''>-v..-'\-"''.}'- MX- fi-- •■f-^y ' . ■:■:■. ■'•'■'■■• ir'-v' ■. m..^ THE peEMS THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES The POE/AS of= J. B. OHARA yT/E TIMES (London) LITERARY ^ SUPPLEMENT (21st February, 1913), reviewing a volume of Poems by J. B. O'Hara, wrote :— " One of the most accomplished of the Australian Poets who remain in the tradition of great English poetry.'' The Poems OF John Bernard O'Hara A SELECTION # Melbourne EDWARD A. VIDLER THE OLDERFLEET, COLLINS STREET INSCRIBED TO THE HON. LITTLETON GROOM. M.P. IN TOKEN OF AN OLD FRIENDSHIP BEGUN IN COLLEGE DAYS AT ORMOND MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY CONTENTS PR /f/S "Qy Prelude Lyrics of Nature- nappy creek The Magpies' Morning Song Epistle to a Country Friend A Voice Recalled • . 9 II 13 16 At the Shrine of the Sea 17 Wattle Blossoms 22 To the South Wind Bringing Rain 23 A Dead Forest . . 25 To a Summer Cloud 28 Nature's Lessons 30 The Bridle Track 32 Homing Crows . . A Ride Seawards 34 36 Dead Leaves i9 The Magpies' Home Flight A Winter Thought . . 42 44 The Sea-Mist 46 The Voice of the Mopoke The Hills of Blue 48 SO The Cry of the Curlew . . 52 To a Ground-Lark 54 The Bell-Bird . . 56 The Cattle Drovers 58 A Day at the Close of Winter 61 The Corn Song . . The Spirit of the Flowers The Cornflower . . • 63 6s 68 In a Rose Garden 70 ^ «^^,^..^-...J, CONTENTS Sonnets — The Supreme Artist Marlowe and Shakespeare Romance and Poesy A Nature Lover Keats . . De Mortuis Wordsworth Aura Musa; A Sea-Lover Spring . . On the Cliffs Dawn . . Voices of the Night Science At Night Ad Musam Youth . . Imperishable Beauty Mountains A Summer Storm Resurrection To My Mother . . To Nature The Dawn Wind On the Dearth of Nobleness A Child's Face . . The Common Way Transfiguration . . " Last Word : To the Colonies To an Old-Time Friend . . 73 74 75 76 77 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 Lyrics of Feeling — Deserted Will-o'-the-Wisp or Star 105 107 CONTENTS Lyrics of Feeling — continued. Resignation The Road that Leads to Home . . A Flower of Babyhood . . Three Years Old A Garden Bud . . To a Babe Love's Vigil The Gleaner . . ... A Legend of Roses " The Stormy Wind Ran Down the Fells " A Sunset Thought A Legend of St. Gregory An Australian Anthem ... Poems of Places — A Day in Mourilyan Harbour, North Queensland A Country Village Mountain Pictures : The Cataract . . Mount Blackwood The Yarrangobilly Caves In the Valley of the Mitta Cudgewa Creek Milford Sound, New Zealand The Bay of Islands Australia A Mountain Gift A Mountain Lake, New Zealand 1 08 1 10 1 12 114 115 117 118 119 121 123 124 125 127 131 135 138 139 140 143 144 146 153 154 156 157 Poems of People and Occasions — Calypso In Memory of Whittier . . " If Thou Should'st Be No More " The Novitiate 161 165 169 170 CONTENTS Poems of People and Occasions — continued. Henry Kendall . . T75 A Pioneer 176 Jephthah's Daughter 189 " From the City I Loved " 194 In Memory of Swinburne 195 Epicede : George Essex Evans 197 Flinders 200 The Commonwealth : an Ode 203 PRELUDE CWEET songs of the singers unscathed of old time, kD Our lips your wild honey Have tasted, and lo, with the sunrise of rime Australia grows sunny. Yet faint is the murmur of music I bring From this land whose romances Are strange as her forested spaces that sing Songs tuned to wild fancies, — Songs born of night voices that glide through weird change, In woodlands that cover The dingo afar on the wind-ringing range, On the lowlands the plover, — Songs born of the deserts of vastness where gape The drought-smitten levels, Where never one wind from her outermost cape A rose-height dishevels. Then gather these flower-songs with kindness, nor note If no summefs completeness Has lent them the hues and the fragrance that float From the masters of sweetness. While, land of my birth, at thy wild woodland shrine. On thy singers' young altar, I place with pure love these frail blossoms of mine With hands that still falter. LYRICS OF NATURE HAPPY CREEK THE little creek goes winding Through gums of white and blue, A silver arm Around the farm It flings, a lover true ; And softly, where the rushes lean, It sings (O sweet and low) A lover's song. And winds along, How