In matchless beauty of proportion clear
On rocky eminence, the city ’neath its feet
And winding river, and the vision sweet
Which his soul cherished was not all in vain.
Behold the vast Cathedral with its lofty fane!
For which he toiled and prayed, but Heaven decreed
He should not see fruition of the seed.
And now within those hallowed walls at rest
He lies with meek hands folded o’er his breast
Beneath the altar fair he is assigned
A fitting resting place for his great mind.
Though he be dead, his works will follow him
And stones shall speak in that great minster dim,
Of strength and majesty so truly wrought--
A temple beautiful for heavenly thought;
Each arch in its magnificence alone
Reveals a poem writ with pen of stone.
Perchance when the sweet sound of vesper bell
And trembling notes of the grand organ swell,
Reverberating, or with cadence soft and clear,
His listening spirit may be hovering near.
When holy chant floats down that stately aisle
And angel voice of choristers beguile
The soul in rapturous awe from mundane things
Will soar aloft on Adoration’s wings!
And may each human pillar moulded be
By master minds of eloquence and oratory;
And down the centuries the founder’s name shall shine
With his successors in God’s House Divine,
While “Glorio in Excelsis Deo” rise
In grandest anthem to the lofty skies.
AT EVENTIDE.
With trembling limbs and side by side
Two old folks walk at eventide,
Two dear old wrinkled faces bow,
Two pairs of feet are weary now,
At eventide.
Hush! Now they reach the old house door,
Where, more than fifty years before,
The bride came on her wedding morn,
And true love waited for his dawn,
Ere eventide.
They gaze with tender age-dimmed eyes
Around the hearth while memories
Surge backward down the vanished years,
Fraught with their sweetness, blent with tears,
This eventide.
They talk of loved ones long since gone,
And one whom they in silence mourn,
The erring one, and thus they stay
With bended heads for him to pray,
At eventide.
And he, with sudden, deep remorse
Resolves to change his evil course,
And plead forgiveness ere too late,
So softly opes the old green gate,
One eventide.
The cottage door is open wide,
He sweeps a vagrant tear aside,
Sees empty dear familiar chairs,
Then gently mounts the oaken stairs
At eventide.
Ah! Yes! it is their eventide,
For see! He finds them side by side,
Wrapped in magnificent repose,
Beyond the golden light that glows
At eventide.
AUTUMN.
Lo! Sad-eyed Autumn walks o’er all the land,
Tenderly touching with caressing hand,
Each quivering leaflet, hung from parent stem,
Bearing a radiant dew-kissed diadem;
And tasselled ruddy gold and variant shade
Droop o’er Psyche as in Arcadian glade
She doth recline, and Autumn’s lover--Wind--
Chants solemn dirge for Summer, left behind
To music of dead leaves, with tears of rain,
While whispering, “Summer cometh yet again,
And Autumn lingereth but a little while,
With glance compassionate on flowers that smile
In winsome beauty ere their blooms decay
And change when Winter cometh cold and grey.”
See! Satin-winged sweet butterflies have flown
Like fairy sprites, to choose a graceful throne
On crimson rose or soft hydrangea blue,
Emblems of the transition we must view.
These tender spirits through the fleeting hours
Cull the sweet essence from the glorious flowers,
And the short seasons pass and may not stay--
Ephemeral pleasures, too, must pass away.
So, did not Autumn Winter meet, and Winter Spring,
Dear Summer’s charms would vanish nor hope bring
Then melancholy Autumn with her Wind may sigh,
For Spring, her smiling sister, cometh by-and-bye.
TO SLEEP.
Sweet seraph! Borne upon the wings of love,
Softly thou cometh from the realms above,
With kiss as light as air, and gentler breath,
More beauteous thou than thy pale brother Death,
Yet not so calm as he, though both bestow
A wondrous loveliness o’er cheek and brow;
He with a regal majesty so marble cold
In immobility of matchless grace doth mould
Each feature with the waxen beauty of the tomb,
While thou dost lend the blush of living bloom,
And the soft dew of Heaven doth linger there,
And lovely Peace imprints her image fair.
