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They did not know,
The hundreds who had read his sturdy verse
And revelled over ringing major notes,
The mournful meaning of the undersong
Which runs through all he wrote, and often takes
The deep autumnal, half-prophetic tone
Of forest winds in March; nor did they think
That on that healthy-hearted man there lay
The wild specific curse which seems to cling
Forever to the Poet's twofold life!
To Adam Lindsay Gordon, I who laid
Two years ago on Lionel Michael's grave
A tender leaf of my regard; yea, I
Who culled a garland from the flowers of song
To place where Harpur sleeps; I, left alone,
The sad disciple of a shining band
Now gone -- to Adam Lindsay Gordon's name
I dedicate these lines; and if 'tis true
That, past the darkness of the grave, the soul
Becomes omniscient, then the bard may stoop
From his high seat to take the offering,
And read it with a sigh for human friends,
In human bonds, and grey with human griefs.
And having wove and proffered this poor wreath,
I stand to-day as lone as he who saw
At nightfall, through the glimmering moony mist,
The last of Arthur on the wailing mere,
And strained in vain to hear the going voice.
~~~ In Memory of Edward Butler ~~~
The fair divinity that roves
Here, where this strange Demeter weeps --
Where sighs the sedge and moans the marsh,
Now where the land's worn face is grey
There is no blossom left at all;
For this heroic Irish heart
But often in the lonely space
Yea, while the frost is on the ways
The saintly face of Stenhouse turns --
Where Edward Butler sleeps, the wave ~~~ How the Melbourne Cup was Won ~~~
And the mouths of pale thousands were hushed
But Cracknell still kept to the fore,
But the wonderful Queenslander came,
And the marvel that came from the North,
But the Derby colt tired at the rails,
Yes, first from the turn to the end,
In a clamour of calls and acclaim, ~~~ Blue Mountain Pioneers ~~~
~~~ Robert Parkes ~~~
High travelling winds by royal hill
To-night across a wild wet plain
I cannot say what forest saith --
Yea, in these deep dim solitudes
And while the hymn of other years
And takes me over moaning wave,
The halo of the beautiful
Here in this lovely lap of bloom,
I do not mark the shell that lies
I only turn, by grief inspired,
The glory of unblemished days
Here is the clay of one whose mind
This Christian, walking on the white
The clamour and exceeding flame
Ah! like an English April psalm,
The chair he filled is set aside
No more his face the forest knows;
Yea, from the hours that heard his speech
Here, kneeling in the body, far
Though you were as a fleeting flame
I never have forgotten yet
I feel that I have given pain
For your sole sake I rue the blow,
I know that once I wronged your sire,
Here let me pause! From years like yours
From lonely lands across the wave ~~~ At Her Window ~~~
To-night the fretted Yarra chafes its banks,
To-night beside a moody window sits
There, where the plopping of the guttered rain
The chapel clock strikes twelve! He has not come.
Is this the old, old tale? Ah! do not ask,
I, having learnt from sources pure and high,
And, therefore, knowing this from you, who've shared ~~~ William Bede Dalley ~~~
He having lived so long with lords of thought,
The clear, bright atmosphere through which he looks
And he, thus strengthened with the fourfold force
He, with the faultless intuition born
But for the sufferer and the son of shame
Firm to the Church by which his fathers stood,
These in his honour. May his life be long, ~~~ To the Spirit of Music ~~~
The cool grass blowing in a breeze
How sweet is wandering where the west
How sweet are dreams in shady nooks,
And oh, how sweet is that sad tune
How blest are they whom thou hast crowned,
These stand within thy courts and see
II
In hills where the keen Thessalonian
She dwelt with the echoes that dwell
In a fair, in a floral abode,
III
Lady of a land of wonder,
Bud of light, she shines above us;
Mournful humanity, stricken and worn,
Chiefly it is when the beautiful day
Then Euterpe's harmonies
Ah! and in that quiet hour ~~~ John Dunmore Lang ~~~
Because thou wert chief and a giant
I knew of thy fierce tribulation,
The noise of thy battle is over, ~~~ On a Baby Buried by the Hawkesbury ~~~
A grace that was lent for a very few hours,
But the gold of the grass, and the green of the vine,
To: The List of Poetic Works of Henry Kendall
To: Australian Master Poets Menu
Is in the woods to-night;
No sound of radiant day is this,
No cadence of the light.
Here in the fall and flights of leaves
Against grey widths of sea,
The spirit of the forests grieves
For lost Persephone.
