of her smile
When Fortune and Fame with their laurels had crown'd me --
But the fire in her eyes has been dying the while,
And the thorns of affliction are planted around me.
And weep till the past is away in the distance;
But this wreck of the dream of my sunshiny years
Will hang like a cloud o'er the rest of existence.
In the depth of my soul she shall ever remain;
My thoughts, like the angels, shall hover about her;
For our hearts have been reft and divided in pain
And what is this world to be left in without her?
And barren eyes all day,
'Tis sweet to think of waterfalls
Two hundred miles away!
An old, old truth from me,
If I could shut a Poet's book
Which haunts me like the Sea!
So many things of light,
That I have found a fourfold faith,
And gained a twofold sight.
How much of God is seen
Amongst the deep-mossed English dells,
And miles of gleaming green.
He leads my bleeding feet
To where I hear the Morning Sea
Round shining spaces beat!
A sound of running creeks,
And blows those dark, unpleasant things,
The sorrows, from my cheeks.
And spend the day with thee;
I'll dream thou art a fountain voice
Which God hath sent to me!
My thoughts shall even stray,
And watch the wilful waterfalls,
Two hundred miles away.
And darling Kentish downs,
I've seen the deep, wild Dungog fells,
And ~hate~ the heart of towns!
Far-folded hills among,
Where Williams,* like a silver snake,
Draws winding lengths along!
Where headlong Winter leaps,
What time the gloomy swamp-oak groans,
And weeps and wails and weeps.
Where one may hear afar,
O'er fifteen leagues of waste, I ween,
A moaning harbour bar!
The caverns, howling loud,
Beyond the midnight Myall Lakes,*
And half-awakened Stroud!)**
** A town on the Karuah, which flows into Port Stephens.)
Beneath a cloudy sun,
Comes rolling down rain-rutted ways,
The wind, Euroclydon!
The thunder, harsh and dry;
And blustering gum and brooding box
Are threshing at the sky!
With crude, unshapely forms
Which hold throughout the yelling night
A fellowship with storms!
Where sumptuous Summer lies
(By reaches brave with flags and ferns)
With large, luxuriant eyes.
Our Spring, so rarely seen,
Who shows us in the cedar trees
A glimpse of golden green.
Away like ghosts to graves,
And darker growths than Night are cooped
In silent, hillside caves.
'Tis better thou should'st be
A far-off thing to love and praise --
A boon from Heaven to me!
With wearied eyes on men,
I think of one unchanging nook,
And find my faith again.
Flying so far from me, Heart of my heart!
Above the eastern hill, I know the red leaves thrill,
But thou art distant still, Heart of my heart!
Sinning, I've dreamed of thee, Heart of my heart!
I know no end nor gain; amongst the paths of pain
I follow thee in vain, Heart of my heart!
Not counting the cost for thee, Heart of my heart!
Through all this year of years thy form as mist appears,
So blind am I with tears, Heart of my heart!
Cometh the Shadow-Face, Heart of my heart!
The friends I've left for thee, their sad eyes trouble me --
I cannot bear to be, Heart of my heart!
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