happy — lovers know ! The little creek goes singing By maidenhair and moss, Along its banks In rosy ranks The wild flowers wave and toss ; And ever, where the ferns dip down, It sings (0 sweet and low) A lover's song. And winds along, How happy — lovers know ! The little creek takes colour From summer skies above ; Now blue, now gold, Its waters fold The clouds in closest love ; lO THE POEMS OF J. B. O'HARA But loudly when the thunders roll It sings (nor sweet, nor low) No lover's song, But sweeps along, How angry — lovers know ! The little creek for ever Goes winding, winding down, Away, away. By night, by day. Where dark the ranges frov/n ; But ever as it glides it sings, It sings (O sweet and low) A lover's song. And winds along, How happy — lovers know ! THE MAGPIES' MORNING SONG A SHAFT of the sun strikes over Dews spilled from their flowery urns, And a wind, on the range a rover, Comes down with the scent of ferns ; The voice of the thresher is humming Afield as the day-star pales, The cows from the meadows are coming Uncalled to the old slip-rails. And hark, as the light gives warning What life to a new world comes. The magpies, glad in the morning, Are carolling clear in the gums. • Where the wings of the wind droop heavy With songs of the dawn and dark. And soars to the sun's bright levee The voice of the viewless lark, They know not a melody sweeter Who have heard not the glorious rush Of music, in morning metre. When the day breaks over the bush. Hark, listen ! the light gives warning What life to a new world comes. And the magpies, glad in the morning. Are carolling clear in the gums. II 12 THE POEMS OF J. B. O'HARA ^^^^^ I I ^ 1 1 I.I- ' ' They sing at the day's bright portal Wild notes that the woods prolong ; But we — with a hope immortal — Make fetters for sorrow in song. They worship in joy the glory That fiUeth the heart of the hills, We bow not our heads made hoary With stress of a life that kills. But listen, the light gives warning What life to a new world comes, And the magpies, glad in the morning, Are carolling clear in the gums. EPISTLE TO A COUNTRY FRIEND O FRIEND, to your far mountain home, Where the wild Snowy breaks in foam And with one song of freedom fills Thine own incomparable hills, Again the season's pageant brings Joy of innumerable things. The fugitive delight of hours That throne the sisterhood of flowers, The supreme dawn,' the crimson set Of suns on hills of violet. The sacred hush when evening falls On the inviolate mountain walls, And every cloud by sunset kissed Pales on the portals amethyst. Yes, all the splendour of the year, The joys that gladden eye and ear. Birds, brooks and flowers, and hills all rife With iron winds whose breath is life. Are thine ; yet have I heard thee praise Far places loved in other days. When youth flashed out from dazzled eyes Some primal light of Paradise, And happy-hearted had for dower Joy of life's unrebuked hour. 13 14 THE POEMS OF J. B. O'HARA For me suffice the gentle charms Of my own native fields and farms, The quiet woods, the dells of fern In songless mountains, grave and stern. What care I for the pomp that fills With sunset Greece's deathless hills ; Or how the dawn in splendour breaks On Alpine snows, Genevan lakes ; What summer glory Rhineland shares, What breath the wind Ionian bears. What mantles of the snow storm rest On cloudy-turbaned Everest ! No nightingale may match for me The bell-bird's chiming minstrelsy ; No flower of orient lands compare, My wattle, with thy golden hair ; Not Danube dark my soul could av/e As thy wild beauty, Cudgewa ; Nor Vallombrosa's leafy song Sound as thy waters, Noorongong ; So other lands be still but dreams. While I beside my native streams Can by the Law of Beauty hold All that the Northern lands unfold ; Can feel in woodland aisles the awe Of dim cathedrals, yea, and draw From wood and river, mount and tree, Life's sweetest gift — tranquillity. EPISTLE TO A COUNTRY FRIEND 15 We seek from home the charms that lie Around, unhidden from the eye ; We miss the beauty at our side In seeking far, in seeking wide ; Yet yearning hopes and longings prove No idle prophecies of love ; Who seek the highest and the best, Through dreaming hours, through deep