John Le Gay Brereton

While to the clarion blown by Marlowe’s breath
Tall Tragedy tramped by in hues of death,
And Shakespeare yet was tuning string by string,
With English hawthorn crowned, in that glad spring
When bright clouds melted in a sky serene,
Romance moved lightly to the pipe of Greene.
As fresh as buds half-open, pure as dew,
Two damsels came in forefront of her crew,
One native to the hedgerows and the meads,
The keeper’s lass, in simple country weeds,
Her firm white arms, as delicate as silk,
Below her smock-sleeve shining wet with milk;
No marvel the young noble learnt to woo
A maid so merry and frank and homely true.
The other with sad mien, though yet a bride,
Clad in man’s raiment softly stole aside
And grieved that he who should have been her stay
Would priv...

On a monument formed as a curving wave

By ceaseless waves, that break and waste,
All human record is effaced:
Only our love in brief defence
Shall hold the billow in suspense.

Within my heart I hear the cry
Of loves that suffer, souls that die,
And you may have no praise from me
For warfare’s vast vulgarity;
Only the flag of love, unfurled
For peace above a weeping world,
I follow, though the fiery breath
Of murder shrivel me in death.
Yet here I stand and bow my head
To those whom other banners led,
Because within their hearts the clang
Of Freedom’s summoning trumpets rang,
Because they welcomed grisly pain
And laughed at prudence, mocked at gain,
With noble hope and courage high,
And taught our manhood how to die.
Praise, praise and love be theirs who came
From that red hell of stench and flame,
Staggering, bloody, sick, but still
Strong with indomitable will,
Happy because, in gloomiest night,
Their own h...

I have sought and followed you, drunk with your sacred wine;
Led out by a laughing wind on a tumbling sea,
On crags amid clouds, in cups that allure the bee,
And deep in the gem-lit gloom of the tortuous mine,
And on widespread wings where the great worlds dance and shine
I have sought by the golden light; but have bent the knee
At last where you lie, a humble goddess and free,
Naked and flushed in the warmth of a crimson shrine.
The hordes of hate have trampled your blooms in mire,
And cackle and roar as their mockery priests blaspheme,
And sing the marching hymn of a wingless might.
They forge their god in the heat of unholy fire
The squat strong incubus born of an evil dream;
And it shrinks and crumbles away in the golden light.

The Blatant Beast saw meadows, made for peace,
Sunlit and gently asway, and held them light,
Till each green blade grew rigid in the night
And ruddied with a glorious morn’s increase.
Thou hast suffered; nor till Freedom find release
And set for ever on the shining height
The eternal rolling banner of her might
Shall thy great gift of strife and suffering cease.

We, bred of one small island in the west,
A little shrine of Freedom, far away
We, who can bow at no strong tyrant’s hest,
Bend low our heads in pride to thee to-day,
For all unknown, a smiling babe at rest,
Within thy lowly manger Freedom lay.

A timid child with heart oppressed
By images of sin,
I slunk into the bush for rest,
And found my fairy kin.

The fire I carried kept me warm:
The friendly air was chill.
The laggards of the lowing storm
Trailed gloom along the hill.

I watched the crawling monsters melt
And saw their shadows wane
As on my satin skin I felt
The fingers of the rain.

The sunlight was a golden beer,
I drank a magic draught;
The sky was clear and, void of fear,
I stood erect and laughed.

And sudden laughter, idly free,
About me trilled and rang,
And love was shed from every tree,
And little bushes sang.

The bay of conscience’ bloody hound
That tears the world apart
Has never drowned the silent sound
Within my happy hea...

Eternal cold of silence, where each sound
Dies in its birth, and Death’s pale henchmen meet
With soft Lethean traps unwary feet
Or ride with hell’s white steed and slavering hound;
Which of us, searching selfward, has not found
This desolate realm, and long black seams, that greet
Our souls with recollections of defeat,
And torrid fossils in the frozen ground?
Not he, who comes among us as a king;
Strange were the secret waste and granite walls
To him whose reverent feet have travelled far
Where duty beckons and adventure calls.
He steers his course, by one red tropic star,
Where ripples the green robe of the lilting spring.

He, born of my girlhood, is dead, while my life is yet young in my heart
Ere the breasts where his baby lips fed have forgotten their softness, we part.
We part. He was mine, he was here, though he travelled by land and by sea,
My son who could trample on fear, my babe who was moulded in me.
As I sat in the darkness, it seemed I could still feel his touch on my head;
He came in the night as I dreamed, and he knelt at the side of my bed;
He murmured the words I had taught when his lips were the lips of a child,
Ere the strength of his arm had been bought and the love that upheld him defiled;
Then my faltering spirit grew bold, and my heart had forgotten its drouth,
And I crooned little songs as of old, till I woke at his kiss on my mouth.
Now waking and sleeping are pain. Nevermore will he ...

Grant me a moment of peace,
Let me but open mine eyes,
Forgetting the empire of lies
And warfare’s majestic increase
Of national folly and hate;
Ere I return to my fate,
Grant me a moment of peace.

To what is I would turn from what seems
From a world where men fall and adore
The god that Fear shuddering bore
To Greed in the desert of dreams,
Unholy, inhuman, impure;
From the State to the loves that endure,
To what is I would turn from what seems.

