Works

I've left my own old home of homes,
Green fields and every pleasant place;
The summer like a stranger comes,
I pause and hardly know her face.
I miss the hazel's happy green,...

Waves trough, rebound, and furious boil again,
Like plunging monsters rising underneath,
Who at the top curl up a shaggy mane,
A moment catching at a surer breath,...

Blood has been harder to dam back than water.
Just when we think we have it impounded safe
Behind new barrier walls (and let it chafe!),
It breaks away in some new kind of slaughter....

The rain it rains without a stay
In the hills above us, in the hills;
And presently the floods break way
Whose strength is in the hills.
The trees they suck from every cloud,...

Here's to the floor,
Our best friend of all,
Who sticks to us close
In the time of our fall.
When benches are fickle
And tables betray
And rugs are revolving,
He meets us half-way....

By Lawson's Hill, near Mudgee,
On old Eurunderee,
The place they called "New Pipeclay",
Where the diggers used to be,
On a dreary old selection,
Where times were dry and thin,...

Once in a golden hour
I cast to earth a seed.
Up there came a flower,
The people said, a weed.

To and fro they went
Thro' my garden bower,
And muttering discontent...

A VISION.


Now turning from the wintry signs, the sun,
His course exalted, through the Ram had run,
And whirling up the skies, his chariot drove
Through Taurus, and the lightsome realms of love;...

Of old, with goodwill from the skies--
God's message to them given--
The angels came, a glad surprise,
And went again to heaven.

But now the angels are grown rare,
Needed no more as then;...

The Fisherman's swapping a yarn for a yarn
Under the hand of the village barber,
And here in the angle of house and barn
His deep-sea dory has found a harbor.

At anchor she rides the sunny sod...

Silk Embroidery.

Lo silken my garden,
and silken my sky,
And silken my apple-boughs
hanging on high;
All wrought by the Worm
in the peasant carle's cot
On the Mulberry leafage...

I.

Bright red is the sun on the waves of Lough Sheelin,
A cool, gentle breeze from the mountain is stealing,
While fair round its islets the small ripples play,...

What flower is this that greets the morn,
Its hues from Heaven so freshly born?
With burning star and flaming band
It kindles all the sunset land
Oh tell us what its name may be, -...

(To Eudora, after I had had certain dire adventures.)



When Dragon-fly would fix his wings,
When Snail would patch his house,
When moths have marred the overcoat
Of tender Mister Mouse,...

She leaned o'er her latticed casement,
The Flower of Wensleydale;
'Twas St Agnes Eve at midnight,
Through the mist the stars burnt pale.

In her hand she held twelve sage-leaves,...

Day after day,
At spring's return,
I watch my flowers, how they burn
Their lives away.

The candle crocus
And daffodil gold
Drink fire of the sunshine--
Quickly cold.
...

Some flowers are brighter far in hue
Than others by their side,
But God baptizes all with dew,
And spreads His mantle wide
To cover all for half the day,
From rays of scorching sun,...

Buy my English posies!
Kent and Surrey may,
Violets of the Undercliff
Wet with Channel spray;
Cowslips from a Devon combe,
Midland furze afire,
Buy my English posies...

Ye offspring of the morning sun,
Ye flowers that deck the smiling plain,
Your lives, in joy and bliss begun,
In Nature's love unchanged remain.
With hues of bright and godlike splendor...

There grew a fragrant rose-tree where the brook flows,
With two little tender buds, and one full rose;
When the sun went down to his bed in the west,
The little buds leaned on the rose-mother's breast,...