unrest Will find their seeking never vain, And loss but an eternal gain. A VOICE RECALLED I HEARD a singer of the woods His happy song rehearse ; I caught the magic of his moods, The glory of his verse ; Until it seemed the raptured air Held nature's spirit everywhere. It was not that the day was bright, For rain was hanging low ; Nor yet was it the wind's delight That stirred my spirit so, Nor fragrance of the forest bower, Nor fields that lost themselves in flower. Nay, it was but a song's sweet round, The carol of a bird ; But it brought back again a sound From years when I was stirred To hear a voice that was to me A wild, sweet world of melody. i6 AT THE SHRINE OF THE SEA WHAT wild old season of the dead grey years First heard the voice that cried, " O sea, be born ! "— The voice divine that dried the sad world's tears, And bade the night look upward to the morn. What mystic change through nature's pulses ran When first the waves uprose and called aloud ; Not mightier when God created man, Or sun and moon and wind and light and cloud. For nature heard thy waters, rolling sea. When first their sweet lone choral utterance rang. More musical than that great symphony When all the morning stars together sang. And she beheld the primal shadows lift And bare thy blue lone beauty to the skies. Then knew the crowning glory of His gift That broke the trance of darkness in her eyes. II O mighty deep, immeasurable sea, Thou art a shrine with heaven for altar heights. Where nature is the worshipper, and we Behold the mighty symbols of her rites 6 17 1 8 THE POEMS OF J. B. O'HARA In storms, and reddening sunsets, and the night Above the azure chancel of thy waves, And ministration of the morn whose Hght Floods full the sounding hollows and the caves, That evermore are voiceful with His name. Even as a shell that murmurs still of thee, And ever keeps imprisoned in its frame The moaning and the music of the sea, And the old sorrow that it softly hides. Even as a heart deceived that waits in vain Death's solace, now that nevermore the tides Of love will flood its loneliness again. Ill All seasons are thy ministers, they bring To thy glad shrine the tribute of bright hours, Green fields that winds for ever revelling wing, White meadows that the languid noon deflowers. Blue summer in thy water loves to gaze, And with the golden fingers of the sun Turn the ridged sand to lines of chrysoprase. Where not a wave may mar the glory done. Spring o'er thy water sounds his clarion clear, And lo, the dreaming lands and gracious skies, Made radiant with the glory of the year. Turn seaward all the splendour of their eyes. AT THE SHRINE OF THE SEA 19 And autumn with his pensive beauty lends Magnificence to every sounding height, Till all thy songs are anthems, and there blends With all thy choral music one delight. 'Tis nature's, and her soul of song she flings With glad abandon to the winds that sound Harmonious with the message of her wings That search the sea's remotest purple bound. IV We sigh for rest — for rest we never know ; We crave as boon the peace days never give ; The river of time bears onward in swift flow Our hopes, our fears, our fancies fugitive. And life unlived has fled, before our eyes Once look beyond the blinding walls of greed. Once seek to pierce the universe that lies Blurred by the mists our sad delusions breed. And so world-weary to thy shrine, O sea. At times I turn with dreams that rise from strange Dull prison depths of infelicity. And wide on wings through nature's glory range. And in such hours of dreaming all divine, I feel that, whatsoe'er the days may give. Who reverent approaches nature's shrine Will win from her the heart to truly live. 20 THE POEMS OF J. B. O'HARA To-day thy smile is beautiful, thy breast Heaves with a sigh so low the winds scarce hear, Mayhap the moaning prelude of unrest Cheats for an idle hour my listening ear. Mayhap thou knowest more than mortals deem, And hearest afar the storm-wind's clarion cry. Who rudely will usurp with his wild team Thy wide inheritance of sun and sky. Till all thy waves are voiceful with the moan Of many waters, and the stern long cry That rings to heaven when thy locks are blown In wild confusion to the wilder