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~~~ Deniehy's Dream ~~~
Splendours miraculous
Infinite tokens of
"This is our brother now:
"Look," said another, ~~~ Cui Bono? ~~~
And the ripple of leaves and the purple and red
You may halt with the face to a flying sea,
But alas for the grey of the wintering eves,
For, seeing all pathos is mixed with our past,
I am lost for these tokens, and wearied of ways
And yet I would write to you! I who have turned
Because I have touched with my fingers a dress
That came in thy absence; because of the lights
Yea, thus having tasted all love with thy lips,
With my face to the wall shall I sleep and forget
Oh, darling of mine, standing here with the Past,
When I know of you, love, how you break with our pain,
Like a stranger who droops on a brink and deplores, ~~~ In Hyde Park ~~~
They come from the highways of labour,
By thousands the people assemble
Their voice is the voice of a nation;
The beautiful tokens of pity
Their thoughts are as one; and together
But for ever, like springs of sweet water
There cometh from shame and dejection,
In the land of distress and of danger,
They weep for the Prince, and the Mother
But he, having moved like a splendour
Will think, in the sickness and shadow,
For the sake of the touching devotion ~~~ Australia Vindex ~~~
Her paths are the paths of the sun;
She is fairer than flowers of love;
She saith to the bloody one curst
"My sorrow shall hack at thy life!
She whispers, "He came to the land
"On the shores of the stranger he stood
"Because of the dastardly thing
"Because of the beautiful trust
"Because" (and she mutters it deep
"Thy sleep shall be broken and sharp
"I will set my right hand on thy neck ~~~ Ned the Larrikin ~~~
The laugh on the lyrical lips is sadder than laughter of ghosts
I gathered this wreath at the close of day that was dripping with dew;
The flower you fancy is sweet has black in the place of the red;
He stands at the door of the sink that gapes like a fissure of death:
He thrives in the sickening scenes that the devil has under his ban;
A blossom of blackness, indeed -- of Satan a sinister fruit!
Than terror of talon or fang this imp of the alleys is worse:
The prison, the shackles, and chain are nothing to him and his type:
There under the walls of the gaols the half of his life has been passed.
No angel in Paradise kneels for him at the feet of the Lord;
The sins of his fathers have brought this bitterness into his days --
Did ever his countenance change? Did ever a moment supreme
Before he was caught in the breach -- in the pits of iniquity grim,
Behold, it is folly to say the evil was born in the blood;
There might have been blossom and fruit -- a harvest exceedingly fair,
The burden -- the burden is their's who, watching this garden about,
A growth like the larrikin Ned -- a brutal unqualified clod,
No more than a damnable weed ye water and foster, ye fools,
The merciful, wonderful light of the seraph Religion behold
But verily trouble shall fall on such, and their portion shall be
For the rose of a radiant star is over the hills of the East,
For a spirit of Deity makes the holy heirophants strong;
Yea, now, by the altars august the elders are shining supreme;
It's life as a vapour shall end as a fog in the fall of the year; ~~~ ~In Memoriam~ -- Nicol Drysdale Stenhouse ~~~
Shall he, the son of that resplendent Muse,
No! let us speak, though feeble be our speech,
We sing the beautiful, the radiant life
Yon tomb, whereon the moonlit grasses sigh,
This was the man whose dear, lost face appears
He, having learned in full the golden rule,
In Learning's halls he walked -- a leading lord,
When scholars poor and bowed beneath the ban,
No term that savoured of unfriendliness,
Moreover, in these days when Faith grows faint,
But now he sleeps, and as the years go by, ~~~ Rizpah ~~~
But David, son of Jesse, spake no word,
We have our Rizpahs in these modern days ~~~ Kiama Revisited ~~~
I answered, "Behold, I was broken, ~~~ Passing Away ~~~
Old years and their changes come trooping
It is hard to awake and discover
We have wandered and wandered together,
We loved the soft tangle of tresses,
O years interwoven with stories ~~~ James Lionel Michael ~~~
Peace -- the peace that no man knows --
Latter leaves, in Autumn's breath,
Soft surprises of the sun --
Wet and cold the hillwinds moan;
He who knew the friendless face
One, too apt to faint and fail,
Care that lays her heavy hand
Life, that flieth like a tune,
Peace is best! If life was hard
Safely housed at last from rack --
Let the forms he loved so well
All the wilful waifs that make
Flying splendours, singing streams,
So that Time to Love may say,
To: The List of Poetic Works of Henry Kendall
To: Australian Master Poets Menu
Flickered out dim,
Flushing the mountain-side,
Summit and rim,
A last, low, lingering gleam
Fell on a yellow stream,
And then there came a dream
Shining to him.
