Works

The English have a scornful insular way
Of calling the French light. The levity
Is in the judgment only, which yet stands,
For say a foolish thing but oft enough
(And here's the secret of a hundred creeds,...

"To-day thou girdest up thy loins thyself
And goest where thou wouldest: presently
Others shall gird thee," said the Lord, "to go
Where thou wouldst not." He spoke to Peter thus,...

Times followed one another. Came a morn
I stood upon the brink of twenty years,
And looked before and after, as I stood
Woman and artist, either incomplete,
Both credulous of completion. There I held...

That son of Italy who tried to blow,
Ere Dante came, the trump of sacred song,
In his light youth amid a festal throng
Sate with his bride to see a public show.
...

Australia, my native land,
A stirring whisper in your ear,
'Tis time for you to understand
Your rating now is A1, dear.
You've done some rousing things of late.
That lift you from the simple state...

I see a land of desperate droughts and floods:
I see a land where need keeps spreading round,
And all but giants perish in the stress:
I see a land where more, and more, and more...

Australia! land of lonely lake
And serpent-haunted fen;
Land of the torrent and the fire
And forest-sundered men:
Thou art not now as thou shalt be
When the stern invaders come,...

While you use your best endeavour to immortalise in verse
The gambling and the drink which are your country's greatest curse,
While you glorify the bully and take the spieler's part,...

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,...

The Mountains
A land of sombre, silent hills, where mountain cattle go
By twisted tracks, on sidelings deep, where giant gum trees grow
And the wind replies, in the river oaks, to the song of the stream below....

Men have said that ye were sleeping
Hurl, Australians, back the lie;
Whet the swords you have in keeping,
Forward stand to do or die!
Hear ye not, across the ocean,
Echoes of the distant fray,...

We must suffer, husband and father, we must suffer, daughter and son,
For the wrong we have taken part in and the wrong that we have seen done.
Let the bride of frivolous fashion, and of ease, be ashamed and dumb,...

They came from the lower levels
Deep down in the Brilliant mine;
From the wastes where the whirlwind revels,
Whirling the leaves of pine.

On the western plains, where the Darling flows,...

Who cometh from fields of the south
With raiment of weeping and woe,
And a cry of the heart in her mouth,
And a step that is muffled and slow?

Her paths are the paths of the sun;...

The unpretentious flowers of the woods,
That rise in bright and banded brotherhoods,
Waving us welcome, and with kisses sweet
Laying their lives down underneath our feet,...

Over the meadows, and down the stream,

And through the garden-walks straying,
He plucks the flowers that fairest seem;

His throbbing heart brooks no delaying....

Plain be the phrase, yet apt the verse,
More ponderous than nimble;
For since grimed War here laid aside
His Orient pomp, 'twould ill befit
Overmuch to ply
The rhyme's barbaric cymbal.
...

(HE EXPLAINS.)

Oh, just burning up some old papers,
They do make a good deal of smoke:
That's right, Dolly, open the window;
They'll blaze if you give them a poke....

La plus douce des voix qui vibraient sous le ciel
Se tait: les rossignols ail's pleurent le fr're
Qui s'envole au-dessus de l''pre et sombre terre,
Ne lui laissant plus voir que l''tre essentiel,...

"The world's smallest painting ... Our Beautiful Canada was painted with a single hair and the aid of a microscope. The artist considers his price of seven million dollars not too high."
...