John Le Gay Brereton

While the summer day is hot
You and I will loaf awhile,
Lolling in a leafy spot,
Lali of the cunning smile.

You and I have little care
How the “precious moments” pass
While we snuff the drowsy air
Rich in fragrance of the grass.

Stupid people boom or squeal
Lessons drawn from daily strife;
“Time,” they cry, “is on the wheel;
Death puts out the gas of life.

Imitate the prudent ant,
Labour like the busy bee.”
O the everlasting cant!
Loafing’s good for you and me.

Here we watch the ants that haul
Loads by weary jungle ways!
If they like it, let them crawl
Laden through the heavy blaze.

We’ve no time for moral tags;
We can hear a sleepy sound
With his yellow tucker-bags
Brother Bee is bumming round.<...

“Our loss was light,” the paper said,
“Compared with damage to the Hun”:
She was a widow, and she read
One name upon the list of dead
Her son, her only son.

And can you tell me Love is blind
Because your faults he will not find,
Because the image that he sees
Is one of splendid mysteries?
And if he lack the power to look
On what he will, as on a book,
And read therein the heart of it,
Why are his ways with wonder lit?
Why think you he should bind his eyes
And hide the many-tinted skies,
But that he sees too well to trust
The shadows on an orb of dust?
For he hath vision keener far
Than poring Thought’s and Fancy’s are
An inward vision, full and clear
When night has flung her mantle sheer
Across the world we stumble through
In search of Truth’s evasive clue.
He looks, and straight there fall away
The flutt’ring rags of your array,
The far-fet gem, th’ indecent drape,
The pads that mar the p...

The spell of Shakespeare fills the heart
With earthly music loud and low;
But Marlowe drives the clouds apart,
And through their thundering rifts we go.

The heart is hard that cannot feel
The bruising of a light appeal.

The heart is deaf that cannot hear
The splashing of a tiny tear.

The heart is dumb that cannot say
“God speed you, comrades,” night and day.

The heart is blind that cannot see
The beckoning soul of mystery.

The heart is lame that cannot rise
From clamouring earth to silent skies.

And O that heart were better dead
That truckles to the prudent head.

O Merlin, how the magic from your eyes
Bids the world flame about your idle feet,
And makes a marvel of the humming street,
The watchful bush, the starry-haunted skies!
Dear, do you know that all such magic dies
In foolish hearts that regularly beat?
Blinded with dust, the elders in retreat
Shake their thin locks to prove that they are wise.
God help them in their tameness: you are wild.
Hold fast your faith, for love has mightier spells
Than yet your mouth has chattered, sung or laughed;
Be drunk still with th’ enchanted wine you’ve quaffed.
Awe spreads her wings above the hut where dwells,
Rapt in his glow of gramarye, the child.

He looks beyond the veils of night and day;
He hearkens in the silence, and has heard
The ancient woods by dryad singing stirred,
To mortal ears how thin and far away.
With what gross laughter yet he turns to play
With slaves of vice and virtue and the herd
Of flopping little Calibans, that gird
At muddy boots and call them feet of clay.
Here you may loaf the valley or breast the hill,
Dive deep for pearl or sink your shaft for gold,
Or watch Love, laughing, flit in the summer nights.
Sit by the mud and sniff it as you will,
If you but lift your eyes an inch, behold
The moving tide and broken glimmer of lights.

Lonely wonder, delight past hoping!
Sky-line broken by stirring trees,
Grey rocks hither and shoreward sloping,
Silent bracken about my knees.

Dusky scrub where the sunlight splashes,
Glimmer of waters barely seen
Here the hope that was dust and ashes
Leaps and flashes in flames of green.

Through the boughs that are still before me,
Misty blue of the harbour hills;
Mighty Spirit of Earth who bore me,
Here the peace of thy love distils.

Fools have harried me; hell has driven,
Bidding me toil for its fading shows:
Back I spring to your arms, forgiven,
Back to the truth that a dreamer knows.

Gold and glory and fleeting pleasure
Pass in dust or as melting cloud:
You can dower with eternal treasure
Heart uplifted and head unbo...

An outcry in the bush below,
A crash, and boughs that sway,
And shouts of laughter let me know
Where my two ruffians play.

Barelegged, bareheaded, brown and free,
They lurk and prowl and spring;
Like tiger-cubs they disagree,
Like honeysuckers sing.

For in their hearts are echoes yet
From ages when they knew
The caves of green they now forget,
Though there they climbed or flew.

No cage set limits to their pace;
They held the hunt at bay;
And in their careless mien I trace
The savage mood to-day.

They’ll take no tidal drift, nor lie
And rot like souls of mud,
For sullen lip and flashing eye
Betray the rebel blood.

Go, flout the law your hearts disdain
Your foes are well arrayed
And take for guerdon lov...