When eve in crimson splendour of delight
Falleth, thou Spirit of the starry night,
And they, all million-eyed in radiance shine,
Like scattered silver seeds o’er fields divine,
Thou to dear children giveth dreamless rest,
Softly embraced upon thy tender breast,
While care-worn sufferers on the tideless sea
Of blissful dreams forget their misery,
And bask in visions of the verdurous hills
Of some enchanted isle where flashing rills,
Gushing sweet music, to the green vales flow,
Where cool, slim palms their graceful shadows throw--
Angel of love, by dear Compassion led,
To fold in deep repose each weary head.
Nature’s sweet nurse, oh ever near us stay
Till, life’s dreams o’er, “the shadows flee away.”
WHAT IS MAN?
Monarch of all the animals is man, but what his goal?
Being material, yet endowed with an immortal soul,
Whence comes he? Hath he lived before? He knoweth not,
But if he be immortal, must be Heaven-begot.
To live for naught in the great cosmic plan
Would prove him lesser than his claim as man.
Alone he stands amid his empire, clothed with speech,
And attributes of reason and intelligence to reach
The heights sublime, for he alone surveys
The skies or lifts his eyes to mark the boundless ways
Of the vast galaxy of the celestial star-strewn plains,
He of the mighty animal kingdom o’er which he reigns,
He who is but the veriest echo of the Almighty sound,
A faint reflection of his Maker, but who yet is bound
By ties unbreakable, for doth he not receive
The realm of thought from Him, the air to breathe?
The glorious constellations move in their appointed place
To the deep throbbing heart-beats of the universe.
The planets, trembling arteries of the spacious whole,
With each frail mortal the molecule called soul,
And he in turn respondeth to the Almighty thought,
Each entity distinct, yet like the other wrought;
Creature of elements mysterious, half divine!
Emotional, fearful, yet vibrating to the electric line
Of the invisible, which holds him startled at the flight
And magnitude of thought soaring beyond the night
Of mundane things; then asks himself--as thousands more--
If death the end of all created beings is, wherefore
All the ennobling longings in the human mind innate
And love of nature and which all things beautiful elate,
This spark of immortality flaming with fitful gleams
Of vague remembrance of a pre-existence, seems
To shape itself into a dream which comes and goes.
And when the influence of the Almighty over spirit throws
The searching rays of the great Omnipresent power
In Whom we live, to Whom we kneel in sorrow’s hour,
Who bids the ministers of all the Heavenly Argosies
Of Faith, and Hope, and Mercy, on the ethereal spheres
Enthroned with Justice, Truth and Liberty,
To teach man that, though mortal, immortality
Is his, Oh not, for nought, the powers of death and life,
Oh not, for nought, it is the everlasting strife
’Twixt mind and matter, if we be--as some would deem--
Nought but the moving shadows of a melting dream,
Why live, why love, why breathe the unconscious prayer?
Because, deep down in the human heart, we feel God there;
And dare the shadow of his Maker,--man--profess
That he can build this empire without him to bless.
[Illustration: text decoration]
THE BLUE MOUNTAINS, NEW SOUTH WALES.
Imperial battlements, whose frowning brows
Look ever into space and watch the dawn
In roseate loveliness above the snows
Of feathery cloudlets which thy breasts adorn.
Ye regal forms! Whose jagged chasms bear
The scars of ages, scored by tempests’ rage
When cataclysms thundering rent the air--
Thou mammoth ruins of a bygone age.
And hoary Kosciusko in dim distance gleams,
So not alone in thy most awful pride
Art thou great Austral Alps, whose purling streams
Gush from the fissures in thy wounded side.
What buried secrets doth thy caverns hold
Of aeons marked by time’s unerring hand?
What mystic rites were held by warriors bold,
The dusky children of an almost vanished band?
Perchance they crept within thy strongholds grim,
Hiding, as erst cave dwellers once had done
In old Europa--fearful lest limb from limb
They should be torn by some great mastodon.
Mayhap from giddy height they gazed with awe
Upon thy ever-changing billowy cloud,
Deeming the “Eagle Rock” and “Bear” they saw
Gods to which they in adoration bowed.
