Death

Sad o'er the hills the poppy sunset died.
Slow as a fungus breaking through the crusts
Of forest leaves, the waning half-moon thrusts,
Through gray-brown clouds, one milky silver side;
In her vague light the dogwoods, vale-descried,
Seem nervous torches flourished by the gusts;
The apple-orchards seem the restless dusts
Of wind-thinned mists upon the hills they hide.
It is a night of omens whom late May
Meets, like a wraith, among her train of hours;
An apparition, with appealing eye
And hesitant foot, that walks a willowed way,
And, speaking through the fading moon and flowers,
Bids her prepare her gentle soul to die.

O Beautiful white Angels! who control
The inner workings of each poet soul,
Thou who hast touched my mind with tender graces
Come near to me that I may see thy faces.

Me, didst thou bless before I came to earth;
Me, hast thou kissed, and dowered at my birth,
With such a wealth of sweet imaginings,
That, even in sleep, my dreaming fancy sings.

Sometimes when seeing snow-white clouds at noon,
Or watching silver shadows from the moon,
Within my soul has stirred a joy like fear,
As if some kindred spirit lingered near.

Come closer, Angels! thou whose haloed wings
Do gild for me the meanest ways and things,
With beauty borrowed from the Infinite -
Stand forth, let me behold thee in the light.

O thought supreme!    O death!    O life! unknown...

Lance, shield, and sword relinquished, at his side
A bead-roll, in his hand a clasped book,
Or staff more harmless than a shepherd's crook,
The war-worn Chieftain quits the world to hide
His thin autumnal locks where Monks abide
In cloistered privacy. But not to dwell
In soft repose he comes: within his cell,
Round the decaying trunk of human pride,
At morn, and eve, and midnight's silent hour,
Do penitential cogitations cling;
Like ivy, round some ancient elm, they twine
In grisly folds and strictures serpentine;
Yet, while they strangle, a fair growth they bring,
For recompense, their own perennial bower.

"I have not sought Thee, I have not found Thee,
I have not thirsted for Thee:
And now cold billows of death surround me,
Buffeting billows of death astound me, -
Wilt Thou look upon, wilt Thou see
Thy perishing me?"

"Yea, I have sought thee, yea, I have found thee,
Yea, I have thirsted for thee,
Yea, long ago with love's bands I bound thee:
Now the Everlasting Arms surround thee, -
Through death's darkness I look and see
And clasp thee to Me."

    Spring heralds the summer with lilacs perched from that door.

    In snows, a swarm of bushes lie black and apparently rootless as the town's iron-gate bridge collapses under the centre part of the main road.

    Little enclaves of activity pass as stores, mere centrefolds across busy highway arteries this time of year.

    I am a grey fleck in my dark wool coat near the perimeter of a winding fence.

    The casual observer gives me half a chance to be seen in the deathless white, opaque coloured moonstone so still against the field's shores.

    A plaster river, her sides inserted with isle-dotted chunks, hands across a winter solstice tribal dance.

    Ostensibly, I poke the land from stylized limbo, a chalky substance disturbed with every movement's cough.

Shadows are but for the moment--
Quickly past;
And then the sun the brighter shines
That it was overcast.

For Light is Life!
Gracious and sweet,
The fair life-giving sun doth scatter blessings
With his light and heat,--
And shadows.
But the shadows that come of the life-giving sun
Crouch at his feet.

No mortal life but has its shadowed times--
Not one!
Life without shadow could not taste the full
Sweet glory of the sun.

No shadow falls, but there, behind it, stands
The Light
Behind the wrongs and sorrows of life's troublous ways
Stands RIGHT.

Hush'd be the camps to-day;
And, soldiers, let us drape our war-worn weapons;
And each with musing soul retire, to celebrate,
Our dear commander's death.

No more for him life's stormy conflicts;
Nor victory, nor defeat--no more time's dark events,
Charging like ceaseless clouds across the sky.

But sing, poet, in our name;
Sing of the love we bore him--because you, dweller in camps, know it truly.

As they invault the coffin there;
Sing--as they close the doors of earth upon him--one verse,
For the heavy hearts of soldiers.

The wind was on the forest,
And silence on the wold;
And darkness on the waters,
And heaven was starry cold;
When Sleep, with mystic magic,
Bade me this thing behold:

This side, an iron woodland;
That side, an iron waste;
And heaven, a tower of iron,
Wherein the wan moon paced,
Still as a phantom woman,
Ice-eyed and icy-faced.

And through the haunted tower
Of silence and of night,
My Soul and I went only,
My Soul, whose face was white,
Whose one hand signed me listen,
One bore a taper-light.

For, lo! a voice behind me
Kept sighing in my ear
The dreams my flesh accepted,
My mind refused to hear -
Of one I loved and loved not,
Whose spirit now spake near.

And, lo! a voice before me
Kept calling...

Diamantina River, Western Queensland


The first flush of grey light, the herald of daylight,
Is dimly outlining the musterer’s camp,
Where over the sleeping, the stealthily creeping
Breath of the morning lies chilly and damp,

As, blankets forsaking, ’twixt sleeping and waking,
The black-boys turn out to the manager’s call;
Whose order, of course, is, “Be after the horses,
And take all sorts of care you unhobble them all.”

Then, each with a bridle (provokingly idle)
They saunter away his commands to fulfil,
Where, cheerily chiming, the musical rhyming
From equine bell-ringers comes over the hill.

