The sun is sinking where the western hills
    The vision bounds with rugged summits old,
And with his latest beam he brightly gilds
    And crowns with amethyst and gold.

The distant music of a tinkling bell
    Is floating o'er the meadow's gentle sweep--
No discords mar the magic of the spell,
    And stealthily the twilight shadows creep.

And gently falls upon the listening ear--
    Like tones from voices of the long-ago--
The cadence of the murmuring waters near--
    With rhythmic ripplings soft and low.

Now grow apace the shadows' slanting shapes
    And fade the rugged hills to misty gray,
As dying day its calm departure takes
    And yields to coming night her sable sway.

The vaulted dome above now glows afar
    With man...

It is stuffy in the steerage where the second-classers sleep,
For there's near a hundred for'ard, and they're stowed away like sheep,,
They are trav'lers for the most part in a straight 'n' honest path;
But their linen's rather scanty, an' there isn't any bath,
Stowed away like ewes and wethers that is shore 'n' marked 'n' draft.
But the shearers of the shearers always seem to travel aft;
In the cushioned cabins, aft,
With saloons 'n' smoke-rooms, aft,
There is sheets 'n' best of tucker for the first-salooners, aft.

Our beef is just like scrapin's from the inside of a hide,
And the spuds were pulled too early, for they're mostly green inside;
But from somewhere back amidships there's a smell o' cookin' waft,
An' I'd give my earthly prospects for a real good tuck-out aft,

Go, now, and dream o'er that joy in thy slumber--
Moments so sweet again ne'er shalt thou number.
Of Pain's bitter draught the flavor ne'er flies,
While Pleasure's scarce touches the lip ere it dies.
    Go, then, and dream, etc.

That moon, which hung o'er your parting, so splendid,
Often will shine again, bright as she then did--
But, never more will the beam she saw burn
In those happy eyes, at your meeting, return.
    Go, then, and dream, etc.

The Danann children laugh, in cradles of wrought gold,
And clap their hands together, and half close their eyes,
For they will ride the North when the ger-eagle flies,
With heavy whitening wings, and a heart fallen cold:
I kiss my wailing child and press it to my breast,
And hear the narrow graves calling my child and me.
Desolate winds that cry over the wandering sea;
Desolate winds that hover in the flaming West;
Desolate winds that beat the doors of Heaven, and beat
The doors of Hell and blow there many a whimpering ghost;
O heart the winds have shaken; the unappeasable host
Is comelier than candles before Maurya’s feet.

Take this rose, and very gently place it on the tender, deep
Mosses where our little darling, Araluen, lies asleep.
Put the blossom close to baby kneel with me, my love, and pray;
We must leave the bird we’ve buried say good-bye to her to-day.
In the shadow of our trouble we must go to other lands,
And the flowers we have fostered will be left to other hands:
Other eyes will watch them growing other feet will softly tread
Where two hearts are nearly breaking, where so many tears are shed.
Bitter is the world we live in: life and love are mixed with pain;
We will never see these daisies never water them again.

Ah! the saddest thought in leaving baby in this bush alone
Is that we have not been able on her grave to place a stone:
We have been too poor to do it; but, my darling...

(After Heine)

Through the lonely mountain land
There rode a cavalier.
"Oh ride I to my darling's arms,
Or to the grave so drear?"
The Echo answered clear,
"The grave so drear."

So onward rode the cavalier
And clouded was his brow.
"If now my hour be truly come,
Ah well, it must be now!"
The Echo answered low,
"It must be now."

I plodded to Fairmile Hill-top, where
A maiden one fain would guard
From every hazard and every care
Advanced on the roadside sward.

I wondered how succeeding suns
Would shape her wayfarings,
And wished some Power might take such ones
Under Its warding wings.

The busy breeze came up the hill
And smartened her cheek to red,
And frizzled her hair to a haze. With a will
"Good-morning, my Dear!" I said.