Oh! lo we bend to Him who fashioned thee
From chaos at His own almighty word--
Creation’s wonderland of moving mystery,
When seas and winds alone His voice had heard.
So wildly beautiful art thou, the spirit fails
To utterly describe thy variant mood.
The mantled velvet of thy mossy, vernal vales
And magic falls, which flash in foaming flood;
Ye tree-crowned hills! With leafy branches spread,
Ye scented pines! Whose odorous breath is flung,
Wafted from “Govett’s Leap” and fen and glade,
From aerial censer by wood-spirits swung.
And when the orb of day in splendour dies,
And trailing flambent clouds thy peaks enlace,
The opalescent tints of western skies
Reveal the enchantments of thy dwelling-place.
Or when our lady of the night, so fair,
Silvers thy forests in translucent showers,
Deftly the sylvan poet thrills the air
With murmuring symphony from wind-wooed bowers.
Gorges and canyon, clefts and ravines deep,
And fairy grotts with starry flowerets set,
Where water-lilies pale on green pool sleep;
Lo! Nature’s masterpiece, her grand magnificat.
Ye massive pillars! Which have viewed the spray
Far, far away upon the impulsive tide
For countless years--ye too must pass away.
For at His fiat who shall then abide?
And He who changeth not, He who hath made
All things of earth we love to change and die,
Hath made thee beautiful, that ’neath thy shade
Vain man may muse upon his immortality.
THE POET LAUREATE.
ALFRED AUSTIN.
The lyre is mute, the strings unstrung,
The muse hath left the song unsung;
He weareth on his poet’s brow
A fairer wreath than men bestow
Or fame may give.
As leaves are scattered o’er the mould,
Unheeded by the world so cold,
Yet, traced indelibly on stone,
Their shapes remain through ages flown,
So sweet words live.
His pleasure was a healthy mind,
Teaching man’s duty to mankind;
No thought of glory or of gain
Centred within that brilliant brain
But love to men.
Oh, life! Oh, death! Thou hast no sting!
Swiftly upon thy glorious wing,
Trembling, within the golden maze,
He passed to pour his sweetest lays
Beyond our ken.
His ivory casket lies at rest
In that dear island of the west;
His song hath ceased, his rest is won,
And peace is his at set of sun,
For he hath led
Some weary mortals to the spheres
Of fancy, far from pensive tears,
Where, in imagination’s bliss,
They hung upon a poet’s kiss.
Oh, happy dead!
And Britain mourns him not alone,
And not because of sculptured stone,
Or tributes great, or elegy,
Will her laureate remembered be,
But in her heart.
Though rugged be the path to fame,
Yet history hath writ his name
A star of magnitude that shines;
For fame, whose lustre few entwines,
Hath crowned his art.
[Illustration: text decoration]
MOUNT TAMBOURINE, QUEENSLAND.
How shall I paint in words thine image fair,
Set in a background of red-winged light,
Glinting through portieres of soft foliage there,
Gold-flecked ere fading into deepening night?
List to the music of cascades which pour
Their liquid silver tribute down the steep
To moss-clad boulders, where it bubbles o’er,
And fronded ferns in verdurous beauty peep.
Breathless--I wait near thy pellucid stream
To view some woodland nymph with flashing feet
And brow, flower-bound for this alluring dream--
A witching Flora in this cool retreat.
Pensive I grow until the bell-bird’s note--
Organ-like, pealing in its grand solemnity--
Brings haunting memories, as the deep tones float,
Of vanished hours--lost chords of melody.
Crowned in magnificence is thy majestic head,
Queenly thy royal robe of purple grace,
With tender nuances o’er dewy verdure spread,
Where the Pacific’s jasper waves embrace.
Whether in winnowed raiment of the crystal dawn,
Or golden mantle of the sun’s rich ore,
Or jewelled scarf star studded round thee worn,
Thy smiles or tears but charm me more and more.
Farewell, thy stately beauty! Stay--a thought
Hath touched the deep recesses of my soul--
Thou standest, thou Colossus, tempest-wrought,
A Beacon on Time’s sea to mark a shoal!