sky. And all thy purple bonds are broken through. And the wild foam is blown about thy face. While cloud pursuing cloud blots out the blue, And the low rims of thunder, roaming space, Sound o'er thy baffled roar till we scarce hear The wail that rises from thy stricken breast. The tumult and the agony and fear. The unremitting heralds of unrest. VI Mysterious ocean, we may never learn The meaning of thy voice that answers not ; We question thee with love, but no return Of love thou hast for all our loveless lot. AT THE SHRINE OF THE SEA 21 Sublime, indifferent to human fate Thou rollest now, as once o'er cities of old ; To Time alone, who sits in supreme state, Thou offerest allegiance stern and cold. Mayhap, when that grey reaper gathers in Our mortal fields the harvest of our days. For some, wan thistles and pale sheafs of sin, For some, the ripened ears of golden praise. For some, the pallid stalks of olden crime (Alas that life should ripen in such wise). For some, the perfect flowers wherewith old Time Keeps fragrant all their deathless memories. Then haply, sea, thy secrets we may learn. We who the lordly heights of science won. Probed nature's depths and in the loveless urn , Pent in the soulless dust when life was done. Mayhap we then shall know what was or seemed- We in far fields by feet immortal trod — And learn that whatsoe'er in life we deemed As dark, but hid the brightest glow of God. WATTLE BLOSSOMS NOW the blossoms laugh for love ; the lightest air, Scarcely lingering for a moment in the flowers, Is enriched with sweetest perfume ; everywhere Is the glory of September in the bowers. All the woods are filled with wattle, and the dells Rich with fragrance from the revellers in gold. Glad with perfume wafted higher than the fells. Far across the windy spaces of the wold. Never yet a sweeter blossom, in the lands Where the sun wheels round to south his fiery team, Made a garland in a poet's happy hands, That exhaled a sweeter fragrance in his dream. All too brief the sweet embraces that you give. Shining blossom, golden-hearted fugitive. 22 TO THE SOUTH WIND BRINGING RAIN THE cool South Wind, the swift South Wind, the South Wind blowing free. He comes, he comes, he is darkening now the brows of the wrinkled sea ; He comes, and the glitter of rain is seen on his wings as he hurries by, To the inland fields that with gaping throats stare up at a broken sky. The cool South Wind, the swift South Wind, with his feet on the rising seas. And his head in the misty rush of clouds on the chariot of the breeze ; He comes, he comes, and the wasted lands ring loud with a joyous shout. For he sets his grip on the iron throat of the fiery fiend of drought. The cool South Wind, the swift South Wind, he has come from the snowy drifts. From the frozen seas and the naked wastes where never the fog bank lifts ; He comes, and the chill of the Polar breeze is still in his thawing veins, As he furrows his way o'er the foaming seas to the mountains and the plains. 23 24 THE POEMS OF J. B. O'HARA The cool South Wind, the swift South Wind, he has lifted our spirits up, And we drink from the urns of the misty air, as we drink from joy's wild cup ; Then hail to the Wind, the sea-born Wind, that baffles the fiery breath Of the North when he rides on his red-shod steeds through the forests and fields of death ! A DEAD FOREST A FOREST dead— a solitude Of gaunt and hoary gums, Where never wild bird rears her brood, Where never wild bee hums ; They stood in ghostly grim array. With white arms thrown aghast, Weird Titans of a vanished day. Grim spectres of the past : The winds that woke the forest psalms, Low songs from whisp'ring crypts, Lay still within the shroudless arms Of those dead eucalypts. Beneath no beauty of wild ferns. No tender mosses grew. No waterfalls from green old urns That forest dipped in dew, That worn and wasted lonely land Where haply whistling spears Sped glancing from a dusky hand Back in the dead old years, That solitude where hapless fate With death was left to mourn,- So wan it was, so desolate, So wasted and forlorn. 