Works

A Dramatic Poem

The deck of an ancient ship. At the right of the stage is the mast,
with a large square sail hiding a great deal of the sky and sea...

Whence comest thou? shady lane, and why and how?
Thou, where with idle heart, ten years ago,
I wandered, and with childhood's paces slow
So long unthought of, and remembered now!...

Set me back for twenty summers,
For I'm tired of cities now,
Set my feet in red-soil furrows
And my hands upon the plough,
With the two 'Black Brothers' trudging
On the home stretch through the loam,...

When you've come to make a fortune and you haven't made your salt,
And the reason of your failure isn't anybody's fault,
When you haven't got a billet, and the times are very slack,...

There are tracks through the scrub, there's a track down the hill,
And a track round the bend from M'Courteney's mill,
Where they slyly emerge from the bush and converge,...

When the caravans of wool-teams climbed the ranges from the West,
On a spur among the mountains stood `The Bullock-drivers' Rest';
It was built of bark and saplings, and was rather rough inside,...

'Tis strange to see a new-launched fashion
Lay on the soul and grow a passion.
To illustrate such folly, I
Proffer some beast to the mind's eye.
Now I select the goat. What then?...

No church-bell rings them from the Track,
No pulpit lights their blindness,
'Tis hardship, drought and homelessness
That teach those Bushmen kindness:
The mateship born of barren lands,...

O I dreamt I shore in a shearing shed and it was a dream of joy
For every one of the rouseabouts was a girl dressed up as a boy
Dressed up like a page in a pantomime the prettiest ever seen...

'The ladies are coming,' the super says
To the shearers sweltering there,
And 'the ladies' means in the shearing-shed:
'Don't cut 'em too bad. Don't swear.'
The ghost of a pause in the shed's rough heart,...

The Sheep adorns the landscape rural
And is both singular and plural,
It gives grammarians the creeps
To hear one say, 'A flock of sheeps.'

The Sheep is gentle, meek and mild,...

The thousand streets of London gray
Repel all country sights;
But bar not winds upon their way,
Nor quench the scent of new-mown hay
In depth of summer nights.

And here and there an open spot,...

"Come to the window, mother!
Look out, and you will see
How fast these little clouds sail on,
Above our old elm tree!

"And tell me, dearest mother,
Are these the sheep of heaven,...

(Air: 'The Bonnie Irish Boy.')


Come now, ye sighing washers all,
Join in my doleful lay,
Mourn for the times none can recall,
With hearts to grief a prey....

The world was like a shell to me, -
Its voice with distant song was low;
But now its mysteries I know:
I hear the turmoil of the sea.

The whirling, soft, and tender sound...

The body grows outside, --
The more convenient way, --
That if the spirit like to hide,
Its temple stands alway

Ajar, secure, inviting;
It never did betray
The soul that asked its shelter...

DORILVS in sorrowes deepe,
Autumne waxing olde and chill,
As he sate his Flocks to keepe
Vnderneath an easie hill:
Chanc'd to cast his eye aside
On those fields, where he had scene,...

(Air: 'She Wore a Wreath of Roses.')


He wore an old blue shirt the night that first we met,
An old and tattered cabbage-tree concealed his locks of jet;...

How sweet is the Shepherd's sweet lot!
From the morn to the evening he stays;
He shall follow his sheep all the day,
And his tongue shall be filled with praise.

For he hears the lambs' innocent call,...

(On a fragment by De Bussy.)

Thy slender form I think I see
On winter hills of Tuscany,
Thy slender pipe I think I hear,
So very faint, so very clear.

That lonely reed! It seems to me...