Betrayal

Thou bidst me come away,
And I'll no longer stay,
Than for to shed some tears
For faults of former years;
And to repent some crimes
Done in the present times;
And next, to take a bit
Of bread, and wine with it;
To don my robes of love,
Fit for the place above;
To gird my loins about
With charity throughout;
And so to travel hence
With feet of innocence;
These done, I'll only cry,
'God, mercy!' and so die.

Your love and pity doth the impression fill,
Which vulgar scandal stamp’d upon my brow;
For what care I who calls me well or ill,
So you o’er-green my bad, my good allow?
You are my all-the-world, and I must strive
To know my shames and praises from your tongue;
None else to me, nor I to none alive,
That my steel’d sense or changes right or wrong.
In so profound abysm I throw all care
Of others’ voices, that my adder’s sense
To critic and to flatterer stopped are.
Mark how with my neglect I do dispense:
You are so strongly in my purpose bred,
That all the world besides methinks are dead.

I

In youth I have known one with whom the Earth
In secret communing held, as he with it,
In daylight, and in beauty, from his birth:
Whose fervid, flickering torch of life was lit
From the sun and stars, whence he had drawn forth
A passionate light such for his spirit was fit,
And yet that spirit knew, not in the hour
Of its own fervor, what had o’er it power.


II

Perhaps it may be that my mind is wrought
To a ferver by the moonbeam that hangs o’er,
But I will half believe that wild light fraught
With more of sovereignty than ancient lore
Hath ever told, or is it of a thought
The unembodied essence, and no more
That with a quickening spell doth o’er us pass
As dew of the night-time, o’er the summer grass?


III
<...

Out in the west, where runs are wide,
And days than ours are hotter,
Not very far from Lachlan Side
There dwelt a wealthy squatter.

Of old opinions he was full,
An Englishman, his sire,
Was hated long where peasants pull
Their forelocks to the squire.

He loved the good old British laws,
And Royalty’s regalia,
And oft was heard to growl because
They wouldn’t fit Australia.

This squatter had a lovely child,
An angel bright we thought her;
And all the stockmen rude and wild
Adored the squatter’s daughter.

But on a bright eventful morn,
A swell of northern nation,
A lordling, brought his languid yawn
And eyeglass to the station.

He coveted the squatter’s wealth;
He saw the squatter’s daughter:
And, what i...

"Return!"--no, never, while the withering hand
Of bigot power is on that hapless land;
While, for the faith my fathers held to God,
Even in the fields where free those fathers trod,
I am proscribed, and--like the spot left bare
In Israel's halls, to tell the proud and fair
Amidst their mirth, that Slavery had been there[1]--
On all I love, home, parents, friends, I trace
The mournful mark of bondage and disgrace!
No!--let them stay, who in their country's pangs
See naught but food for factions and harangues;
Who yearly kneel before their masters' doors
And hawk their wrongs, as beggars do their sores:
Still let your .            .            .            .[2]
            .            .            .            .            .
Still hope a...

    A thousand doubts and pleadings in a day
        Are filed in Empress Reason's court supreme
        By angry Love--his eyes with anger gleam.
        "Which of us twain hath been more faithful, say.
    'Tis all through me that Cino can display
        The sail of fame on life's unhappy stream."
        "Thee," quoth I, "root of all my woe I deem,
        I found what gall beneath thy sweetness lay."
    Then he: "Ah, traitorous and truant slave!
        Are these the thanks thou renderest, ingrate,
        For giving thee a maid without a peer?"
    "Thy left," cried I, "slew what thy right hand gave."
        "Not so," said he. The judge, "Your wrath abate.
        I must have time to give true judgment here."

                                               ...

Ill-fated hour! oft as thy annual reign
Leads on th' autumnal tide, my pinion'd joys
Fade with the glories of the fading year;
"Remembrance wakes, with all her busy train,"
And bids affection heave the heart-drawn sigh
O'er the cold tomb, rich with the spoils of death,
And wet with many a tributary tear!

Eight times has each successive season sway'd
The fruitful sceptre of our milder clime
Since my loved----died! but why, ah! why
Should melancholy cloud my early years?
Religion spurns earth's visionary scene,
Philosophy revolts at misery's chain:
Just Heaven recall'd its own; the pilgrim call'd
From human woes: from sorrow's rankling worm--
Shall frailty then prevail?

Oh! be it mine
To curb the sigh which bursts o'er Heaven's decree;
To t...

A lonely barn, lost in a field of weeds;
A fallen fence, where partly hangs a gate:
The skies are darkening and the hour is late;
The Indian dusk comes, red in rainy beads.
Along a path, which from a woodland leads,
Horsemen come riding who dismount and wait:
Here Anarchy conspires with Crime and Hate,
And Madness masks and on its business speeds.
Another Kuklux in another war
Of blacker outrage down the night they ride,
Brandishing a torch and gun before each farm.
Is Law asleep then? Does she fear? Where are
The servants of her strength, the Commonweath's pride?
And where the steel of her restraining arm?

A vapour seems to hide your face from view;
Your mystic eye (is it green, grey, or blue?)
Tender by turns, dreamy or merciless,
Reflects the heavens' pallid indolence.

You call to mind white, mild, enshrouded days
That make enchanted hearts dissolve away,
When, agitated by a twisting ache,
The taut nerves call the spirit to awake.

Sometimes you're like horizons set aglow
By suns in rainy seasons here below...
Like you superb, a watery countryside
That rays enflame out of a misty sky!

O weather! woman! - both seduce me so!
Will I adore as well your frost and snow,
And will I draw from winter's ruthless vice
Pleasures more keen than iron or than ice?