25 26 THE POEMS OF J. B. O'HARA And yet they tell that once the wind To music here was wed, Made lutes of lordly boughs and thinned The green leaves of the dead ; That here the plover came and went, The wild bee hummed at noon, The curlew's lonely life was spent From moon to waning moon, The white-winged ibis sought the rim Of yonder pool unstirred, And here the wild swan used to swim. The warrigal was heard. Now flower of beauty never grows Where once the shining spring Kissed lover-like the wild-briar rose. Set blossoms bourgeoning ; The sounds that filled the leafy wold With summers of delight, The music and the bloom of old Have passed into the night ; And now the bunyip only walks Beside the choked lagoon What time its fringe of whisp'ring stalks Is silvered with the moon. O wasted wood, for thee no springs Are glad with green and gold, No beauty of the old time clings Around the ruined wold ; A DEAD FOREST 27 Earth yields no more her liquid store, Clouds weep for thee in vain, Thy face that laughed to gold of yore Will never smile again. Dead forest, o'er thee shadows rise, Winds moan upon the height, The stormy message of the skies. The voices of the night. TO A SUMMER CLOUD O RESTLESS cloud, how fleetingly you move Across the summer blue ; The arid earth is longing for your love, Is yearning now for you. The viewless winds are calling, " Come, come, No longer idly roam. Back to the pondering ranges, dim and dumb, Back to your ancient home." And ever for that low voice of the wind, Leaving the languid grass, Leaving the hopeless meadows far behind, To the dark hills you pass. Where the loud thunders, caught in tempest toils. Wake deep prophetic tones. And the red serpent of the lightning coils Around the cloudy cones. Ah, stay awhile ; the misty peaks can spare The bounty of your rain ; The music of the mountain stream is there, But here the arid plain. 28 TO A SUMMER CLOUD 29 Ah, here the blessings of your silver showers Will glad the thirsty earth, Revive the spirit of the grieving flowers, And f\\\ the lands with mirth. And once again the glory of the green Will flash from meadov/s cool. And for the dusty hollow rifts be seen The welcome amber pool. O restless cloud, with longings wild and vain We too would reach the height ; Unhelping pass along the lowly plain, And lose for darkness light. And leaving souls that yearn for help, as flowers For love of rain and sun. Would seek the higher hills to find our powers And purposes undone. NATURE'S LESSONS IN countless ways she doth unfold Her love through passing hours, By gifts of tender green and gold, By jewelled fruits and flowers. For us she swings her golden gates Apart that all may cull Her bounties held in rich estates Of wild lands beautiful. She holds within her shining hands The gift that beautifies ; The joy that fills the radiant lands With lives of glad surprise. She droops with autumn-time to warn Of death and old decay ; And yet foretells the good unborn In winter's stormier way. With buds and flowers her newer birth Puts human griefs to scorn ; With verdure of the happy earth And springing of the corn. 30 NATURE'S LESSONS 31 And so with leaf and spray of spring She draws her symbols clear, To teach the good of suffering, The hopes that vanquish fear. The rich return our lives unfold Beyond the riper years, — Yea, prophesies in smiles of gold The triumph of our tears. THE BRIDLE TRACK DO you remember yet the days We rode by leagues of plain, In valleys where the Mitta hears the wild grey plover call ; And how along the rugged ways We rode with loosened rein, As morning rose above the mountain wall ? Yea, round the rocky battlement That topped the rugged range We rode, where wound the bridle track that vanished long ago. And upward, upward still we went Into a world of change. Till we lost the river rolling far below. But caught instead a breezy view, And morning winds that bring The gums' rich scent of peppermint on ferny slopes, and soon We saw the screaming cockatoo Uprise on snowy wing Above the valley lands of Tallandoon. 