DREAMS.
I dream of thee when morn is nigh
And Eos, incense laden,
Through rosy portals of the sky,
Chaseth the white mist maiden.
I dream when falls the tender night,
And walks the pale queen moon,
And peeping stars with eyes so bright
Whisper “She cometh soon.”
I watch them in the fragrant gloom
Hanging so pure and high,
For they are woven in my dream,
And gleam all silently.
Beloved! As a budding rose
With petals just unfolding,
My passion would thy heart unclose
A flower of love’s own moulding.
And oft in slumber wrapped profound
I see thy lashes wet,
And know thy thoughts with mine are bound,
And thou dost not forget.
My dreams I cherish, and thou must
By this, my only token,
Know that my love, till I am dust,
Shall e’er remain unbroken.
And when that “Light that never was”
On earth or sky or sea
Shall break o’er me, ’twill be because
God led me up through thee.
AUSTRALIA TO THE EMPIRE MOTHER.
Peace to thee, Mother of Empires: Austral, thy younger child
Far removed from thy steadfast hand across the ocean wild,
Sees not thy mighty cities, nor the pleasurance of thy mead,
Nor the glory of thy landscapes where tender flocklets feed.
Nor the ancient feudal castles flanked with turrets and with moats,
The fane of great Westminster, nor hath heard Big Ben’s deep notes.
Thy palaces and heirlooms with proud earls and ladies fair,
Of noble blood and long descent, and costly jewels rare.
Thy wondrous wealth and poverty with streets one shining blaze,
Where tiny children clad in rags are driven within the maze
Or labyrinth of alleys, just to sell God’s gift--the flowers,
With little bodies blue with cold to pass the mid-night hours.
Oh, Britain! Thy great heart doth swell with passionate regret
That thou hast so many mouths to fill; then thou must not forget
That far away ’neath Southern Cross thy child doth bless thy name,
For she hath written in her heart the story of thy fame.
Thy battles fought, thy hopes for peace on that expectant day
When the crimson tides of human blood for aye shall fade away.
And see! Thy royal daughter waits to plead with Britain’s race,
To send her vessels filled with kin, to choose a dwelling-place
Beneath the soft and balmy skies where giant forests gleam,
And the yellow ribboned wattle grows beside the silver stream;
Where golden sands of islets float beyond the purple rim
Of sapphire seas, and lofty palms wave languourously and slim
Where the vine and fig tree flourish within the rich, red soil,
And poverty is never known save to those who will not toil.
Oh, not with tones of other climes thy daughter Austral sings;
Not as the birds of other lands their note’s wild echo rings,
The cadence of the bell-bird’s call, the curlew’s haunting cry,
The green and scarlet plumage gay which sweep across the sky,
The ’possum and the mopoke, and the soft-eyed kangaroo,
Nature in all her curious shapes, with flowers of gorgeous hue.
In solitary splendour Austral waits within her walls
Of rocky sea-girt armoury and for population calls;
Her empty Northern Territory hath smiling emerald plains,
Her pasture land is waiting for the men who have the brains.
Oh! Mother of ours, thy children in thine island of the west
Will find a home through Britain’s shore in where their hearts may rest.
We know the name of Austral shines upon thy royal crown
And that with thine own glorious seal her deeds are written down;
And that Austral’s heart is loyal and is ever beating true,
And the women of her nation are not dreamers, but they do.
And their ever-marching army with intelligence will prove
That Australia is advancing in her work of peace and love.
Oh! Empire Mother, whom we love, we know thy greatest need
Is to teach thy sons to follow--where a little child may lead--
[Illustration: text decoration]
YOUTH AND AGE.
Though lovely youth seems far apart to lie
It treadeth ever on the heels of age;
A few delicious years of transient joy
Then turns the fly-leaf of life’s solemn page.
Some duties stern blent with the lessons meet
From nature’s wondrous garden of delight;
Fair meadows, where the gold-eyed marguerite
’Opes to the sun and prays, as we, at night.
