Works

i(Man)
In a cleft that's christened Alt
Under broken stone I halt
At the bottom of a pit
That broad noon has never lit,
And shout a secret to the stone.
All that I have said and done,...

[1]

Impertinent, we tease and weary Heaven
With prayers which would insult mere mortals even.
'Twould seem that not a god in all the skies
From our affairs must ever turn his eyes,...

[1]

A pagan kept a god of wood, -
A sort that never hears,
Though furnish'd well with ears, -
From which he hoped for wondrous good.
The idol cost the board of three;
So much enrich'd was he...

A man of middle age, whose hair
Was bordering on the grey,
Began to turn his thoughts and care
The matrimonial way.
By virtue of his ready,
A store of choices had he...

FLORENTINE we now design to show; -
A greater blockhead ne'er appeared below;
It seems a prudent woman he had wed,
With beauty that might grace a monarch's bed;...

Oh the wife she tried to tell me that 'twas nothing but the thrumming
Of a wood-pecker a-rapping on the hollow of a tree;
And she thought that I was fooling when I said it was the drumming...

He's the man from Eldorado, and he's just arrived in town,
In moccasins and oily buckskin shirt.
He's gaunt as any Indian, and pretty nigh as brown;
He's greasy, and he smells of sweat and dirt....

I

This is the sunburnt bushman who
Came down from Goondiwindi, Q.

II

This is the Push from Waterloo
That spotted the sunburnt bushman who
Came down from Goondiwindi, Q.
...

It was the man from Ironbark who struck the Sydney town,
He wandered over street and park, he wandered up and down.
He loitered here, he loitered there, till he was like to drop,...

There was movement at the station, for the word had passed around
That the colt from Old Regret had got away,
And had joined the wild bush horses, he was worth a thousand pound,...

It was the Man from Waterloo,
When work in town was slack,
Who took the track as bushmen do,
And humped his swag out back.

He tramped for months without a bob,
For most the sheds were full,...

Like silver lamps in a distant shrine,
The stars are sparkling bright
The bells of the city of God ring out,
For the Son of Mary is born to-night.
The gloom is past and the morn at last...

He wiled me through the furzy croft;
He wiled me down the sandy lane.
He told his boy's love, soft and oft,
Until I told him mine again.

We married, and we sailed the main;...

"Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have sat us down to wet
Right many a nipperkin!

"But ranged as infantry,
And staring face to face,
I shot at him as he at me,...

The woods stretch deep to the mountain side,
And the brush is wild where a man may hide.

They have brought the bloodhounds up again
To the roadside rock where they found the slain.
...

I saw them sitting in the shade;
The long green vines hung over,
But could not hide the gold-haired maid
And Earl, my dark-eyed lover.
His arm was clasped so close, so close,...

On a tall cliff that overhung the deep,
A maniac stood. He heeded not the sweep
Of the swift gale that lashed the troubled main,
And spread with showery foam the watery plain....

A story is told in Spain, of a woman, who, by a sudden shock of domestic calamity, became insane, and ever after looked up incessantly to the sky.


O'er her infant's couch of death,...

God said; "Let there be light"; and in the East
A star rose flaming from night's purple sea -
The star of Truth, the star of Joy, the star
Seen by the prophets down the lonely years;...

WRITTEN FOR "THE SPECTATOR"

There's a brave little berry-brown man
At the opposite side of the earth;
Of the White, and the Black, and the Tan,
He's the smallest in compass and girth....