Works

Over there, above the jetty, stands the mansion of the Vardens,
With a tennis ground and terrace, and a flagstaff in the gardens:
They are gentlemen and ladies, they've been 'toffs' for generations,...

On western plain and eastern hill
Where once my fancy ranged,
The station hands are riding still
And they are little changed.
But I have lost in London gloom
The glory of the day,...

Of his beauty, or stature, or colour of hair I hadn't the slightest hint,
But he comes to me as a little man, with a scrubby beard and a squint,
With a heart somewhere if it wasn't there, and an Irish terrier nose,...

'ONE-MAN-ONE-VOTE!' You hear the people shouting.
The walls of Mammon tremble ere they fall.
ONE-MAN-ONE-VOTE! Is this a time for doubting?
The poets have been prophets after all.
...

I

Queen Hilda rode along the lines,
And she was young and fair;
And forward on her shoulders fell
The heavy braids of hair:
No gold was ever dug from earth
Like that burnished there,...

A public parlour in the slums,
The haunt of vice and villainy,
Where things are said unfit to hear,
And things are done unfit to see;
'Mid ribald jest and reckless song,...

They towed the Seabolt down the stream,
And through the harbour's mouth;
She spread her wings and sailed away
To seek the sunny South.

But, ah! she met with storm on storm...

'Twas the glowing log of a picnic fire where a red light should not be,
Or the curtained glow of a sick room light in a window that faced the sea....

White handkerchiefs wave from the short black pier
As we glide to the grand old sea,
But the song of my heart is for none to hear
If one of them waves for me.
A roving, roaming life is mine,...

While the crippled cruisers stagger where the blind horizon dips,
And the ocean ooze is rising round the sunken battle-ships,
While the battered wrecks, unnoticed, with their mangled crews drift past,...

'Did she care as much as I did
When our paths of Fate divided?
Was the love, then, all onesided,
Did she understand or care?'
Slowly fall the moments leaden,
And the silence seems to deaden,...

The other night I got the blues and tried to smile in vain.
I couldn't chuck a chuckle at the foolery of Twain;
When Ward and Billings failed to bring a twinkle to my eye,...

I thought that silence would be best,
But I a call have heard,
And, Victor, after all the rest,
I well might say a word:
The day and work is nearly done,
And ours the victory,...

And his death came in December,
When our summer was aglow,
Like a song that we remember,
Like a child's dream long ago,
And it brought Australia to him,
Her sweetest singer dead,...

The schools marched in procession in happiness and pride,
The city bands before them, the soldiers marched beside;
Oh, starched white frocks and sashes and suits that high schools wear,...