She glanced from me to the far-off gray,
And, with proud severity,
"Good-morning to you - though I may say
I am not YOUR Dear," quoth she:

"For I am the Dear of one not here -
One far from his native land!" -
And she passed me by; and I did not try
To make her understand.

1901

That is the earliest thing that I remember--
The narrow house in the long narrow street,
Dark rooms within and darkness out of doors
Where grasses in the garden lift in the wind,
Long grasses clinging round unsteady feet.
The sunlight through one narrow passage pours,
As through the keyhole into a dusty room,
Striking with a golden rod the greening gloom.
The tall, tall timber-stacks have yet been kind,
Letting the sun fling his rod clear between,
Lest there should be no gold upon the green,
And no light then for a child to dream upon,
And day be of day's brightness all forlorn.
I saw those timber piles first dark and tall,
And then men clambered up, and stumbled down,
Each with a heavy and long timber borne
Upon broad shoulders, leather-covered, bent.
Ho...

"The Lord appeared in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush and behold, the bush burned with fire and the bush was not consumed." - EXODUS III. 2.


    When to your virgin heart, unstirred, ungiven,
    Upon the quiet mountain side untrod,
    The sudden naked fire came down from heaven,
    Burning you with the very breath of God,

    Was the sun lost?    Were all the sweet stars dim
    While God raised round your head those walls of light?
    Were you locked dumbly, terribly with Him,
    Within that burning temple day and night?

    What was it to have God there like a bird -
    God like a great, gold flower upon your breast -
    While He spake things that only one man heard,
    Face down before that glory manifest?

    When that str...

Heh! Walk her round. Heave, ah, heave her short again!
Over, snatch her over, there, and hold her on the pawl.
Loose all sail, and brace your yards aback and full,
Ready jib to pay her off and heave short all!
Well, ah, fare you well; we can stay no more with you, my love,
Down, set down your liquor and your girl from off your knee;
For the wind has come to say:
"You must take me while you may,
If you'd go to Mother Carey
(Walk her down to Mother Carey!),
Oh, we're bound to Mother Carey where she feeds her chicks at sea!"

Heh! Walk her round. Break, ah, break it out o' that!
Break our starboard-bower out, apeak, awash, and clear!
Port, port she casts, with the harbour-mud beneath her foot,
And that's the last o' bottom we shall see this year!
Well, ah, fare y...

Dusk is thy dawn; when Eve puts on her state
Of gold and purple in the marbled west,
Thou comest forth like some embodied trait,
Or dim conceit, a lily-bud confessed;
Or, of a rose, the visible wish; that, white,
Goes softly messengering through the night,
Whom each expectant flower makes its guest.

All day the primroses have thought of thee,
Their golden heads close-haremed from the heat;
All day the mystic moonflowers silkenly
Veiled snowy faces, that no bee might greet
Or butterfly that, weighed with pollen, passed;
Keeping Sultana charms for thee, at last,
Their lord, who comest to salute each sweet.

Cool-throated flowers that avoid the day's
Too fervid kisses; every bud that drinks
The tipsy dew and to the starlight plays
Nocturnes of fra...

As children gather daisies down green ways
Mid butterflies and bees,
To-day across the meadows of past days
I gathered memories.

I stored my heart with harvest of lost hours -
With blossoms of spent years;
Leaves that had known the sun of joy, and hours
Drenched with the rain of tears.

And perfumes that were long ago distilled
From April's pink and white,
Again with all their old enchantment, filled
My spirit with delight.

From out the limbo where lost roses go
The place we may not see,
With all its petals sweet and half-ablow,
One rose returned to me.

Where falls the sunlight chequered by the shade
On meadows of the past,
I gathered blossoms that no sun can fade
No winter wind can blast.

        Oh the elements varied - the exquisite plan -
        That are used in constructing the lovely young man!
        His face he has easily made to possess
        The expression of nothing within to express;
        His hair is oiled glossily back of his ears,
        Atop of his head an equator appears;
        His scanty mustache has symmetrical bends,
        Is groomed with precision, and waxed at both ends;
        His darling complexion, bewitching to see,
        Is powdered the same as a lady's might be.
        And this is the dear whom the newspapers rude
        Have scornfully treated, and christened the    -    - .