Where many waters sing
Doth miss her daughter of the groves --
The golden-headed Spring.
She cannot find the shining hand
That once the rose caressed;
There is no blossom on the land,
No bird in last year's nest.
This large, sad life unseen --
Where July's strong, wild torrent leaps
The wet hill-heads between,
I sit and listen to the grief,
The high, supreme distress,
Which sobs above the fallen leaf
Like human tenderness!
The hermit plover calls;
The voice of straitened streams is harsh
By windy mountain walls;
There is no gleam upon the hills
Of last October's wings;
The shining lady of the rills
Is with forgotten things.
And storm is on the wave,
What flower is left to bear away
To Edward Butler's grave?
What tender rose of song is here
That I may pluck and send
Across the hills and seas austere
To my lamented friend?
But this white winter leaf,
Whose glad green life is past recall,
Is token of my grief.
Where love is tending growths of grace,
The first-born of the Spring,
Perhaps there may be found a place
For my pale offering.
We miss so much to-day,
Whose life was of our lives a part,
What words have I to say?
Because I know the noble woe
That shrinks beneath the touch --
The pain of brothers stricken low --
I will not say too much.
When night is on the land,
I dream of a departed face --
A gracious, vanished hand.
And when the solemn waters roll
Against the outer steep,
I see a great, benignant soul
Beside me in my sleep.
With barren banks austere,
The friend I knew in other days
Is often very near.
I do not hear a single tone;
But where this brother gleams,
The elders of the seasons flown
Are with me in my dreams.
His kind old eyes I see;
And Pell and Ridley from their urns
Arise and look at me.
By Butler's side the lights reveal
The father of his fold,
I start from sleep in tears, and feel
That I am growing old.
Is hardly ever heard;
But now the leaves above his grave
By August's songs are stirred.
The slope beyond is green and still,
And in my dreams I dream
The hill is like an Irish hill
Beside an Irish stream.
Made soft by a breeze from the sea,
The horses were started away,
The fleet-footed thirty and three;
Where beauty, with shining attire,
Shed more than a noon on the land,
Like spirits of thunder and fire
They flashed by the fence and the stand.
When Somnus, a marvel of strength,
Past Bowes like a sudden wind rushed,
And led the bay colt by a length;
But a chestnut came galloping through,
And, down where the river-tide steals,
O'Brien, on brave Waterloo,
Dashed up to the big horse's heels.
And first by the water bend wheeled,
When a cry from the stand, and a roar
Ran over green furlongs of field;
Far out by the back of the course --
A demon of muscle and pluck --
Flashed onward the favourite horse,
With his hoofs flaming clear of the ruck.
And the thundering leaders were three;
And a ring, and a roll of acclaim,
Went out, like a surge of the sea:
"An Epigram! Epigram wins!" --
"The Colt of the Derby" -- "The bay!"
But back where the crescent begins
The favourite melted away.
With another, was heavily thrown;
And here at the turning flashed forth
To the front a surprising unknown;
By shed and by paddock and gate
The strange, the magnificent black,
Led Darebin a length in the straight,
With thirty and one at his back.
And Ivory's marvellous bay
Passed Burton, O'Brien, and Hales,
As fleet as a flash of the day.
But Gough on the African star
Came clear in the front of his "field",
Hard followed by Morrison's Czar
And the blood unaccustomed to yield.
With a boy on him paler than ghost,
The horse that had hardly a friend
Shot flashing like fire by the post.
When Graham was "riding" 'twas late
For his friends to applaud on the stands,
The black, through the bend and "the straight",
Had the race of the year in his hands.
He landed the money -- the horse
With the beautiful African name,
That rang to the back of the course.
Hurrah for the Hercules race,
And the terror that came from his stall,
With the bright, the intelligent face,
To show the road home to them all!
These heroes battled with the haughty heights;
For twenty spaces of the star and sun
These Romans kept their harness buckled on;
By gaping gorges, and by cliffs austere,
These fathers struggled in the great old year.
Their feet they set on strange hills scarred by fire,
Their strong arms forced a path through brake and briar;
They fought with Nature till they reached the throne
Where morning glittered on the great UNKNOWN!
There, in a time with praise and prayer supreme,
Paused Blaxland, Lawson, Wentworth, in a dream;
There, where the silver arrows of the day
Smote slope and spire, they halted on their way.
Behind them were the conquered hills -- they faced
The vast green West, with glad, strange beauty graced;
And every tone of every cave and tree
Was as a voice of splendid prophecy.