Mixed with his pain
All like a vision of
Radiance and rain!
He faced the sea, the skies,
Old star-like thoughts did rise;
But tears were in his eyes,
Stifled in vain.
Sorrows set free
Came in the dreaming wind
Far from the sea!
Past years about him trooped,
Fair phantoms round him stooped,
Sweet faces o'er him drooped
Sad as could be!
Sisters, deplore
Man without purpose, like
Ship without shore!
He tracks false fire," one said,
"But weep you -- he must tread
Whereto he may be led --
Lost evermore."
"Summit and slope
Burn, in the mountain-land --
Basement and cope!
Till daylight, dying dim,
Faints on the world's red rim,
We'll tint this Dream for him
Even -- with hope!"
And the Summer comes -- with the shining noons,
With the ripple of leaves, and the passionate light
Of the falling suns and the rising moons.
Die for the grapes and the gleam of the wheat,
And then you may pause with the splendours, or tread
On the yellow of Autumn with lingering feet.
Or stand like a gloom in the gloom of things,
When the moon drops down and the desolate lea
Is troubled with thunder and desolate wings.
And the pondering storms and the ruin of rains;
And alas for the Spring like a flame in the leaves,
And the green of the woods and the gold of the lanes!
And knowing all sadness of storm and of surge
Is salt with our tears for the faith that was cast
Away like a weed o'er a bottomless verge,
Wedded with ways that are waning amain,
Like those that are filled with the trouble that slays;
Having drunk of their life to the lees that are pain.
Away with a bitter disguise in the eyes,
And bitten the lips that have trembled and burned
Alone for you, darling, and breaking with sighs.
That was Beauty's; because that the breath of thy mouth
Is sweetness that lingers; because of each tress
Showered down on thy shoulders; because of the drouth
In the Passion that grew to a level with thee --
Is it well that our lives have been filled with the nights
And the days which have made it a sorrow to be?
And having the warmth of thy hand in mine own,
Is it well that we wander, like parallel ships,
With the silence between us, aloof and alone?
The shadow, the sweet sense of slumber denies,
If even I marvel at kindness, and fret,
And start while the tears are all wet in mine eyes?
Trampled under our feet in the bitterest ways,
Is this speech like a ghost that it keeps us aghast
On the track of the thorns and in alien days?
And sob for the sorrow of sorrowful dreams,
Like a stranger who stands in the wind and the rain
And watches and wails by impassable streams:
With famishing hands and frost in the feet,
For the laughter alive on the opposite shores
With the fervour of fire and the wind of the wheat.
published in Sydney in 1868. While in Sydney, the Prince was shot at
by a fanatic and slightly injured.)
From labour and leisure they come;
But not to the sound of the tabor,
And not to the beating of drum.
With faces of shadow and flame,
And spirits that sicken and tremble
Because of their sorrow and shame!
But lo, it is muffled and mute,
For the sword of a strong tribulation
Hath stricken their peace to the root.
Have utterly fled from their eyes,
For the demon who darkened the city
Is curst in the breaking of sighs.
They band in their terrible ire,
Like legions of wind in fierce weather
Whose footsteps are thunder and fire.
That sings in the grass-hidden leas
As soft as the voice of a daughter,
There cometh a whisper from these.
From wrath and the blackness thereof,
A word at whose heart is affection
With a sighing whose meaning is love.
With their foreheads in sackcloth and dust,
They weep for the wounds of the Stranger
And mourn o'er the ashes of trust!
Whose years have been smitten of grief --
For the son and the lord and the brother,
And the widow, the queen and the chief!
