Works

Neither the harps nor the crowns amused, nor the cherubs' dove-winged races,
Holding hands forlornly the Children wandered beneath the Dome,
Plucking the splendid robes of the passers-by, and with pitiful! faces...

Again the warm bare earth, the noon
That hangs upon her healing scars,
The midnight round, the great red moon,
The mother with her brood of stars,

The mist-rack and the wakening rain...

My friend, thou sorrowest for thy golden prime,
For thy fair youthful years too swift of flight;
Thou musest, with wet eyes, upon the time
Of cheerful hopes that filled the world with light,...

Once again, but how chang'd since my wand'rings began
I have heard the deep voice of the Lagan and Bann,
And the pines of Clanbrasil resound to the roar
That wearies the echoes of fair Tullamore....

The gulf of seven and fifty years
We stretch our welcoming hands across;
The distance but a pebble's toss
Between us and our youth appears.

For in life's school we linger on...

They have met, they have met! now their pinions unfurl
In that city whose pavement is gold,
Whose every gate is of one liquid pearl,
And her beauty and glory untold;
...

Suddenly and without warning they came -
The Revealing Angels came.
Suddenly and simultaneously, through city streets,
Through quiet lanes and country roads they walked....

Trumpets of the Lancer Corps
Sound a loud reveille;
Sound it over Sydney shore,
Send the message far and wide
Down the Richmond River side.
Boot and Saddle, mount and ride,
Sound a loud reveille....

Hark! I hear the tramp of thousands,
And of armed men the hum;
Lo! a nation's hosts have gathered
Round the quick alarming drum,
Saying, 'Come,
Freemen, come!...

The same old sprint in the morning, boys, to the same old din and smut;
Chained all day to the same old desk, down in the same old rut;
Posting the same old greasy books, catching the same old train:...

O all ye fair ladies with your colours and your graces,
And your eyes clear in flame of candle and hearth,
Toward the dark of this old window lift not up your smiling faces,...

A Ballad of the Fleet

1878

I

At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay,
And a pinnace, like a fluttered bird, came flying from far away:...

It was three slim does and a ten-tined buck in the bracken lay;
And all of a sudden the sinister smell of a man,
Awaft on a wind-shift, wavered and ran...

In that desolate land and lone,
Where the Big Horn and Yellowstone
Roar down their mountain path,
By their fires the Sioux Chiefs
Muttered their woes and griefs
And the menace of their wrath.
...

The REVEREND MICAH SOWLS,
He shouts and yells and howls,
He screams, he mouths, he bumps,
He foams, he rants, he thumps.

His armour he has buckled on, to wage
The regulation war against the Stage;...

I'd reckon his weight as eight-stun-eight,
And his height as five-foot-two,
With a face as plain as an eight-day clock
And a walk as brisk as a bantam-cock,
Game as a bantam, too,...

Oh, have you heard what hapt of late?
If not, come lend an ear,
While sad I state the piteous fate
Of the Reverend Pamphleteer.

All praised his skilful jockeyship,
Loud rung the Tory cheer,...

A rich advowson, highly prized,
For private sale was advertised;
And many a parson made a bid;
The Reverend Simon Magus did.

He sought the agent's: "Agent, I
Have come prepared at once to buy...

At the corner of Wood Street, when daylight appears,
Hangs a Thrush that sings loud, it has sung for three years:
Poor Susan has passed by the spot, and has heard
In the silence of morning the song of the Bird....

Venus one day, as story goes,
But for what reason no man knows,
In sullen mood and grave deport,
Trudged it away to Jove's high court;
And there his Godship did entreat
To look out for his best receipt:...