Works

In a far-away glen of the hills,
Where the bird of the night is at rest,
Shut in from the thunder that fills
The fog-hidden caves of the west
In a sound of the leaf, and the lute...

The wild night comes like an owl to its lair,
The black clouds follow fast,
And the sun-gleams die, and the lightnings glare,
And the ships go heaving past, past, past
The ships go heaving past!...

Encompassed by the psalm of hill and stream,
By hymns august with their majestic theme,
Here in the evening of exalted days
To Thee, our Friend, we bow with breath of praise.
...

A voice of grave, deep emphasis
Is in the woods to-night;
No sound of radiant day is this,
No cadence of the light.
Here in the fall and flights of leaves
Against grey widths of sea,...

Because this man fulfilled his days,
Like one who walks with steadfast gaze
Averted from forbidden ways
With lures of fair, false flowerage deep,
Behold the Lord whose throne is dim...

In the depths of a Forest secluded and wild,
The night voices whisper in passionate numbers;
And I'm leaning again, as I did when a child,
O'er the grave where my father so quietly slumbers.
...

Dim dreams it hath of singing ways,
Of far-off woodland water-heads,
And shining ends of April days
Amongst the yellow runnel-beds.

Stoop closer to the ruined wall,...

Stand out, swift-footed leaders of the horns,
And draw strong breath, and fill the hollowy cliff
With shocks of clamour, let the chasm take
The noise of many trumpets, lest the hunt...

Oh, tell me, ye breezes that spring from the west,
Oh, tell me, ere passing away,
If Leichhardt's bold spirit has fled to its rest?
Where moulders the traveller's clay?
...

A grace that was lent for a very few hours,
By the bountiful Spirit above us;
She sleeps like a flower in the land of the flowers,
She went ere she knew how to love us....

Where the strength of dry thunder splits hill-rocks asunder,
And the shouts of the desert-wind break,
By the gullies of deepness and ridges of steepness,
Lo, the cattle track twists like a snake!...

Every happy expression in these stanzas may fairly be claimed by the Hon. W. B. Dalley (Author's note)


Deep under the spires of a hill, by the feet of the thunder-cloud trod,...

I dread that street its haggard face
I have not seen for eight long years;
A mother's curse is on the place,
(There's blood, my reader, in her tears).
No child of man shall ever track,...

As when the strong stream of a wintering sea
Rolls round our coast, with bodeful breaks of storm,
And swift salt rain, and bitter wind that saith
Wild things and woeful of the White South Land...

The strong sob of the chafing stream
That seaward fights its way
Down crags of glitter, dells of gleam,
Is in the hills to-day.

But far and faint, a grey-winged form...

Twelve years ago our Jack was lost. All night,
Twelve years ago, the Spirit of the Storm
Sobbed round our camp. A wind of northern hills
That hold a cold companionship with clouds...

I see, as one in dreaming,
A broad, bright, quiet sea;
Beyond it lies a haven
The only home for me.
Some men grow strong with trouble,
But all my strength is past,
And tired and full of sorrow,...

While the morning light beams on the fern-matted streams,
And the water-pools flash in its glow,
Down the ridges we fly, with a loud ringing cry
Down the ridges and gullies we go!...

In dark wild woods, where the lone owl broods
And the dingoes nightly yell
Where the curlew's cry goes floating by,
We splitters of shingles dwell.
And all day through, from the time of the dew...

Chaotic crags are huddled east and west
Dark, heavy crags, against a straitened sea
That cometh, like a troubled soul in quest
Of voiceless rest where never dwelleth rest,...