        The mental equipment I'll tell, if I can,
        That Nature has given the lovely young man:
        A set of emotions cons...

    Jungle, the cave
    human reservoir & cistern ... .
    quagmire and bog, but no alpine meadow,
    fairest glance of goodness in
    soiled wildflower under winter snows.

    Pebbles into a cesspool,
    our sometime passions alive
    in the outback where honey-fuelled
    ants soothe enemy bones.

    My blood, tempest-whipped,
    ardour drawn to the surface
    fathom marks the depths
    sees a spectacle on the roads
    queues/Carnival & Lent,
    unbridled raw and raging.
    Jesus would have nails.

    Poison darts,
    liana and mangrove sounds
    with footsteps in the distance
    the blow-gun or bolo knife
    attache case / cellular phone ...
    "I'll kick your teeth down
    your throa...

She stood by my side with a queenly air,
Her face it was young and proud and fair;
She held my rose in her hands of snow;
It crimsoned her face with a deeper glow;
The sunlight drooped in her eyes of fire
And quickened my heart to a wild desire;
I envied the rose in her hands so fair,
I envied the flowers that gleamed in her hair.

Ah! many a suitor I knew before
Had knelt at her feet in the days of yore;
And many a lover as foolish as I,
Had proudly boasted to win or die.
She had scorned them all with a careless grace
And a woman's scorn on her beautiful face.
Yet now in the summer I knelt at her feet,
And dreamed a dream that was fair and sweet.

The roses drooped in her gold-brown hair,
And quivered and glowed in the sun-lit air;
The jew...

    As I watch the clouds assemble, steam-ship fashion, with funnels to
    alert passersby, I realize the Romanovs tore silk & riches from
    every bazaar leaving the bright spot of this evening studded with emerald marks.
    A dot in the ocean is a spark upon which minnows play, their silver
    bellies upturned to imitate the moon's white shawl.

    I am wanting in the delights of the reef narrowly hauled from
    rambunctious depths, the tiniest splashes of green, yellow, blue darting in an upturned fish's tail.
    An octopus rock commands squadrons of fingerlings while the eisel
    fish decorates a steeper, coral garden.

    Jet black sand crowns the lagoon volcanic ages' past the innocence
    of this spurting palm while mounds of pitch dark ants deposit slivers o...

I

I nursed it in my bosom while it lived,
    I hid it in my heart when it was dead;
In joy I sat alone, even so I grieved
    Alone and nothing said.

I shut the door to face the naked truth,
    I stood alone - I faced the truth alone,
Stripped bare of self-regard or forms or ruth
    Till first and last were shown.

I took the perfect balances and weighed;
    No shaking of my hand disturbed the poise;
Weighed, found it wanting: not a word I said,
    But silent made my choice.

None know the choice I made; I make it still.
    None know the choice I made and broke my heart,
Breaking mine idol: I have braced my will
    Once, chosen for once my part.

I broke it at a blow, I laid it cold,
    Crushed in my deep heart wher...

To E. B. B.


I
There they are, my fifty men and women
Naming me the fifty poems finished!
Take them, Love, the book and me together:
Where the heart lies, let the brain lie also.

II
Rafael made a century of sonnets,
Made and wrote them in a certain volume
Dinted with the silver-pointed pencil
Else he only used to draw Madonnas:
These, the world might view, but one, the volume.
Who that one, you ask? Your heart instructs you.
Did she live and love it all her lifetime
Did she drop, his lady of the sonnets,
Die, and let it drop beside her pillow
Where it lay in place of Rafael’s glory,
Rafael’s cheek so duteous and so loving,
Cheek, the world was wont to hail a painter’s,
Rafael?s cheek, her love had turned a poet’s?