Works

Rivermouth Rocks are fair to see,
By dawn or sunset shone across,
When the ebb of the sea has left them free,
To dry their fringes of gold-green moss
For there the river comes winding down,...

Day of ending for beginnings!
Ocean hath another innings,
Ocean hath another score;
And the surges sing his winnings,
And the surges shout his winnings,
And the surges shriek his winnings,...

To the happy memory of five Franciscan Nuns exiles by the Falk Laws drowned between midnight and morning of Dec. 7th. 1875


PART THE FIRST

1
Thou mastering me
God! giver of breath and bread;...

It was the Bondi golfing man
Drove off from the golf house tee,
And he had taken his little daughter
To bear him company.

"Oh, Father, why do you swing the club
And flourish it such a lot?"...

It was the schooner Hesperus,
That sailed the wintry sea;
And the skipper had taken his little daughter,
To bear him company.

Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax,
Her cheeks like the dawn of day,...

On wan dark night on Lac St. Pierre,
De win' she blow, blow, blow,
An' de crew of de wood scow "Julie Plante"
Got scar't an' run below
For de win' she blow lak hurricane,
Bimeby she blow some more,...

Within the greenhouse dim and damp
The heat floats like a cloud.
Pale rose-leaves droop from the rust roof
With rust-edged roses bowed.
As I go in
Out flies the startled wren.
...

Early each spring the little wren
Came scolding to his nest of moss;
We knew him by his peevish cry,
He always sung so very cross.
His quiet little mate would lay
Her eggs in peace, and think all day....

Old monasteries under steadfast walls
Displayed tableaux of holy Verity,
Warming the inner men in those cold halls
Against the chill of their austerity.
...

A writer wrote of the hearts of men, and he followed their tracks afar;
For his was a spirit that forced his pen to write of the things that are....

"My little Edward, how could you
Tell me a thing that was not true?
And make me feel thus grieved and sad
To find I have a child so bad?

"And then, to do a deed so mean,...

The Bishop tells us: "When the boys come back
They will not be the same; for they'll have fought
In a just cause: they lead the last attack
On Anti-Christ; their comrade's blood has bought...

To the Tune of "Derry Down."

Jolly boys of St. Kevan's,[2] St. Patrick's, Donore
And Smithfield, I'll tell you, if not told before,
How Bettesworth, that booby, and scoundrel in grain,...

THIS is the Yak, so neg-li-g'e:
His coif-fure's like a stack of hay;
He lives so far from Any-where,
I fear the Yak neg-lects his hair,
And thinks, since there is none to see,...

They're all buildin nests for thersen,
One bi one they goa fleetin away;
A suitable mate comes, - an then,
I'th' old nest they noa longer can stay.
Well, - it's folly for th' old en's to freeat,...

She sings by her wheel at that low cottage door,
Which the long evening shadow is stretching before;
With a music as sweet as the music which seems
Breathed softly and faintly in the ear of our dreams!
...

They are blind, and they are dead:
We will wake them as we go;
There are words have not been said,
There are sounds they do not know:
We will pipe and we will sing--
With the Music and the Spring...

The Loch Achray was a clipper tall
With seven-and-twenty hands in all.
Twenty to hand and reef and haul,
A skipper to sail and mates to bawl
"Tally on to the tackle-fall,...

'Twas on the shores that round our coast
From Deal to Ramsgate span,
That I found alone, on a piece of stone,
An elderly naval man.

His hair was weedy, his beard was long,...

I.

A Tortured tree in a huddled hollow,
On whose gnarled boughs three leaves are blowing:
A strip of path that the hunters follow,
That leads to fields of the wind's wild sowing,...