Amongst them in happier days,
With the grace that is manly and tender
And the kindness that passes all praise,
Of greetings in forest and grove,
And welcome in city and meadow,
Nor couple this sin with their love.
That sobs through the depths of their woe,
This son of the kings of the ocean,
As he came to them, trusting will go.
With raiment of weeping and woe,
And a cry of the heart in her mouth,
And a step that is muffled and slow?
Her house is a beautiful light;
But she boweth her head, and is one
With the daughters of dolour and night.
She is fiercer than wind-driven flame;
And God from His thunders above
Hath smitten the soul of her shame.
With the fever of evil, she saith
"My sorrow shall strangle thee first
With an agony wilder than death!
Thou shalt wrestle with wraiths of thy sin,
And sleep on a pillow of strife
With demons without and within!"
A lord and a lover of me --
A son of the waves with a hand
As fearless and frank as the sea.
With the sweetness of youth on his face;
Till there started a fiend from the wood,
Who stabbed at the peace of the place!
Thou hast done in the sight of the day,
All horrors that sicken and sting
Shall make thee for ever their prey.
Destroyed by a devil like thee,
Thy bed shall be low in the dust
And my heel as a shackle shall be!
Who curseth the coward in chains)
"Thou hast stricken and murdered our sleep,
Thy sleep shall be perished with pains;
And filled with fierce spasms and dreams,
And shadow shall haunt thee and harp
On hellish and horrible themes!
And my foot on thy body, nor bate,
Till thy name shall become as a wreck
And a byword for hisses and hate!"
That comes with the fall of the leaf, I sing to the shadows to-night.
Chained back in the pits of eclipse by wailing unnameable coasts.
The blossom you take for a rose was plucked from the branch of a yew.
For this is a song of the street -- the ballad of larrikin Ned.
The face of him fiery with drink, the flame of its fume in his breath.
A rascal not out of his teens with the voice of a vicious old man.
Far better the centipede's seed -- the spawn of the adder or newt.
His speech is a poisonous slang -- his phrases are coloured with curse.
He sings in the shadow of pain, and laughs at the impotent stripe.
He was born in the bosom of bale -- he will go to the gallows at last.
A Nemesis follows his heels in the flame of a sinister sword.
His life is accounted as naught; his soul is a brand for the blaze.
Illumine his face with a strange ineffably beautiful dream?
Did ever the Deity reach the hand of a Father to him?
The rose that is cankered to-day was once an immaculate bud!
Instead of the venomous root, and flowers that startle and scare.
Assisted the thistle and tares, and stamped the divinity out!
Is what ye are helping who'd tread on the necks of the prophets of God.
Whose aim is to banish indeed the beautiful Christ from the schools.
These evil ones shut from the sight of the children who weep in the cold!
A harvest of hyssop and gall, and sorrow as wild as the sea.
And the fathers are heartened for war --
the prophet, the Saint, and the priest.
And a morning of majesty breaks, and blossoms in colour and song.
And brittle and barren as dust is the spiritless secular dream.
For the Lord is a Father and Friend, and the day of His coming is near.
Turned gracious eyes and countenance of shine,
Be left to lie without a wreath from us,
To sleep without a flower upon his shrine?
Who gleams, high priestess of sweet scholarship,
Still slumber on, and every bard refuse
To touch a harp or move a tuneful lip?
And let us sing, though faltering be our strain,
And haply echoes of the song may reach
And please the soul we cannot see again.
That shone amongst us like the quiet moon,
A fine exception in this sphere of strife,
Whose time went by us like a hallowed tune.
Hides from our view the shell of one whose days
Were set throughout to that grand harmony
Which fills all minor spirits with amaze.
To rise betimes like some sweet evening dream,
And holy memories of faultless years,
And touching hours of quietness supreme.
Which guides great lives, stood fairly by the same,
Unruffled as the Oriental pool,
Before the bright, disturbing angel came.
He trod the sacred temple's inner floors;
But kindness beamed in every look and word
He gave the humblest Levite at the doors.
Which clings as fire, were like to faint and fall,
This was the gentle, good Samaritan,
Who stopped and held a helping hand to all.
No censure through those pure lips ever passed;
He saw the erring spirit's keen distress,
And hoped for it, long-suffering to the last.