But now the dull dawning gives place to the morning,
The sun, springing up in a glorious flood
Of golden-shot fire, mounts higher and hi...

Hark! The drums! Muffled drums!
The long low ruffle of the drums!--
And every head is bowed,
In the vast expectant crowd,
As the Great Queen comes,--
By the way she knew so well,
Where our cheers were wont to swell,
As we tried in vain to tell
Of our love unspeakable.
Now she comes
To the rolling of the drums,
And the slow sad tolling of the bell.
Let every head be bowed,
In the silent waiting crowd,
As the Great Queen comes,
To the slow sad ruffle of the drums!

Who is this that comes,
To the rolling of the drums,
In the sorrowful great silence of the peoples?
Take heart of grace,
She is not here!
The Great Queen is not here!
What most in her we did revere,--
The lofty spirit, white and clear,
The ten...

("I believe ... in the resurrection of the body.")

How young you are, for such lone majesty

Of silence and repose!
That lip was vowed to laughter and that eye,

That white cheek to the rose!

What age your spirit hath, who thinks to say?

If young, or young no more;
But all for merriment, oh, all for play.

That new, sweet shape it wore!

So, in His time, to whom all time is now.

From flower and wind and steep.
Shall He not summon you to keep your vow,

Since He hath made you sleep?

Ah me! too soon the autumn comes
Among these purple-plaintive hills!
Too soon among the forest gums
Premonitory flame she spills,
Bleak, melancholy flame that kills.

Her white fogs veil the morn, that rims
With wet the moonflower's elfin moons;
And, like exhausted starlight, dims
The last slim lily-disk; and swoons
With scents of hazy afternoons.

Her gray mists haunt the sunset skies,
And build the west's cadaverous fires,
Where Sorrow sits with lonely eyes,
And hands that wake an ancient lyre,
Beside the ghost of dead Desire.

Ah me! too soon the autumn comes
Among these purple-plaintive hills!
Too soon among the forest gums
Premonitory flame she spills,
Bleak, melancholy flame that kills.

Her white fogs veil the morn, that rims
With wet the moonflower's elfin moons;
And, like exhausted starlight, dims
The last slim lily-disk; and swoons
With scents of hazy afternoons.

Her gray mists haunt the sunset skies,
And build the west's cadaverous fires,
Where Sorrow sits with lonely eyes,
And hands that wake an ancient lyre,
Beside the ghost of dead Desire.

Oh! is it Death that comes
To have a foretaste of the whole?
    To-night the planets and the stars
    Will glimmer through my window-bars
But will not shine upon my soul!

For I shall lie as dead
Though yet I am above the ground;
    All passionless, with scarce a breath,
    With hands of rest and eyes of death,
I shall be carried swiftly round.

Or if my life should break
The idle night with doubtful gleams,
    Through mossy arches will I go,
    Through arches ruinous and low,
And chase the true and false in dreams.

Why should I fall asleep?
When I am still upon my bed
    The moon will shine, the winds will rise
    And all around and through the skies
The light clouds travel o'er my head!

O busy, busy things,

Some starlit garden grey with dew,
Some chamber flushed with wine and fire,
What matters where, so I and you
Are worthy our desire?

Behind, a past that scolds and jeers
For ungirt loin and lamp unlit;
In front the unmanageable years,
The trap upon the pit;

Think on the shame of dreams for deeds,
The scandal of unnatural strife,
The slur upon immortal needs,
The treason done to life:

Arise! no more a living lie
And with me quicken and control
A memory that shall magnify
The universal Soul.

The full-orbed Paschal moon; dark shadows flung
On the brown Lenten earth; tall spectral trees
Stand in their huge and naked strength erect,
And stretch wild arms towards the gleaming sky.
A motionless girl-figure, face upraised
In the strong moonlight, cold and passionless.

    *    *    *    *    *

A proud spring sunset; opal-tinted sky,
Save where the western purple, pale and faint
With longing for her fickle Love, - content
Had merged herself into his burning red.
A fair young maiden, clad in velvet robe
Of sombre green, stands in the golden glow,
One hand held up to shade her dazzled eyes,
A bunch of white Narcissus at her throat.

    *    *    *    *    *

November's day, dark, leaden, lowering, -
Grey purple shadows fading on...

The heart that once was rich with light,
And happy in your grace,
Now lieth cold beneath the scorn
That gathers on your face;
And every joy it knew before,
And every templed dream,
Is paler than the dying flash
On yonder mountain stream.
The soul, regretting foundered bliss
Amid the wreck of years,
Hath mourned it with intensity
Too deep for human tears!

The forest fadeth underneath
The blast that rushes by
The dripping leaves are white with death,
But Love will never die!
We both have seen the starry moss
That clings where Ruin reigns,
And one must know his lonely breast
Affection still retains;
Through all the sweetest hopes of life,
That clustered round and round,
Are lying now, like withered things,
Forsaken on the ...

I


In the anatomical plates
displayed on the dusty quays
where many a dry book sleeps
mummified, as in ancient days,


drawings to which the gravity
and skill of some past artist,
despite the gloomy subject
have communicated beauty,


you’ll see, and it renders those
gruesome mysteries more complete,
flayed men, and skeletons posed,
farm-hands, digging the soil at their feet.



II


Peasants, dour and resigned,
convicts pressed from the grave,
what’s the strange harvest, say,
for which you hack the ground,


bending your backbones there,
flexing each fleshless sinew,
what farmer’s barn must you
labour to fill with such care?


Do you seek to show – by tha...