Works

You say we bushmen cannot love,
Our lives are too prosaic: hence
We lose or lack that finer sense
That raises some few men above
Their fellows, setting them apart
As vessels of a finer make,...

Adown the grass-grown paths we strayed,
The evening cowslips ope'd
Their yellow eyes to look at her,
The love-sick lilies moped
With envy that she rather chose
To take a creamy-petalled rose...

The fight was over, and the battle won
A soldier, who beneath his chieftain's eye
Had done a might deed and done it well,
And done it as the world will have it done,...

Easter Monday in the city,
Rattle, rattle, rumble, rush;
Tom and Jerry, Nell and Kitty,
All the down-the-harbour 'push,'
Little thought have they, or pity,
For a wanderer from the bush.
...

I've a kiss from a warmer lover
Than maiden earth can be:
She blew it up to the skies above her,
And now it has come to me;
From the far-away it has come today
With a breath of the old salt sea.
...

Drip, drip, drip! It tinkles on the fly
The pitiless outpouring of an overburdened sky:
Each drooping frond of pine has got a jewel at its tip
First a twinkle, then a sprinkle, and a drip, drip, drip.
...

What made the porter stare so hard? what made the porter stare
And eye the tall young woman and the bundle that she bare?

What made the tall young woman flush, and strive to hide her face,...

None ever knew his name,
Honoured, or one of shame,
Highborn or lowly;
Only upon that tree
Two letters, J and C,
Carved by him, mark where he
Lay dying slowly.

Why came he to the West?...

A Valentine The Bree was up; the floods were out
Around the hut of Culgo Jim:
The hand of God had broke the drought
And filled the channels to the brim:
The outline of the hut loomed dim...

Far reaching down's a solid sea sunk everlastingly to rest,
And yet whose billows seem to be for ever heaving toward the west
The tiny fieldmice make their nests, the summer insects buzz and hum...

She was born in the season of fire,
When a mantle of murkiness lay
On the front of the crimson Destroyer:
And none knew the name of her sire
But the woman; and she, ashen grey,...

The western sun, ere he sought his lair,
Skimm'd the treetops, and glancing thence,
Rested awhile on the curling hair
Of Kitty McCrae, by the boundary fence;
Her eyes looked anxious, her cheeks were pale,...

Our Skeeta was married, our Skeeta! the tomboy and pet of the place,
No more as a maiden we'd greet her, no more would her pert little face
Light up the chill gloom of the parlour; no more would her deft little hands...

There's a nice little hatpeg that hangs on the wall
That long from its owner has parted,
And though he is wandering far beyond call
Like him it is always true hearted.
...