No man has been richer than I,
Though he staggered with infinite gold
And bought of whatever is sold
Of the beauty that money can buy.
In the wealth that is lost in the mart
And is stored in the innermost heart
No man has been richer than I.

Humbly, a pilgrim, I stood,
W...

When fires have burnt your forest bare and black,
And you are parched and dizzy, and search in vain
For pools in dust unvisited of rain,
And shamble, lost, along a shimmering track,
This is the comfort of the world: “Alack!
So youth’s illusions die, that we may gain
Wisdom and strength to face our lifelong pain,
The truth, from which no man shall turn him back.”
Falter for no such melancholy lies,
For by one holy touch the spirit is healed
To know its treasure of sight and sound and scent;
Veil after veil the earthborn fogs arise,
Star beyond star the heavens are then revealed,
And truth is fair in love’s enlightenment.

A singing voice is in my dream
The voice of Erskine, on his boulders,
Babbling and shouting till he shoulders
Stoutly against the heavier stream.

No longer now my curtained sight,
On serried books and pictures dwelling,
Of long-neglected work is telling,
But looks beyond the travelling night.

And here no longer is my home,
For you and I are far asunder:
I hear again the cascade thunder
And watch the little pool of foam.

And where the water, pouring sleek,
In sudden whiteness flings his treasure,
I see you sitting, Queen of Pleasure,
Clad only by the glittering creek.

I hold my arms to you once more,
For O my longing flesh is aching,
And you, your rocky throne forsaking,
Come cool and radiant to the shore.

I see...

Hail to you, comrades, who have won,
Where the torn lines of battle run
By tattered town and ruined mead,
The honour that men give with pride
To those who, daffing death aside,
Have done the valorous deed.

And has the war, then, brought to birth,
As flowers that spring from western earth
At summons of the pelting rain,
The courage that can force its way,
And hold the shadowing wings at bay,
And smile at lingering pain?

And is it true that only now
Life lifts from her heroic brow
The smothering shroud of deadly peace,
And laughs to sniff the morning air,
And bids a thousand bonfires flare
The news of her release?

Hell’s throat may swallow down its lie,
For men knew how to live and die
And take the gifts of motley fate,

Not till the sun, that brings to birth
The myriad marvels of the earth
And bids us look with wandering eyes
On all that here about us lies,
Has gone behind the hill,
Do you, O peaceful evening star,
Gaze on the dusk in which we are
And draw the heart of hope and love
To infinite deep on deep above
And bid our care be still.

All glorious pleasures of the day,
When every sense may have its way
And thought may touch the tiniest fact
And gauge the motive and the act
And measure our delight,
Depart, and leave us to the quest
Of quiet solitude and rest
And knowledge that the plotting brain
With all its science cannot gain
But from the soul of Night.

“Where shall we dwell?” say you.
Wandering winds reply:
“In a temple with roof of blue
Under the splendid sky.”

Never a nobler home
We’ll find though an age we try
Than is arched by the azure dome
Of the all-enfolding sky.

Here we are wed, and here
We live under God’s own eye.
“Where shall we dwell,” my dear?
Under the splendid sky.

From every quarter we,
Who bent the trembling knee
And cowered or grovelled prostrate day and night,
Now come once more to sing
A dirge before thee, King,
Once more with earnest heart to do thee right.

Have we not hailed thee God?
Our weary feet have trod
The vasty barren sands and treacherous ice,
With many a bitter cry,
To pile thine altar high
With pallid human hearts in sacrifice.

We hated thee and came
With eyes of shifty shame,
With heavy steel above the craven breast,
Yet evermore we did
The ill thy servants bid,
For everywhere thy might was manifest.

At thy sibilant word
We were filled with distrust,
And we glared on each other,
All horribly stirred
Against sister and brother;
Our green hopes were wi...

One of the twain was long and dusty grey,
And like a spark that in the ashes lies,
Satiric laughter glinted in his eyes
And made his nose auroral with its ray:
The other like a huge black bird of prey,
His hat enorm, his pipe of awful size,
His coat hung empty-sleeved in careless wise,
Loomed a fat angel from the pit astray.
A voice was booming ever: laugh and jeer
Mingled with noble praise of battling right,
And verse and girls were mixed with radiant beer
And all the city tram was given sight
Of the invisible dark and bidden hear
Unsplashing silence of the pouring light.

’Twas Jack-o’-Winter hailed it first,
But now more timid angels sing,
For what dull ear can fail to hear
Afar the fluting of the Spring?

In all free spaces of the land
A sightless flame is flickering;
Through every vein it leaps amain,
The fiery miracle of Spring.

A music ranging in the air,
A lambent light in everything;
O sweet, my sweet, the subtle heat,
The dancing light of Love and Spring!

Love may trace his echoing footsteps, yet we never more shall meet
Rugged Kretschmann, the musician, plodding down a Sydney street,
Never see the low broad figure, massive head and shaggy mane
And the quiet furrowed features, never hear his voice again.

But from many a home there rises many a note that lingering rings
Ever since his cunning fingers touched and drew it from the strings;
All our land is full of noises; happy phantom fields of scent,
Bright with sunlit blossoms, echo birdlike music where he went.

He was old and grey and weary, death and he were long at grips,
Evil whispers hissed behind him, German to the finger-tips,
War’s wild fury snarled about him, so he gently stepped aside,
Loving us and loving Germans, heavy-hearted, and he died.

Crusted she...