Their awful anthem sing,
And songs exalted flow and fill
The caverns of the spring.
A shadow sobs and strays;
The trees are whispering in the rain
Of long departed days.
Its words are strange to me:
I only know that in its breath
Are tones that used to be.
I hear a sound I know --
The voice that lived in Penrith woods
Twelve weary years ago.
Is on a listening land,
The Angel of the Past appears
And leads me by the hand;
And tracts of sleepless change,
To set me by a lonely grave
Within a lonely range.
Is round the quiet spot;
The grass is deep and green and cool,
Where sound of life is not.
The grace of glen and glade,
That tender days and nights illume,
My gentle friend was laid.
Beneath the touching flowers;
I only see the radiant eyes
Of other scenes and hours.
Like some forsaken thing,
To look upon a life retired
As hushed Bethesda's spring.
Is on the silent mound --
The light of years, too pure for praise;
I kneel on holy ground!
Was fairer than the dew,
The sweetest nature of his kind
I haply ever knew.
Clear paths apart from strife,
Kept far from all the heat and light
That fills his father's life.
Were never in his days:
A higher object was his aim
Than thrones of shine and praise.
That floats by sea and strand,
He passed away into the calm
Of the Eternal Land.
Upon his father's floor;
In morning hours, at eventide,
His step is heard no more.
His voice is of the past;
But from his life of beauty flows
A radiance that will last.
High shining mem'ries give
That fine example which will teach
Our children how to live.
From grave of flower and dew,
My friend beyond the path of star,
I say these words to you.
Across my road austere,
The memory of your face became
A thing for ever dear.
The Christian's gentle touch;
And, since the time when last we met,
You know I've suffered much.
By certain words and deeds,
But stricken here with Sorrow's rain,
My contrite spirit bleeds.
But this assurance send:
I smote, in noon, the public foe,
But not the private friend.
But since that awful day
My soul has passed through blood and fire,
My head is very grey.
There ever flows and thrives
The splendid blessing which endures
Beyond our little lives.
Is sent to-night by me
This rose of reverence for the grave
Beside the mountain lea.
Across the city. Now by salt wet flats,
And ridges perished with the breath of drought,
Comes up a deep, sonorous, gulf-like voice --
Far-travelled herald of some distant storm --
That strikes with harsh gigantic wings the cliff,
Where twofold Otway meets his straitened surf,
And makes a white wrath of a league of sea.
And dusks and glistens; while the city shows
A ring of windy light. From street to street
The noise of labour, linked to hurrying wheels,
Rolls off, as rolls the stately sound of wave,
When he that hears it hastens from the shore.
A wife who watches for her absent love;
Her home is in a dim suburban street,
In which the winds, like one with straitened breath,
Now fleet with whispers dry and short half-sobs,
Or pause and beat against the showery panes
Like homeless mem'ries seeking for a home.
Sounds like a heavy footstep in the dark,
Where every shadow thrown by flickering light
Seems like her husband halting at the door,
I say a woman sits, and waits, and sits,
Then trims her fire, and comes to wait again.
The night grows wilder, and the wind dies off
The roads, now turned to thoroughfares of storm,
Save when a solitary, stumbling foot
Breaks through the clamour. Then the watcher starts,
And trembles, with her hand upon the key,
And flutters, with the love upon her lips;
Then sighs, returns, and takes her seat once more.
My gentle reader, but across your doubts
Throw shining reasons on the happier side;
Or, if you cannot choose but doubt the man --
If you do count him in your thoughts as one
Who leaves a good wife by a lonely hearth
For more than half the night, for scenes (we'll say)
Of revelry -- I pray you think of how
That wretch must suffer in his waking times
(If he be human), when he recollects
That through the long, long hours of evil feasts
With painted sin, and under glaring gas,
His brightest friend was at a window-sill
A watcher, seated in a joyless room,
And haply left without a loaf of bread.
From springs of love that make the perfect wife,
Can say how much a woman will endure
For one to whom her tender heart has passed.
When fortune fails, and friends drop off, and time
Has shadows waiting in predestined ways --
When shame that grows from want of money comes,
And sets its brand upon a husband's brow,
And makes him walk an alien in the streets:
One faithful face, on which a light divine
Becomes a glory when vicissitude
Is in its darkest mood -- one face, I say,
Marks not the fallings-off that others see,
Seeks not to know the thoughts that others think,
Cares not to hear the words that others say:
But, through her deep and self-sufficing love,
She only sees the bright-eyed youth that won
Her maiden heart in other, happier days,
And not the silent, gloomy-featured man
That frets and shivers by a sullen fire.
