Identity

Had the gods loved me I had lain
Where darnel is, and thorn,
And the wild night-bird's nightlong strain
Trembles in boughs forlorn.

Nay, but they loved me not; and I
Must needs a stranger be,
Whose every exiled day gone by
Aches with their memory.

It was bright day and all the trees were still
In the deep valley, and the dim Sun glowed;
The clay in hard-baked fire along the hill
Leapt through dark trunks to apples green and gold,
Smooth, hard and cold, they shone like lamps of stone:

They were bright bubbles bursting from the trees,
Swollen and still among the dark green boughs;
On their bright skins the shadows of the leaves
Seemed the faint ghosts of summers long since gone,
Faint ghosts of ghosts, the dreams of ghostly eyes.

There was no sound between those breathless hills.
Only the dim Sun hung there, nothing moved;
The thronged, massed, crowded multitude of leaves
Hung like dumb tongues that loll and gasp for air:
The grass was thick and still, between the trees.

There were big apples...

    Breathless is the deep blue sky;
    Breathless doth the blue sea lie;
    And scarcely can my heart believe,
    'Neath such a sky, on such a wave,
    That Heaven can frown and billows rave,
    Or Beauty so divine deceive.

    Softly sail we with the tide;
    Silently our bark doth glide;
    Above our heads no clouds appear:
    Only in the West afar
    A dark spot, like a baneful star,
    Doth herald tempests dark and drear.

    And now the wind is heard to sigh;
    The waters heave unquietly;
    The Heaven above is darkly scowling;
    Down with the sail!    They come, they come!
    Loos'd from the depths of their wintry home,
    The wild fiends of the storm are howling.

    Hold tight, and tug at the straining oar,...

The door is shut. She leaves the curtained office,
And down the grey-walled stairs comes trembling slowly
Towards the dazzling street.
Her withered hand clings tightly to the railing.
The long stairs rise and fall beneath her feet.

Here in the brilliant sun we jostle, waiting
To tear her secret out . . . We laugh, we hurry,
We go our way, revolving, sinister, slow.
She blinks in the sun, and then steps faintly downward.
We whirl her away, we shout, we spin, we flow.

Where have you been, old lady? We know your secret!
Voices jangle about her, jeers, and laughter. . . .
She trembles, tries to hurry, averts her eyes.
Tell us the truth, old lady! where have you been?
She turns and turns, her brain grows dark with cries.

Look at the old fool tremble! S...

The swallows in their torpid state
Compose their useless wing,
And bees in hives as idly wait
The call of early Spring.


The keenest frost that binds the stream,
The wildest wind that blows,
Are neither felt nor fear’d by them,
Secure of their repose.


But man, all feeling and awake,
The gloomy scene surveys;
With present ills his heart must ache,
And pant for brighter days.


Old Winter, halting o’er the mead,
Bids me and Mary mourn;
But lovely Spring peeps o’er his head,
And whispers your return.


Then April, with her sister May,
Shall chase him from the bowers,
And weave fresh garlands every day,
To crown the smiling hours.


And if a tear that speaks regret
Of happier times, appe...

O jay -
Blue-jay!
What are you trying to say?
I remember, in the spring
You pretended you could sing;
But your voice is now still queerer,
And as yet you've come no nearer
To a song.
In fact, to sum the matter,
I never heard a flatter
Failure than your doleful clatter.
Don't you think it's wrong?
It was sweet to hear your note,
I'll not deny,
When April set pale clouds afloat
O'er the blue tides of sky,
And 'mid the wind's triumphant drums
You, in your white and azure coat,
A herald proud, came forth to cry,
"The royal summer comes!"

But now that autumn's here,
And the leaves curl up in sheer
Disgust,
And the cold rains fringe the pine,
You really must
Stop that supercilious whine - -
Or you'll be shot, b...

Where the broad sheepwalk bare and brown
[Yields] scant grass pining after showers,
And winds go fanning up and down
The little strawy bents and nodding flowers,
There the huge thistle, spurred with many thorns,
The suncrackt upland's russet swells adorns.

Not undevoid of beauty there they come,
Armed warriors, waiting neither suns nor showers,
Guarding the little clover plots to bloom
While sheep nor oxen dare not crop their flowers
Unsheathing their own knobs of tawny flowers
When summer cometh in her hottest hours.

The pewit, swopping up and down
And screaming round the passer bye,
Or running oer the herbage brown
With copple crown uplifted high,
Loves in its clumps to make a home
Where danger seldom cares to come.

The yellowhamm...

Throughout the sunny day he whistled on his way -
Oh high and low, and gay and sweet,
The melody rang down the street,
Till all the weary, old, and grey,
Smiled at their work, or stopped to say,
"Now God be thanked that youth is fair,
And light of heart, and free from care."