How many years, how many years have fled,
Since in the cool dim parlour sat the three
Lawson and I and, lounging easily,
The beaming indolent poet! Then instead
Of labouring weary at the mill, we led
The careless life of wanderers, frank and free,
And had the wealth of a new-found world in fee:
How pitiless time gropes on with tireless tread!
A glass was raised, and golden liquor glowed
When a ray from summer streets came piercing in;
He drank the sunlight in the gloomy place!
And now I know the magic drink bestowed
A vital golden splendour on Roderic Quinn,
Which fumbling fingers of Time will scarce efface.

I

The Sphinx

The spires of sand spring up at every gust
That bids them dance and scatter and lays them low:
He sits impassive, as the ages flow
And bear superbly the mirage of lust.
The moonbright steel he has witnessed redden and rust,
He has seen storm-proud deep-rooted empires grow,
And watched victorious gods flash forth and go;
And still before him spins the aspiring dust.
What has he seen in that hoar-centuried land
More strange and dreadful in its long delight
Of vain hope-haunted ever-starting quest
Than I can follow across this burning sand
Wherefrom the dizzying phantoms take their flight
Within the compass of a wanderer’s breast?


II

Nicholson Museum: Exhibit 32

The curious look and pass, be...

Spring, and the wispy clouds that fade away
And draw the ecstatic soul in pain to aspire
In maddening flight through heaven’s thin flood of fire
To melt in rapture at the heart of day,
The powers of the world that promise and betray
Have dragged me from you in their icy ire
And set me spinning at their loom, for hire,
The shroud in which my senses must decay.
For hire I give myself, and cannot tell
If the blind force that flings me in the chest
Have power or will to pay the bargained price,
Yet for a word of love I gladly quell
The quivering hope of not inactive rest
And very humbly make my sacrifice.

Swags up! and yet I turn upon the way.
The yellow hill against a dapple sky,
With tufts and clumps of thorn, the bush whereby
All through the wonder-pregnant night I lay
Until the silver stars were merged in grey
Our fragrant camp, demand a parting sigh:
New tracks, new camps, and hearts for ever high,
Yet brief regret with every welcome day.
Dear dreamy earth, receding flickering lamp,
Dear dust wherein I found this night a home,
Still for a memory’s sake I turn and cling,
Then take the road for many a distant camp,
Among what hills, by what pale whispering foam,
With eager faith for ever wandering.

One very rough day on the Pride of the Fray
In the scuppers a poor little cabin-boy lay,
When the Bosun drew nigh with wrath in his eye
And gave him a kick to remember him by,
As he cried with a sneer: “What good are you here?
Go home to your mammy, my bold buccaneer.”

Now the Captain beheld, and his pity upwelled:
With a plug in the peeper the Bosun he felled.
With humility grand he extended his hand
And helped the poor lad, who was weeping, to stand,
As he cried: “Have no fear; I’m the manager here.
Take heart, and you’ll yet be a bold buccaneer.”

But how he did flare when the lad then and there
Doffed his cap and shook down a gold banner of hair.
Though his movements were shy, he’d a laugh in his eye,
And he sank on the Captain’s broad breast with a ...

Alone
I sit in the dusk and see
Surely the living faces, dear to me,
Of comrades who have thrown
All that they had, the fruit of all desire,
Upon an altar fire.

They heard,
Above all clamour of the crowd,
The music of their own hearts throbbing loud
Until the air was stirred
Into a summoning harmony; and so
We saw them rise, and go.

The sound,
That love set ringing in those years
Of agony, exultation, voiceless fears,
And hopes now underground,
Shall not be silenced; it is thrilling yet,
And we shall not forget.

But clear
The mellow tone of mingled notes,
Triumph and sorrow made one spirit, floats
To my prophetic ear;
That is their music echoing, echoing still
From our remembering hill.

Borne in the car along a crowded way,
Sun-soaked, I saw the world like shadows glide,
Or phantom boats, upon a running tide,
Driven through flying fog at break of day.
“The chain gang? Yes,” I heard a woman say,
“Here in this very street.” I glanced aside
And saw the fetters that she flashed in pride,
And turned again to watch the world’s array.
Clearly I saw men scurrying on the hour,
Young girls who weary all day on dainty feet,
Dandies whose socks betoken infinite pains,
The life that springs and withers like a flower:
I heard the gangs go clanking down the street,
Intolerably patient of their chains.

Beside the path, on either hand,
To keep the garden beds,
The rusted iron pickets stand
Thin shafts and pointed heads.

And straight my spirit swooping goes
Across the waves of time
Till I’m a little boy who knows
A fence is made to climb;

And bed and lawn and gloomy space
By thicket overgrown
Are wonderlands where I may trace
The beckoning Unknown.

But O the cruelty that strikes
My elder heart with dread
The writhing form upon the spikes,
The trickled pool of red!

So, every day I pass and see
The fence the urchin scales,
The little boy stands up in me
To curse the iron rails.

When I cast my slough of clay
Put it quietly away.

Let no bloom untimely fade
Where my empty heart is laid.

Ask no folk to crowd around
With an air of woe profound.

Those who love me know that I
Cannot in a coffin lie.

Let them go where’er they will,
Dreaming of me living still.

Let no formal words be said
Customary for the dead.

Plant no stone above the pit:
Let the grass run over it.