Works

'All day a strong sun has been drinking
The ponds in the Wattletree Glen;
And now as they're puddles, I'm thinking
We were wise to head hitherwards, men!
The country is heavy to nor'ard,...

'A perfect woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort, and command.'

The priests and the Levites went forth, to feast at the courts of the Kings;...

Where Harpur lies, the rainy streams,
And wet hill-heads, and hollows weeping,
Are swift with wind, and white with gleams,
And hoarse with sounds of storms unsleeping.
...

Phantom streams were in the distance mocking lights of lake and pool
Ghosts of trees of soft green lustre groves of shadows deep and cool!
Yea, some devil ran before them changing skies of brass to blue,...

Too cold, O my brother, too cold for my wife
Is the Beauty you showed me this morning:
Nor yet have I found the sweet dream of my life,
And good-bye to the sneering and scorning....

Sing her a song of the sun:
Fill it with tones of the stream,
Echoes of waters that run
Glad with the gladdening gleam.
Let it be sweeter than rain,
Lit by a tropical moon:...

Sing the song of wave-worn Coogee, Coogee in the distance white,
With its jags and points disrupted, gaps and fractures fringed with light;
Haunt of gledes, and restless plovers of the melancholy wail...

Years fifty, and seven to boot, have smitten the children of men
Since sound of a voice or a foot came out of the head of that glen.
The brand of black devil is there an evil wind moaneth around...

A clamour by day and a whisper by night,
And the Summer comes with the shining noons,
With the ripple of leaves, and the passionate light
Of the falling suns and the rising moons.
...

Take the harp, but very softly for our brother touch the strings:
Wind and wood shall help to wail him, waves and mournful mountain-springs.
Take the harp, but very softly, for the friend who grew so old...

When lost Francesca sobbed her broken tale
Of love and sin and boundless agony,
While that wan spirit by her side did wail
And bite his lips for utter misery...

Daphne! Ladon's daughter, Daphne! Set thyself in silver light,
Take thy thoughts of fairest texture, weave them into words of white
Weave the rhyme of rose-lipped Daphne, nymph of wooded stream and shade,...

To her who, cast with me in trying days,
Stood in the place of health and power and praise;
Who, when I thought all light was out, became
A lamp of hope that put my fears to shame;...

Just when the western light
Flickered out dim,
Flushing the mountain-side,
Summit and rim,
A last, low, lingering gleam
Fell on a yellow stream,
And then there came a dream
Shining to him....

Spirit of Loveliness! Heart of my heart!
Flying so far from me, Heart of my heart!
Above the eastern hill, I know the red leaves thrill,
But thou art distant still, Heart of my heart!
...

A brother wandered forth with me,
Beside a barren beach:
He harped on things beyond the sea,
And out of reach.

He hinted once of unknown skies,
And then I would not hark,...

Gloomy cliffs, so worn and wasted with the washing of the waves,
Are ye not like giant tombstones round those lonely ocean graves?
Are ye not the sad memorials, telling of a mighty grief...

Here, pent about by office walls
And barren eyes all day,
'Tis sweet to think of waterfalls
Two hundred miles away!

I would not ask you, friends, to brook
An old, old truth from me,...

I hear no footfall beating through the dark,
A lonely gust is loitering at the pane;
There is no sound within these forests stark
Beyond a splash or two of sullen rain;
...

Into that good old Hebrew's soul sublime
The spirit of the wilderness had passed;
For where the thunders of imperial Storm
Rolled over mighty hills; and where the caves...