With me the ordeal of most trying times,
I sometimes feel a hot shame flushing up,
To think that there are those among my sex
Who are so cursed with small-souled selfishness
That they do give to noble wives like you,
For love -- that first and final flower of life --
The dreadful portion of a drunkard's home.
Of deathless verse, intense, ineffable,
Hath made this scholar's nature like the white,
Pure Roman soul of whom the poets tell.
The grand hierophants of speech and song,
Hath from the high, august communion caught
Some portion of their inspiration strong.
Is one by no dim, close horizon bound;
The power shed as flame from noble books
Hath made for him a larger world around.
Which scholarship to genius gives, is one
That liberal thinkers, pausing in their course,
With fine esteem are glad to look upon.
Of splendid faculties, sees things aright,
And all his strong, immeasurable scorn
Falls like a thunder on the hypocrite.
On whom remorse -- a great, sad burden -- lies,
His kindness glistens like a morning flame,
Immense compassion shines within his eyes.
But tolerant to every form of creed,
He longs for universal brotherhood,
And is a Christian gentleman indeed.
And, like a summer with a brilliant close,
As full of music as a perfect song,
As radiant as a rich, unhandled rose.
Of April valleys sooms and sways;
On slopes that dip to quiet seas
Through far, faint drifts of yellowing haze.
I lie like one who, in a dream
Of sounds and splendid coloured things,
Seems lifted into life supreme
And has a sense of waxing wings.
For through a great arch-light which floods
And breaks and spreads and swims along
High royal-robed autumnal woods,
I hear a glorious sunset song.
But, ah, Euterpe! I that pause
And listen to the strain divine
Can never learn its words, because
I am no son of thine.
Is full of thee, what time the morn
Looks from his halls of rosy rest
Across green miles of gleaming corn!
When bees are out, and day is mute,
While down the dell there floats the brook's
Fine echo of thy marvellous lute!
Of thine, within the evening breeze,
Which roams beneath the mirrored moon
On silver-sleeping summer seas!
Thy priests -- the lords who understand
The deep divinity of sound,
And live their lives in Wonderland!
The light exceeding round thy throne,
But I -- an alien unto thee --
I faint afar off, and alone.
Made 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 her
Immutable dower of dreams,
And clothed her with glory, and taught her
The words of the winds and the streams.
In 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 rain
Had life in the life of the lyre,
And breath in its infinite strain.
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 bars
Of the leaves of her luminous bowers,
Syllables splendid as stars,
And faultless as moon-litten flowers.
Daughter of the hill supernal,
Far from frost and far from thunder
Under sons and moons eternal!
Long ago the strong Immortals
Took her hence on wheels of fire,
Caught her up and shut their portals --
Floral maid with fervent lyre.
But stray fallen notes of brightness
Yet within our world are ringing,
Floating on the winds of lightness
Glorious fragments of her singing.
But a few of starry pinions --
Passioned souls who are her lovers --
Dwell in her divine dominions.
Few they are, but in the centric
Fanes of Beauty hold their station;
Kings of music, lords authentic,
Of the worlds of Inspiration.
These are they to whom are given
Eyes to see the singing stream-land,
Far from earth and near to heaven,
Known to gods and men as Dreamland.
Toiling for peace in undignified days,
Set in a sphere with the shadows forlorn,
Seeing sublimity dimmed by a haze --
Mournful humanity wearing the sign
Of 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 light
Sweeten the heart of the summering west,
Music and glory that lend to the night
Glimpses of marvellous havens of rest.
Dies with a sound on its lips like a psalm --
Anthem of loveliness drifting away
Over a sea of unspeakable calm.
In 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.
Soul by soul is borne away
Over 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 abide
Robed with strange new majesty.
Whose music is full of thy name,
Is weaker, O father! than any,
Is fainter than flickering flame.
But far in the folds of the mountains
Whose bases are hoary with sea,
By lone immemorial fountains
This singer is mourning for thee.
With those who fought on for the right
A 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.
Thou wert ever the same in my thought --
The father and friend of a nation
Through 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 letters
Whipped infamy back to its den.
Thy sword is hung up in its sheath;
Thy grave has been decked by its lover
With 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 never
Bring sorrow again unto thee.
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.
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.
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