(Deserters)
There is a world outside the one you know,
To which for curiousness 'Ell can't compare,
It is the place where "wilful-missings" go,
As we can testify, for we are there.

You may 'ave read a bullet laid us low,
That we was gathered in "with reverent care"
And buried proper. But it was not so,
As we can testify , for we are there!

They can't be certain, faces alter so
After the old aasvogel 'ad 'is share.
The uniform's the mark by which they go,
And, ain't it odd?, the one we best can spare.

We might 'ave seen our chance to cut the show,
Name, number, record, an 'begin elsewhere,
Leaven'' some not too late-lamented foe
One funeral-private-British-for 'is share.

We may 'ave took it yonder in the Low
Bush-veldt that sen...

If the sad old world should jump a cog
    Sometime, in its dizzy spinning,
And go off the track with a sudden jog,
    What an end would come to the sinning,
What a rest from strife and the burdens of life
    For the millions of people in it,
What a way out of care, and worry and wear,
    All in a beautiful minute.

As 'round the sun with a curving sweep
    It hurries and runs and races,
Should it lose its balance, and go with a leap
    Into the vast sea-spaces,
What a blest relief it would bring to the grief,
    And the trouble and toil about us,
To be suddenly hurled from the solar world
    And let it go on without us.

With not a sigh or a sad good-bye
    For loved ones left behind us,
We would go with a lunge and a mighty plunge...

        (To Laura.)


        My Laura, your rebukes are prudish;
        For although flattery is rudish,
        Yet deference, not more than just,
        May be received without disgust.
        Am I a privilege denied
        Assumed by every tongue beside?
        And are you, fair and feminine,
        Prone to reject a verse benign?
        And is it an offence to tell
        A fact which all mankind knows well?
        Or with a poet's hand to trace
        The beaming lustre of your face?
        Nor tell in metaphor my tale,
        How the moon makes the planets pale?
        I check my song; and only gaze,
        Admiring what I may not praise.

        If you reject my tribute due,
        I'll moralise - despite...

I

Only a man harrowing clods
In a slow silent walk
With an old horse that stumbles and nods
Half asleep as they stalk.

II

Only thin smoke without flame
From the heaps of couch-grass;
Yet this will go onward the same
Though Dynasties pass.

III

Yonder a maid and her wight
Come whispering by:
War's annals will cloud into night
Ere their story die.

1915.

Last salvo in "The Bush Controversy".

The later poem "A Voice From the Town" (Banjo Patterson) continues the theme.


The world has had enough of bards who wish that they were dead,
Tis time, the people passed a law to knock 'em on the head,
For 'twould be lovely if their friends could grant the rest they crave,
Those bards Of "tears" and "vanished hopes," those poets of the grave.
They say that life's an awful thing and full of care and gloom,
They talk of peace and restfulness connected with the tomb.

They say that man is made of dirt, and die, of course, he must;
But, all the same, a man is made of pretty solid dust,
There is a thing that they forget, so let it here be writ,
That some are made of common mud, and some are made of grit;
Some try to help the...

Puellae.

Whence comest thou, and whither goest thou?
Abide! abide! longer the shadows grow;
What hopest thou the dark to thee will show?

Abide! abide! for we are happy here.

Amans.

Why should I name the land across the sea
Wherein I first took hold on misery?
Why should I name the land that flees from me?

Let me depart, since ye are happy here.

Puellae.

What wilt thou do within the desert place
Whereto thou turnest now thy careful face?
Stay but a while to tell us of thy case.

Abide! abide! for we are happy here.

Amans.

What, nigh the journey's end shall I abide,
When in the waste mine own love wanders wide,
When from all men for me she still doth hide?

"Hign bliss is only for a higher state,"
But, surely, if severe afflictions borne
With patience merit the reward of peace,
Peace ye deserve; and may the solid good,
Sought by a wise though late exchange, and here
With bounteous hand beneath a cottage-roof
To you accorded, never be withdrawn,
Nor for the world's best promises renounced.
Most soothing was it for a welcome Friend,
Fresh from the crowded city, to behold
That lonely union, privacy so deep,
Such calm employments, such entire content.
So when the rain is over, the storm laid,
A pair of herons oft-times have I seen,
Upon a rocky islet, side by side,
Drying their feathers in the sun, at ease;
And so, when night with grateful gloom had fallen,
Two glow-worms in such nearness that they shared,
...

Sometimes the spirit that never leaves me quite
Taps at my heart when thou art in the way,
Saying, Now thy Queen cometh: therefore pray,
Lest she should see thee vile, and at the sight
Shiver and fly back piteous to the light
That wanes when she is absent. Then, as I may,
I wash my soilèd hands and muttering, say,
Lord, make me clean; robe Thou me in Thy white!

So for a brief space, clad in ecstasy,
Pure, disembodied, I fall to kiss thy feet,
And sense thy glory throbbing round about;
Whereafter, rising, I hold thee in a sweet
And gentle converse that lifts me up to be,
When thou art gone, strange to the gross world's rout.

In controversial foul impureness
The peace that is thy light to thee
Quench not: in faith and inner sureness
Possess thy soul and let it be.

No violence—perverse—persistent—
What cannot be can bring to be;
No zeal what is make more existent,
And strife but blinds the eyes that see.

What though in blood their souls embruing,
The great, the good and wise they curse,
Still sinning, what they know not doing;
Stand still, forbear, nor make it worse.

By curses, by denunciation,
The coming fate they cannot stay;
Nor thou, by fiery indignation,
Though just, accelerate the day.

