To-night a strong south wind in thunder sings Across the city. Now by salt wet flats, And ridges perished with the breath of drought, Comes up a deep, sonorous, gulf-like voice...
Men have said that ye were sleeping Hurl, Australians, back the lie; Whet the swords you have in keeping, Forward stand to do or die! Hear ye not, across the ocean, Echoes of the distant fray,...
Swarthy wastelands, wide and woodless, glittering miles and miles away, Where the south wind seldom wanders and the winters will not stay; Lurid wastelands, pent in silence, thick with hot and thirsty sighs,...
In the beams of a beautiful day, Made soft by a breeze from the sea, The horses were started away, The fleet-footed thirty and three; Where beauty, with shining attire,...
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,...
The Bard of ancient lore! Like one forlorn, He turned, enamoured, to the silent Past; And searching down its mazes gray and vast, As you might find the blossom by the thorn,...
The verdant ivy clings around Yon moss be-mantled wall, As if it sought to hide the stones, That crumbling soon must fall: That relic of a bygone age Now tottering to decay,...
Sad faces came round, and I dreamily said 'Though the harp of my country now slumbers, Some hand will pass o'er it, in love for the dead, And attune it to sorrowful numbers!'...
Where the lone creek, chafing nightly in the cold and sad moonshine, Beats beneath the twisted fern-roots and the drenched and dripping vine; Where the gum trees, ringed and ragged, from the mazy margins rise,...
The Warrigal's lair is pent in bare, Black rocks at the gorge's mouth; It is set in ways where Summer strays With the sprites of flame and drouth; But when the heights are touched with lights...
The rain-clouds have gone to the deep The East like a furnace doth glow; And the day-spring is flooding the steep, And sheening the landscape below. Oh, ye who are gifted with souls...
I loiter by this surging sea, Here, by this surging, sooming sea, Here, by this wailing, wild-faced sea, Dreaming through the dreamy night; Yearning for a strange delight!...
Just a shell, to which the seaweed glittering yet with greenness clings, Like the song that once I loved so, softly of the old time sings Softly of the old time speaketh bringing ever back to me...
Like a beautiful face looking ever at me A pure bright moon cometh over the sea; And I stand on the crags, and hear the falls Go tumbling down, through the black river-walls;...
When underneath the brown dead grass My weary bones are laid, I hope I shall not see the glass At ninety in the shade. I trust indeed that, when I lie Beneath the churchyard pine,...