Works

One blossoming rose-tree, like a beautiful thought
Nursed in a broken mind, that waits and schemes,
Survives, though shattered, and about it caught,
The strangling dodder streams.
...

The old farm-home is Mother's yet and mine,
And filled it is with plenty and to spare,
But we are lonely here in life's decline,
Though fortune smiles around us everywhere:
We look across the gold...

The old farm-home is Mother's yet and mine,
And filled it is with plenty and to spare, -
But we are lonely here in life's decline,
Though fortune smiles around us everywhere:
We look across the gold...

Out on the wastes of the Never Never
That's where the dead men lie!
There where the heat-waves dance forever
That's where the dead men lie!
That's where the Earth's loved sons are keeping...

The unexplored parts of Australia are sometimes spoken of by the bushmen of Western Queensland as the home of the pelican, a bird whose resting place, so far as the writer knows, is seldom, if ever, found.
...

Where we made the fire,
In the summer time,
Of branch and briar
On the hill to the sea
I slowly climb
Through winter mire,
And scan and trace
The forsaken place
Quite readily.
...

Spare us, Lord, that last, that dreariest ill!
Thy wrath's grim thunder, and thy lightning-scorn
For our iniquity, that we have worn
Soft as a grace, these, if it be thy will,...

Dishevelled leaves creep down
Upon that bank to-day,
Some green, some yellow, and some pale brown;
The wet bents bob and sway;
The once warm slippery turf is sodden
Where we laughingly sat or lay.
...

Where three roads joined it was green and fair,
And over a gate was the sun-glazed sea,
And life laughed sweet when I halted there;
Yet there I never again would be.
...

Whether my bark went down at sea,
Whether she met with gales,
Whether to isles enchanted
She bent her docile sails;

By what mystic mooring
She is held to-day, --
This is the errand of the eye...

Who then is rich, who poor? I'll tell you now
Of one, a meagre life who had to live,
Wear dingy garb, and scarcely could allow
Himself what men call comfort; yet to give...

We are both of us sad at heart,
But I wonder who can say
Which has the harder part,
Or the bitterer grief to-day.

You grieve for a love that was lost
Before it had reached its prime;...

So, the three Court-ladies began
Their trial of who judged best
In esteeming the love of a man:
Who preferred with most reason was thereby confessed
Boy-Cupid's exemplary catcher and cager;...

The wind was on the forest,
And silence on the wold;
And darkness on the waters,
And heaven was starry cold;
When Sleep, with mystic magic,
Bade me this thing behold:
...

There are two kinds of people on earth to-day;
Just two kinds of people, no more, I say.

Not the sinner and the saint, for it's well understood,
The good are half bad and the bad are half good.
...

"God bless the King! God bless the faith's defender!
God bless, no harm in blessing, the Pretender.
But who pretender is, and who is king,
God bless us all, that's quite another thing."

While Anna's peers and early playmates tread,
In freedom, mountain-turf and river's marge;
Or float with music in the festal barge;
Rein the proud steed, or through the dance are led;...

While beams of orient light shoot wide and high,
Deep in the vale a little rural Town
Breathes forth a cloud-like creature of its own,
That mounts not toward the radiant morning sky,...

"It is sad that so many of worth,
Still in the flesh," soughed the yew,
"Misjudge their lot whom kindly earth
Secludes from view.

"They ride their diurnal round
Each day-span's sum of hours...

While gazing on the moon's light,
A moment from her smile I turned,
To look at orbs, that, more bright,
In lone and distant glory burned.
But too far
Each proud star,...