Works

And can you tell me Love is blind
Because your faults he will not find,
Because the image that he sees
Is one of splendid mysteries?
And if he lack the power to look
On what he will, as on a book,...

The spell of Shakespeare fills the heart
With earthly music loud and low;
But Marlowe drives the clouds apart,
And through their thundering rifts we go.

The heart is hard that cannot feel
The bruising of a light appeal.

The heart is deaf that cannot hear
The splashing of a tiny tear.

The heart is dumb that cannot say...

O Merlin, how the magic from your eyes
Bids the world flame about your idle feet,
And makes a marvel of the humming street,
The watchful bush, the starry-haunted skies!...

He looks beyond the veils of night and day;
He hearkens in the silence, and has heard
The ancient woods by dryad singing stirred,
To mortal ears how thin and far away....

Lonely wonder, delight past hoping!
Sky-line broken by stirring trees,
Grey rocks hither and shoreward sloping,
Silent bracken about my knees.

Dusky scrub where the sunlight splashes,...

An outcry in the bush below,
A crash, and boughs that sway,
And shouts of laughter let me know
Where my two ruffians play.

Barelegged, bareheaded, brown and free,
They lurk and prowl and spring;...

How many years, how many years have fled,
Since in the cool dim parlour sat the three
Lawson and I and, lounging easily,
The beaming indolent poet! Then instead
Of labouring weary at the mill, we led...

I

The Sphinx

The spires of sand spring up at every gust
That bids them dance and scatter and lays them low:
He sits impassive, as the ages flow
And bear superbly the mirage of lust....

Spring, and the wispy clouds that fade away
And draw the ecstatic soul in pain to aspire
In maddening flight through heaven's thin flood of fire
To melt in rapture at the heart of day,...

Swags up! and yet I turn upon the way.
The yellow hill against a dapple sky,
With tufts and clumps of thorn, the bush whereby
All through the wonder-pregnant night I lay...

One very rough day on the Pride of the Fray
In the scuppers a poor little cabin-boy lay,
When the Bosun drew nigh with wrath in his eye
And gave him a kick to remember him by,...

Alone
I sit in the dusk and see
Surely the living faces, dear to me,
Of comrades who have thrown
All that they had, the fruit of all desire,
Upon an altar fire.

They heard,...

Borne in the car along a crowded way,
Sun-soaked, I saw the world like shadows glide,
Or phantom boats, upon a running tide,
Driven through flying fog at break of day....

Beside the path, on either hand,
To keep the garden beds,
The rusted iron pickets stand
Thin shafts and pointed heads.

And straight my spirit swooping goes
Across the waves of time...

When I cast my slough of clay
Put it quietly away.

Let no bloom untimely fade
Where my empty heart is laid.

Ask no folk to crowd around
With an air of woe profound.
...

Hail and farewell to those who fought and died,
Not laughingly adventurous, nor pale
With idiot hatred, nor to fill the tale
Of racial selfishness and patriot pride,...

Out of the pregnant darkness, where from fire
To glimmering fire the watchword leaps,
The dirge floats up from those who build the pyre
High and still higher
That yet shall blaze across the verminous deeps....

The bulging cloud mounts lazily
In shade where sunlight glances through,
And sweeping lightly from the tree
Melts indolently in the blue.

The scanty grass-blades yonder shake,...

I

Dearest, when I left your side,
I stood a moment, hesitating,
And plunged. The boiling tide
Of darkness took me, and down I went
Swift as a bird with folded wing,
And upward sent...