What time the wind blew high, he whistled and went by -
Then clarion clear on every side
The song was scattered far and wide;
Like birds above a storm that fly
The silver notes soared to the sky,
"O soul, whose courage does not fail
But with a song can meet the gale."

And when the rain fell fast, he whistled as he passed -
A little tune the whole world knew,
A song of love, of love most true;
On through the mist it came at last
To one by sorrow overcast,
"Dear Ch...

She slept beneath a tree
Remembered but by me.
I touched her cradle mute;
She recognized the foot,
Put on her carmine suit, --
And see!

Oh! to some distant scene, a willing exile
From the wild roar of this busy world,
Were it my fate with Delia to retire,
With her to wander through the sylvan shade,
Each morn, or o’er the moss-embrowned turf,
Where, blest as the prime parents of mankind
In their own Eden, we would envy none,
But greatly pitying whom the world calls happy,
Gently spin out the silken thread of life!

Dusk wraps the village in its dim caress;
Each chimney's vapour, like a thin grey rod,
Mounting aloft through miles of quietness,
    Pillars the skies of God.

Far up they break or seem to break their line,
Mingling their nebulous crests that bow and nod
Under the light of those fierce stars that shine
    Out of the calm of God.

Only in clouds and dreams I felt those souls
In the abyss, each fire hid in its clod,
From which in clouds and dreams the spirit rolls
    Into the vast of God.

This is all that is left - this letter and this rose!
And do you, poor dreaming things, for a moment suppose
That your little fire shall burn for ever and ever on,
And this great fire be, all but these ashes, gone?

Flower! of course she is - but is she the only flower?
She must vanish like all the rest at the funeral hour,
And you that love her with brag of your all-conquering thew,
What, in the eyes of the gods, tall though you be, are you?

You and she are no more - yea! a little less than we;
And what is left of our loving is little enough to see;
Sweet the relics thereof - a rose, a letter, a glove -
That in the end is all that remains of the mightiest love.

Six-foot two! what of that? for Death is taller than he;
And, every moment, Death gathers flowers...

    Oh, daughter, lovelier than your lovely mother,
        Whatever punishment you may desire
        Give my offending verses; in the fire
    Throw them, please you, or in the Adriatic.
    Not Dindymene, no, nor even Apollo
        So shakes the minds of priests within the shrine;
        Nor so disturbing is the God of wine,
    Nor Corybantes doubling their shrill cymbals,
    As direful fits of anger that are frightened
        Neither by Noric sword nor savage flame,
        Nor by ship-wrecking seas, nor them can tame
    Great Jupiter himself, with all his thunders.
    To our original clay, they say Prometheus
        Was forced to add a portion he had made
        Of bits from every creature, and he laid
    In human hearts rage from the furious lion.

He listened at the porch that day,
To hear the wheel go on, and on;
And then it stopped, ran back away,
While through the door he brought the sun:
But now my spinning is all done.

He sat beside me, with an oath
That love ne'er ended, once begun;
I smiled, believing for us both,
What was the truth for only one:
And now my spinning is all done.

My mother cursed me that I heard
A young man's wooing as I spun:
Thanks, cruel mother, for that word,
For I have, since, a harder known!
And now my spinning is all done.

I thought, O God! my first-born's cry
Both voices to mine ear would drown:
I listened in mine agony,
It was the silence made me groan!
And now my spinning is all done.

Bury me 'twixt my mother's grave,
(Who...

Brother belov'd if health shall smile again,
Upon this wasted form and fever'd cheek:
If e'er returning vigour bid these weak
And languid limbs their gladsome strength regain,
Well may thy brow the placid glow retain
Of sweet content and thy pleas'd eye may speak
The conscious self applause, but should I seek
To utter what this heart can feel, Ah! vain
Were the attempt! Yet kindest friends while o'er
My couch ye bend, and watch with tenderness
The being whom your cares could e'en restore,
From the cold grasp of Death, say can you guess
The feelings which these lips can ne'er express;
Feelings, deep fix'd in grateful memory's store.

When the white sun scorches the fair, green land in the rage of his fierce desires,
Or looms blood red on the Western hills, through the smoke of their waning fires;
When the winds at war strew the mountain side with limbs of the mangled trees,
Or the flood tides wheel in the valleys low, or sweep to the distant seas,
We are leading back, and the faintest track that we leave in the desert wild
Or we blaze for fear through the forest drear will be tramped by the settler’s child.

We have turned our backs on the City’s joys, on the glare of its myriad lights,
On the measured peace of its bloodless days, and the strife of its shining nights;
We have fled the pubs in the dull bush towns and the furthermost shanty bars,
And have camped away at the edge of space, or aloft by the brooding stars.<...

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.