The day fades fast; And backward ebbs the tide of light From the far hills in billows bright, Scattering foam, as they sweep past, O'er the low clouds that bank the sky, And barrier day off solemnly....
At eventide, when glories lie In crimson curtains hung on high, And all the breast of heaven glows With mingled wreaths of flowers and snows, The dearest dreams of life draw nigh. ...
'Tis true, Idoloclastes Satyrane! (So call him, for so mingling blame with praise, And smiles with anxious looks, his earliest friends, Masking his birth-name, wont to character...
Atonement Day--evening pray'r--sadness profound. The soul-lights, so clear once, are dying around. The reader is spent, and he barely can speak; The people are faint, e'en the basso is weak....
Brothers, whom we may not reach Through the veil of alien speech, Welcome! welcome! eyes can tell What the lips in vain would spell, - Words that hearts can understand, Brothers from the Flowery Land!...
We welcome you, Lords of the Land of the Sun! The voice of the many sounds feebly through one; Ah! would 't were a voice of more musical tone, But the dog-star is here, and the song-birds have flown. ...
There is no escape by the river, There is no flight left by the fen; We are compassed about by the shiver Of the night of their marching men. Give a cheer! For our hearts shall not give way....
I stood beside his sepulchre whose fame, Hurled over Europe once on bolt and blast, Now glows far off as storm-clouds overpast Glow in the sunset flushed with glorious flame....
One eve it happened, when I sat alone, Alone, upon the terrace of my tower, A book upon my knees to counterfeit The reading that I never read at all, While Marian, in the garden down below,...
Ah, well! but the case seems hopeless, and the pen might write in vain; The people gabble of old things over and over again. For the sake of the sleek importer we slave with the pick and the shears,...
Her rain-kissed face is fresh as rain, Is cool and fresh as a rain-wet leaf; She glimmers at my window-pane, And all my grief Becomes a feeble rushlight, seen no more...
I see thy house, but I am blown about, A wind-mocked kite, between the earth and sky, All out of doors--alas! of thy doors out, And drenched in dews no summer suns can dry. ...
A volant Tribe of Bards on earth are found, Who, while the flattering Zephyrs round them play, On "coignes of vantage" hang their nests of clay; How quickly from that aery hold unbound,...
The sun strikes down with a blinding glare; The skies are blue and the plains are wide, The saltbush plains that are burnt and bare By Walgett out on the Barwon side, The Barwon River that wanders down...