Then comes a page of slowly dawning thought,
The alley-ways where wrong in painted guise
Rose-coloured, glows in filmy beauty wrought,
“’Tis then that calm reflection makes us wise.”
Again a leaf, and then life’s real intent,
Forceful with all its earnestness and pain,
Presents itself--but useless to lament
Past idle hours--Oh! waste them not again.
Youth and old age, twin destinies which sway
The human leaves; youth feeleth not the blast
But age though withered knoweth well that May
Must pass December’s threshold at the last.
We turn the leaf of this the longer page
By some as yet unfinished--let it stand
A volume of our hearts, while hoping age
Will lead us gently to the shadow land.
And when at length our page is nearly closed
With all our faults and virtues there impressed,
Let age, its mortal garment--quit composed
By the sweet thought: “Who made us knowest best.”
IMAGINATION.
Swifter than light imagination springs
Unfettered by its tenement of clay;
One moment here, the next on joyous wings
Poised o’er the stars which pave the “Milky Way.”
Oh boundless space! Oh mighty concaved dome!
Graven with tessallated groups of stars;
Imagination hears God’s vibrant loom
As the frail spirit soars beyond its bars.
There jewelled in the blue empyreal height
Gleam glittering Sirius, Deneb and Altair;
Lo, clustering gems of scintillating light,
The brilliant retinue of Crucis fair.
Lost in infinitude, it views with awe
The majesty of rolling spheres around,
Where golden argosies are speeding o’er
The vast celestial seas without a bound.
It is enough! We may not lift the veil
Which shrouds the altar of the Eternal Throne;
The thought doth the imagination quail
As meek it kneels before the Gate alone.
Alone a space, within that vastitude--
Beyond all mundane things of time and sense,
And change and swift vicissitude,
To worship Him for his beneficence--
Imagination’s bounds are limitless,
No star of eve trembling above the sea
Hath wider path, or sheddeth sweeter bliss,
For it, of all God’s gifts, to man is free.
AN AUSTRALIAN REVERIE.
I stood in the Temple of Silence
Where in crimson splendour shone,
The rich light through stained windows
O’er a matchless crystal throne.
And a vista of stately pillars
Stretched far ’neath a dome of gold,
And sculptured recumbent figures
Of mortals of kingly mould.
Yet with all its surpassing beauty
I could feel the icy breath
Of the wings of some brooding phantom
In this gilded house of death.
Here no sound ever broke the stillness,
Here solitude ever abode,
I stayed till the moonbeams quivered,
Then left Silence alone with God.
I stood in the Palace of Pleasure,
The revels were wild and gay,
And mocking laughter rose and fell
As the swift hours sped away.
The lights waxed dim, and the flowers
Drooped dead in the gorgeous bowls,
And the painted faces anon grew sad,
And mirthless their empty souls.
The long night waned, and the dancers,
Their beauty all faded and worn,
Looked pallid, and listless, and weary,
In the rays of the glorious morn.
Ever seeking ephemeral pleasure,
Which leads to the path of pain,
And down to the Valley of Never,
Whence none may return again.
I stood in life’s Garden of Beauty,
And, lo! in a floral shrine
Of roses and lilies entwining
Lay a chalice of dew divine.
And a throng of mortals stood waiting
For the Angel of Love to pour
This holy dew of libation,
Which falleth for evermore.
And children were weaving garlands
As they walked o’er the verdant sward
With the flowers of Truth and Perfection
In sunlight which ever poured.
And here, in this new earthly Eden,
With its gleaming wings of white,
Was Peace, for all men were Brothers--
I awoke from my dream: “’Twas night!”
[Illustration: text decoration]
THE VOICE OF SONG.
Come, oh song, and charm my sadness,
For I fain would weep,
With melodious notes of gladness
Wooing balmy sleep.
While the troops of stars are smiling
Calm my fevered brow,
All my soul with sound beguiling,
Charm, oh! charm me now.
Golden daylight hath its laughter,
Moonlight hath its tears;
Songs are dreams which follow after
Thought along the years.
Waves of joy, and waves of sorrow,
Placid, turbulent,
Darkest days have bright to-morrows,
Each a message sent.
