Works

The curtain rose, the play began,
The limelight on the gay garbs shone;
Yet carelessly I gazed upon
The painted players, maid and man,
As one with idle eyes who sees
The marble figures on a frieze....

A horseman on a hilltop green
Drew rein, and wound his horn;
So bright he looked he might have been
The Herald of the Morn.

His steed was of the sovran strain
In Fancy's meadows bred,...

Say little: where she lies, so let her rest:
What cares she now for Fame, and what for Art?
What for applause? She has played out her part.
Her hands are folded calmly on her breast,
God knows the best!...

With pen in hand and pipe in mouth,
And claret iced to quench my drouth,
I sit upon my balcony
That overlooks the sparkling sea,
Serenly gay, and cool, and bland
With pipe in mouth and pen in hand....

What! Don't you our M'cenas know
The man who started, years ago,
Our Wild Australian Author show?

You don't? Your ignorance sublime
Exceeds - to use a Boston rhyme
The taciturnity of time.
...

Very often, when I'm drinking,
Of the old days I am thinking,
Of the good old days when living was a Joy,
And each morning brought new Pleasure,
And each night brought Dreams of Treasure,...

By a black wharf I stood lately,
When the night was at its noon;
Keen, malicious stars were shining,
And a wicked, white-faced moon.

And I saw a stately vessel,
Built in fashion quaint and old;...

There is a saying of renown,
"God made the country, man the town."
Well, everybody to his trade!
But man likes best the thing he made.
The town has little space to spare;...

The wan light of a stormy dawn
Gleamed on a tossing ship:
It was the In Memoriam
Upon a mourning trip.

Wild waves were on the windward bow,
And breakers on the lee;...

It fell upon a summer night
The village folk were soundly sleeping,
Unconscious of the glamour white
In which the moon all things was steeping;
One window only showed a light;...

The waters make a music low:
The river reeds
Are trembling to the tunes of long ago,
Dead days and deeds

Become alive again, as on
I float, and float,...

The world was in my debt,
I was the Friend of Man,
When, years ago, I met
The Old Bohemian.

His hat was shocking bad,
He wore a faded tie,
And yet, withal, he had...

He sat beneath the curling vines
That round the gay verandah twined,
His forehead seamed with sorrow's lines,
An old man with a weary mind.

His young wife, with a rosy face...

Once upon a hushed red morning
In the wondrous years of old,
When the sun rose like a Rajah
Clad in robes of gleaming gold,

And upon his land of India
Poured the largess of his heart,...

In Youth, when through our veins runs fast
The bright red stream of life,
The Soul's Voice is a trumpet-blast
That calls us to the strife.

The Spirit spurns its prison-bars,...