And Heaven seems blurred by speculation wild,
He, blameless as a mediaeval saint,
Had all the trust which sanctifies a child.
We'll often pause above his sacred dust,
And think how grand a thing it is to die
The noble death which deifies the just.
To Jesse's mighty son: "My Lord, O King,
I, halting hard by Gibeon's bleak-blown hill
Three nightfalls past, saw dark-eyed Rizpah, clad
In dripping sackcloth, pace with naked feet
The flinty rock where lie unburied yet
The sons of her and Saul; and he whose post
Of watch is in those places desolate,
Got up, and spake unto thy servant here
Concerning her -- yea, even unto me: --
`Behold,' he said, `the woman seeks not rest,
Nor fire, nor food, nor roof, nor any haunt
Where sojourns man; but rather on yon rock
Abideth, like a wild thing, with the slain,
And watcheth them, lest evil wing or paw
Should light upon the comely faces dead,
To spoil them of their beauty. Three long moons
Hath Rizpah, daughter of Aiah, dwelt
With drouth and cold and rain and wind by turns,
And many birds there are that know her face,
And many beasts that flee not at her step,
And many cunning eyes do look at her
From serpent-holes and burrows of the rat.
Moreover,' spake the scout, `her skin is brown
And sere by reason of exceeding heat;
And all her darkness of abundant hair
Is shot with gray, because of many nights
When grief hath crouched in fellowship with frost
Upon that desert rock. Yea, thus and thus
Fares Rizpah,' said the spy, O King, to me."
But turned himself, and wept against the wall.
Who've lost their households through no sin of theirs,
On bloody fields and in the pits of war;
And though their dead were sheltered in the sod
By friendly hands, these have not suffered less
Than she of Judah did, nor is their love
Surpassed by hers. The Bard who, in great days
Afar off yet, shall set to epic song
The grand pathetic story of the strife
That shook America for five long years,
And struck its homes with desolation -- he
Shall in his lofty verse relate to men
How, through the heat and havoc of that time,
Columbia's Rachael in her Rama wept
Her children, and would not be comforted;
And sing of Woman waiting day by day
With that high patience that no man attains,
For tidings, from the bitter field, of spouse,
Or son, or brother, or some other love
Set face to face with Death. Moreover, he
Shall say how, through her sleepless hours at night,
When rain or leaves were dropping, every noise
Seemed like an omen; every coming step
Fell on her ears like a presentiment
And every hand that rested on the door
She fancied was a herald bearing grief;
While every letter brought a faintness on
That made her gasp before she opened it,
To read the story written for her eyes,
And cry, or brighten, over its contents.
To the voice of the runnels sea-driven,
While, northward, the mountain-heads darkened,
Girt round with the clamours of heaven.
One peak with the storm at his portal
Loomed out to the left of his brothers:
Sustained, and sublime, and immortal,
A king, and the lord of the others!
Beneath him a cry from the surges
Rang shrill, like a clarion calling;
And about him, the wind of the gorges
Went falling, and rising, and falling.
But ~I~, as the roofs of the thunder
Were cloven with manifold fires,
Turned back from the wail and the wonder,
And dreamed of old days and desires.
A song that was made, I remembered --
A song that was made in the gloaming
Of suns which are sunken and numbered
With times that my heart hath no home in.
But I said to my Dream, "I am calmer
Than waters asleep on the river.
I can look at the hills of Kiama
And bury that dead Past for ever."
"Past sight, out of mind, alienated,"
Said the Dream to me, wearily sighing,
"Ah, where is the Winter you mated
To Love, its decline and its dying?
Here, five years ago, there were places
That knew of her cunning to grieve you,
But alas! for her eyes and her graces;
And wherefore and how did she leave you!
Have you hidden the ways of this Woman,
Her whispers, her glances, her power
To hold you, as demon holds human,
Chained back to the day and the hour?
Say, where have you buried her sweetness,
Her coldness for youth and its yearning?
Is the sleep of your Sorrow a witness
She is passed all the roads of returning?
Was she left with her beauty, O lover,
And the shreds of your passion about her,
Beyond reach and where none can discover?
~Ah! what is the wide world without her?~"
Because of this bright, bitter maiden,
Who helped me with never a token
To beat down the dark I had strayed in.