Love and life on wings are flying,
Dreams of yesterday,
Like the precious hours, are lying
Far from us to-day.
Sing, then, sing your sweetest number
Softer than a sigh,
That it bring me dreamless slumber
For my weary eye.
And thy song shall be for dreamers
Tender, soft, and low,
And the tune that Boreas murmurs,
Which none others know.
Waft, oh voice of song, thy measure
O’er the air of even,
Till the soul, consumed with pleasure,
Wakes to thoughts of Heaven.
ALIENATION.
What gulf so deep, what arid desert plain,
Or dreary vastitude of ocean main,
So deep as the divide of hearts once stirred
To sweet response, which only winds had heard?
The dead who live but love us now no more,
Gone are the echoes of the tones of yore;
The faces of our sighs and tears and dreams
Are cold as gleaming ice on frozen streams.
The days that were may ne’er return again,
Though each perchance has felt the aching pain;
Yet pride forbade thy wounded heart to let
Me plead; but, oh! thou never can’st forget.
’Tis destiny’s decree, and ’twere not meet
That when I see thy cold eyes I should greet
Thee more--thy burning heart ’neath snow
Can never flame again with tender glow.
And yet how strange that it should thus befall,
Since love is dead, that fain we would recall
Each note that trembled on the golden lyre,
Ere it lay silent on the funeral pyre.
So be it: Destiny for all sad mortals leaves
Some little grains of comfort from life’s sheaves;
So, though my love be lost to me for aye,
The flowers of memory ne’er will fade away.
AT NIGHT.
When sinks the sun a globe of gold
Across the ocean’s breast,
And night doth all the world enfold,
My spirit will not rest.
And forth it speeds without a sound,
For nought can bind my will.
The moonbeams cast a halo round,
And everything is still.
Once more I tread the flowery field
As in the days of yore,
My beating heart doth almost yield
When near the garden door.
There stand the stately old elm trees
Which once my childhood knew,
The tulips bend unto the breeze,
The fountain plashes, too.
I hear the silvery laughter float
From out the cool, dim hall,
I hear my brothers’ merry shout
As they each other call.
I stand within the ancient room
I see the books so rare,
And smell the olden rich perfume
Of roses clustering there.
And I become a child again,
And listen to the prayer
My father breathes, like a refrain,
Which all our beings stir.
And from the stairs, so black with age
The mullioned windows view,
Through which once gazed some vanished sage
The while he pensive grew.
Its leaden panes with vitreous eyes
Look over o’er the sea,
Which there in rolling grandeur lies,
God’s moving mystery.
And as I through each chamber tread
With footsteps light as air,
I feel that sorrow’s years have fled
And left me young and fair.
And then the old clock in the tower,
With solemn voice and deep,
Booms out the ne’er returning hour,
And wakes me from my sleep.
Lo! from all sadness springs a joy
The world may never give,
And in these realms of memory
My soul at night doth live.
[Illustration: text decoration]
THE WATTLE.
A maze of gorgeous golden bloom
The yellow wattle gleams,
A glorious wealth of sweet perfume,
It dwells beside the streams.
And deep in bush and forest glade
On verdurous velvet lawn,
Or avenues of waving shade,
This empress--Austral born.
With leaves of frosted silver chased,
Their myriad tiny heads
By trembling drops of dew enlaced
A glittering radiance sheds.
And Auster’s beauteous witching flower
Hath e’er a jealous hue,
For Helios breathed his passion there,
And flamed it through and through.
The dawn with heavy scent is sweet,
The petals shower their gold
In soft abandon at its feet
New glory to unfold.
’Tis seen in Afric’s torrid clime,
Yet, though it bloometh there,
Its spirit dreameth of the time
It drank of Austral’s air.
Dear national flower, an emblem thou
Of what our children need;
To train with love their hands to do
Each day some golden deed.
AUSTRAL’S SONG.
Lo! from her long sleep of ages
Austral now awakes;
Hear the glorious strains ye sages,
Her glad morning breaks.
Borne afar across the water
Trembling to the sky,
List! For Britain’s royal daughter
Chants her song of joy.