Ef you's only got de powah fe' to blow a little whistle,
Keep ermong de people wid de whistles.
Ef you don't, you'll fin' out sho'tly dat you's th'owed yo' fines' feelin'
In a place dat's all a bed o' thistles.
'Tain't no use a-goin' now, ez sho's you bo'n,
A-squeakin' of yo' whistle 'g'inst a gread big ho'n.

Ef you ain't got but a teenchy bit o' victuals on de table,
Whut' de use a-claimin' hit's a feas'?
Fe' de folks is mighty 'spicious, an' dey's ap' to come apeerin',
Lookin' fe' de scraps you lef' at leas'.
Wen de meal's a-hidin' f'om de meal-bin's top,
You needn't talk to hide it; ef you sta'ts, des stop.

Ef yo' min' kin only carry half a pint o' common idees,
Don' go roun' a-sayin' hit's a bar'l;
'Ca'se de people gwine to test you, an' dey'll fin' out ...

Now, joy and thanks forevermore!
The dreary night has wellnigh passed,
The slumbers of the North are o'er,
The Giant stands erect at last!
More than we hoped in that dark time
When, faint with watching, few and worn,
We saw no welcome day-star climb
The cold gray pathway of the morn!
O weary hours! O night of years!
What storms our darkling pathway swept,
Where, beating back our thronging fears,
By Faith alone our march we kept.
How jeered the scoffing crowd behind,
How mocked before the tyrant train,
As, one by one, the true and kind
Fell fainting in our path of pain!
They died, their brave hearts breaking slow,
But, self-forgetful to the last,
In words of cheer and bugle blow
Their breath upon the darkness passed.
A mighty host, on either...

A hater he came and sat by a ditch,
And he took an old cracked lute;
And he sang a song which was more of a screech
'Gainst a woman that was a brute.

When the darkened Fifties dip to the North,
And frost and the fog divide the air,
And the day is dead at his breaking-forth,
Sirs, it is bitter beneath the Bear!

Far to Southward they wheel and glance,
The million molten spears of morn,
The spears of our deliverance
That shine on the house where we were born.

Flying-fish about our bows,
Flying sea-fires in our wake:
This is the road to our Father's House,
Whither we go for our souls' sake!

We have forfeited our birthright,
We have forsaken all things meet;
We have forgotten the look of light,
We have forgotten the scent of heart.

They that walk with shaded brows,
Year by year in a shining land,
They be men of our Father's House,
They shall receive us and understand.
...

I may not rightly call thy name, -
Alas! thy forehead never knew
The kiss that happier children claim,
Nor glistened with baptismal dew.

Daughter of want and wrong and woe,
I saw thee with thy sister-band,
Snatched from the whirlpool's narrowing flow
By Mercy's strong yet trembling hand.

"Avis!" - With Saxon eye and cheek,
At once a woman and a child,
The saint uncrowned I came to seek
Drew near to greet us, - spoke, and smiled.

God gave that sweet sad smile she wore
All wrong to shame, all souls to win, -
A heavenly sunbeam sent before
Her footsteps through a world of sin.

"And who is Avis?" - Hear the tale
The calm-voiced matrons gravely tell, -
The story known through all the vale
Where Avis and her sisters dwell.

There is something in the sound of drum and fife
That stirs all the savage instincts into life.

In the old times of peace we went our ways,
Through proper days
Of little joys and tasks.    Lonely at times,
When from the steeple sounded wedding chimes,
Telling to all the world some maid was wife -
But taking patiently our part in life
As it was portioned us by Church and State,
Believing it our fate.
    Our thoughts all chaste
Held yet a secret wish to love and mate
    Ere youth and virtue should go quite to waste.
But men we criticised for lack of strength,
And kept them at arm's length.
Then the war came -
The world was all aflame!
The men we had thought dull and void of power
Were heroes in an hour.
He who had seemed a slave to petty g...

'The ladies are coming,' the super says
To the shearers sweltering there,
And 'the ladies' means in the shearing-shed:
'Don't cut 'em too bad. Don't swear.'
The ghost of a pause in the shed's rough heart,
And lower is bowed each head;
And nothing is heard, save a whispered word,
And the roar of the hearing-shed.

The tall, shy rouser has lost his wits,
And his limbs are all astray;
He leaves a fleece on the shearing-board,
And his broom in the shearer's way.
There's a curse in store for that jackaroo
As down by the wall he slants,
And the ringer bends with his legs askew
And wishes he'd patched his pants.

They are girls from the city. (Our hearts rebel
As we squint at their dainty feet.)
And they gush and say in a girly way
That 'the ...

A shepherd who was deeply in love with a shepherdess was sitting one day by her side trying to find words to express the emotions her charms created in his breast.

"Ah! Amaranth, dear," he sighed, "could you but feel, as I do, a certain pain which, whilst it tears the heart, is so delightful that it enchants, you would say that nothing under heaven is its equal. Let me tell you of it. Believe me, trust me. Would I deceive you? You, for whom I am filled with the tenderest sentiments the heart can feel!"

"And what, my Thyrsis, is the name you give this pleasing pain?"

"It is called love," said Thyrsis.

"Ah!" responded the maiden, "that is a beautiful name. Tell me by what signs I may know it, if it come to me. What are the feelings it gives one?"

Thyrsis, taking heart of grace, replied ...

Think not some knowledge rests with thee alone;
    Why, even God's stupendous secret, Death,
    We one by one, with our expiring breath,
Do pale with wonder seize and make our own;
The bosomed treasures of the earth are shown,
    Despite her careful hiding; and the air
    Yields its mysterious marvels in despair
To swell the mighty store-house of things known.
In vain the sea expostulates and raves;
    It cannot cover from the keen world's sight
    The curious wonders of its coral caves.
And so, despite thy caution or thy tears,
The prying fingers of detective years
    Shall drag thy secret out into the light.