She knew that my soul was entangled
By what was too fiery to bear then;
Nor cared how she withered and strangled
My life with her eyes and her hair then.
But I have not leapt to the level
Where light and the shadows dissever?
She is fair, but a beautiful devil
That I have forgotten for ever!"
"She is sweeter than music or singing,"
Said the Dream to me, heavily moaning,
"Her voice in your slumber is ringing;
And where is the end -- the atoning?
Can you look at the red of the roses;
Are you friend of the fields and the flowers?
Can you bear the faint day as it closes
And dies into twilighted hours?
Do you love the low notes of the ballad
She sang in her darling old fashion?"
And I whispered, "O Dream, I am pallid
And perished because of my passion."
But the Wraith withered out, and the rifted
Gray hills gleaming over the granges,
Stood robed with moon-rainbows that shifted
And shimmered resplendent with changes!
While, for the dim ocean ledges,
The storm and the surges were blended,
Sheer down the bluff sides of the ridges
Spent winds and the waters descended.
The forests, the crags, and the forelands,
Grew sweet with the stars after raining;
But out in the north-lying moorlands,
I heard the lone plover complaining.
From these to Kiama, half-hidden
In a yellow sea-mist on the slopings
Of hills, by the torrents be-ridden,
I turned with my aches and my hopings,
Saying ~this~ -- "There are those that are taken
By Fate to wear Love as a raiment
Whose texture is trouble with breaking
Of youth and no hope of repayment."
The light on the forehead of Love,
And the spell of past visited places,
And the songs and the sweetness thereof;
These, touched by a hand that is hoary;
These, vext with a tune of decay,
Are spoiled of their glow and their glory;
And the burden is, "Passing away!
Passing away!"
At nightfall to you and to me,
When Autumn sits faded and drooping
By the sorrowful waves of the sea.
Faint phantoms that float in the gloaming,
Return with the whispers that say,
"The end which is quiet is coming;
Ye are weary, and passing away!
Passing away!"
The swiftness that waits upon Time;
But youth and its beauty are over,
And Love has a sigh in its rhyme.
The Life that looks back and remembers,
Is troubled and tired and gray,
And sick of the sullen Decembers,
Whose burden is, "Passing away!
Passing away!"
And our joys have been many and deep;
But seasons of alien weather
Have ended in longings for sleep.
Pale purpose and perishing passion,
With never a farewell to say,
Die down into sobs of suppression;
The burden is, "Passing away!
Passing away!"
The lips that were fain and afraid.
And the silence of far wildernesses,
With their dower of splendour and shade!
For faces of sweetness we waited,
And days of delight and delay,
Ere Time and its voices were mated
To a voice that sighs, "Passing away!
Passing away!"
Of strong aspirations and high,
How fleet and how false were the glories
That lived in your limited sky!
Here, sitting by ruinous altars
Of Promise, what word shall we say
To the speech that the rainy wind falters,
Whose burden is, "Passing away!
Passing away!"
Calm and deep.
Let no wayward word or thought
Vex his sleep.
Now remains
Where the wasted woodwind blows,
Wakes and wanes.
White and sere,
Sanctify the scholar's death,
Lying here.
Swift, serene --
O'er the mute grave-grasses run,
Cold and green.
Let them rave!
Love that takes a tender tone
Lights his grave.
Sorrows shew,
Often sought this quiet place
Years ago.
Loved to stray
Here where water-shallows wail
Day by day.
On the best,
Bound him with an iron hand;
Let him rest.
Left his eyes,
As an April afternoon
Leaves the skies.
Peace came next.
Thus the scholar, thus the bard,
Lies unvext.
Far from pain;
Who would wish to have him back?
Back again?
Hover near;
Shine of hill and shade of dell,
Year by year.
Beauty's face,
Let them sojourn for his sake
Round this place.
Lutes and lights,
May they be as happy dreams:
Sounds and sights;
"Wherefore weep?
Sweet is sleep at close of day!
Death is sleep."
Copyright 1996-2001 - KRACKATINNI IS THE REGISTERED TRADEMARK OF RODNEY JOHN O'BRIEN