1.
The billows on the beach are leaping around it,
The bark is weak and frail,
The sea looks black, and the clouds that bound it
Darkly strew the gale.
Come with me, thou delightful child,
Come with me, though the wave is wild,
And the winds are loose, we must not stay,
Or the slaves of the law may rend thee away.

2.
They have taken thy brother and sister dear,
They have made them unfit for thee;
They have withered the smile and dried the tear
Which should have been sacred to me.
To a blighting faith and a cause of crime
They have bound them slaves in youthly prime,
And they will curse my name and thee
Because we fearless are and free.

3.
Come thou, beloved as thou art;
Another sleepeth still
Near thy sweet mother's anxious...

In the sunlight doctors tear a woman apart.
Here the open red body gapes.    And heavy blood
Flows, dark wine, into a white bowl.    One sees
Very clearly the rose-red cyst.    Lead gray,
The limp head hangs down.    The hollow mouth
Rattles.    The sharp yellow chin points upward.
The room shines, cool and friendly.    A nurse
Savors quite a bit of sausage in the background.

Listless he eyes the palisades
And sentries in the glare;
'Tis barren as a pelican-beach
But his world is ended there.

Nothing to do; and vacant hands
Bring on the idiot-pain;
He tries to think--to recollect,
But the blur is on his brain.

Around him swarm the plaining ghosts
Like those on Virgil's shore--
A wilderness of faces dim,
And pale ones gashed and hoar.

A smiting sun. No shed, no tree;
He totters to his lair--
A den that sick hands dug in earth
Ere famine wasted there,

Or, dropping in his place, he swoons,
Walled in by throngs that press,
Till forth from the throngs they bear him dead--
Dead in his meagreness.

I saw thy form in youthful prime,
    Nor thought that pale decay
Would steal before the steps of Time,
    And waste its bloom away, Mary!

Yet still thy features wore that light,
    Which fleets not with the breath;
And life ne'er looked more truly bright
    Than in thy smile of death, Mary!

As streams that run o'er golden mines,
    Yet humbly, calmly glide,
Nor seem to know the wealth that shines
    Within their gentle tide, Mary!
So veiled beneath the simplest guise,
    Thy radiant genius shone,
And that, which charmed all other eyes,
    Seemed worthless in thy own, Mary!

If souls could always dwell above,
    Thou ne'er hadst left that sphere;
Or could we keep the souls we love,
    We ne'er had lost thee here, Mary!<...

We come with peace and reason,
We come with love and light,
To banish black self-treason
And everlasting night.

We know no god nor devil,
We neither drive nor lead,
We come to banish evil
In thought as well as deed.

And this our grandest mission,
And this our purest worth;
To banish superstition,
The blackest curse on earth.

We come to pass no sentence,
For ours is not the power,
The coward’s vain repentance
But wastes the waiting hour.

’Tis not for us to lengthen
The years of wasted lives;
We come to help and strengthen
The goodness that survives.

We promise nought hereafter,
We cannot conquer pain,
But work, and rest, and laughter,
Will soothe the tortured brain.

That which is lost, ...

An Ode. 1685.


I.

    Thou youngest virgin-daughter of the skies,
    Made in the last promotion of the blest;
    Whose palms, new pluck'd from Paradise,
    In spreading branches more sublimely rise,
    Rich with immortal green above the rest:
    Whether, adopted to some neighbouring star,
    Thou roll'st above us, in thy wandering race,
        Or, in procession fix'd and regular,
        Mov'st with the heavens' majestic pace;
        Or, call'd to more superior bliss,
    Thou tread'st, with seraphims, the vast abyss:

    Whatever happy region is thy place,
    Cease thy celestial song a little space;
    Thou wilt have time enough for hymns divine,
        Since Heaven's eternal year is thine.
    Hear then a mortal Muse th...

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
    "Life is but an empty dream!"
For the soul is dead that slumbers.
    And things are not what they seem.

Life is real!    Life is earnest!
    And the grave is not its goal;
"Dust thou art, to dust returnest,"
    Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
    Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
    Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
    And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
    Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
    In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
    Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasan...

A wounded Chieftain, lying
    By the Danube's leafy side,
Thus faintly said, in dying,
    "Oh! bear, thou foaming tide.
    "This gift to my lady-bride."

'Twas then, in life's last quiver,
    He flung the scarf he wore
Into the foaming river,
    Which, ah too quickly, bore
    That pledge of one no more!

With fond impatience burning,
    The Chieftain's lady stood,
To watch her love returning
    In triumph down the flood,
    From that day's field of blood.

But, field, alas, ill-fated!
    The lady saw, instead
Of the bark whose speed she waited,
    Her hero's scarf, all red
With the drops his heart had shed.

One shriek--and all was over--
    Her life-pulse ceased to beat;
The gloomy waves now cover<...

My heart is sick awishing and awaiting:
The lad took up his knapsack, he went, he went his way;
And I looked on for his coming, as a prisoner through the grating
Looks and longs and longs and wishes for its opening day.

On the wild purple mountains, all alone with no other,
The strong terrible mountains he longed, he longed to be;
And he stooped to kiss his father, and he stooped to kiss his mother,
And till I said, "Adieu, sweet Sir," he quite forgot me.

He wrote of their white raiment, the ghostly capes that screen them,
Of the storm winds that beat them, their thunder-rents and scars,
And the paradise of purple, and the golden slopes atween them,
And fields, where grow God's gentian bells, and His crocus stars.

He wrote of frail gauzy clouds, that drop on the...