32 THE^ BRIDLE TRACK 33 And felt a glad thanksgiving, As the mighty scene unrolled, To feel the wild blood leaping through the gateways of our veins ; Oh, life ! the joy of living In the restless days of old, When we rode above the valleys and the plains. The bridle track is overgrown, 'Tis green with waving grass ; There never sound of footstep comes to wake the silent hours. Save when the dingo prowls alone, Or feet of summer pass In red revel through the phalanx of the flowers. Yea, silence holds the lonely height, As lonely as the dream That fills my soul with sadness for the days that are no more. While riding ever to the night That hides the ghostly stream Low-lapping life's irremeable shore. HOMING CROWS ABOVE the darkening woodlands float Far wavering lines that slowly win Against the wind, while from each throat Across the dying day a note Falls earthward, querulous and thin. Till nearer come the dim, dense plumes That deepen in the twilight grey, The loud battalion that assumes The silence of the thickening glooms Round the flower-folded corse of day. No beauty flames from countless wings, No sound of music falls like light ; Dark and forbidding evil things Whereon no vagrant sun-ray flings One spell to exorcise their night 1 Sad omens, as the dark intrudes, To me your stern, prophetic wings Bring hints of deep, unfathomed woods, And deeper glooms in solitudes. Unbroken by the breaking springs. 34 HOMING CROWS 35 And in your hoarse and ravenous cry Methinks I hear the sounds that beat About the dark hill-heads on high, When storm and tempest, thundering by. Trample the night with fiery feet. But if nor light nor beauty clings Around you in the glimmering glooms, Yet ever through the dusk your wings Beat homeward where old Quiet flings His mantle o'er the fading blooms. Peace to you, loud ill-omened birds ! We, too, are phantoms of the night, Dark souls to whom the shining words Of wisdom lend no gleam that girds Our ways with loveliness and light. Whose faith is frailer than our dreams. Who see not, when the night draws breath. That in the house of life there gleams A spirit-light that bravely streams Across the darkness which is death. A RIDE SEAWARDS B UT the leagues of the land were lovely, the heart of the day divine, As we rode by the honeyed nrieadows and drank of the mountain wine ; And the day took heart from the heavens, and the heavens took heart from day, And the miles were ablaze with blossom, and a hundred colours lay On headland and peak and forest ; and ever there grew and grew The sense of the dim sweet depths that were blue as the heavens were blue. The sense of the sea we saw not, diviner than love may be, And fragrant as ever a wind that the spirit of Spring set free. And we rode from the valley reluctant, for there was the lure of rest, Clad round w'th the bloom that was golden as stores of the wild bees' nest, Girt round with the murmur of waters that babbled and bickered and fell Wherever the lightwood brightened the walls of the winding dell, 36 A RIDE SEAWARDS 37 Wherever the scent of the wattle, flung out where the miles were long, Came swift on us, mixt with a chorus supreme from a world of song, While ever with music that lightened the hollows and heights that morn The song of the breaking seas on the wings of the wind was borne. And we rode over long green ranges, loose-reined, to the far green height, And there, in its glory and splendour supreme on our eager sight. The rapturous waste of the waters, the tremulous world of the sea, And the wind with a heart that was heaven, and whose soul was the minstrelsy Of the waves that broke on the headlands, gusty with salt and spray. And the stern grey bluffs that shouldered the strengths of the tides away. And we gazed and we wished that morning, dream-bound in a glorious gaze. That time might stay for a season the wheels of the rolling days. For a day was born triumphant and dowered with might to slay Sad thoughts of the toiling seasons, the griefs of a world grown grey, 38 THE POEMS OF J. B. O'HARA Where never the wings of passion, and sorrow and guilt and pain, Are folded in quiet havens away from the moaning main. And we said, " Though the years are many and darkness has ringed them round, This hour is of God's own giving, this gift of a day, gold- crowned. The crown of our toil and striving, where sweet to the yearning sight The infinite sea in its grandeur speaks loud to the lordly height." DEAD LEAVES THERE was nothing but blue sky over The wind-swept autumn day ; No sign in the shadowless heaven Of clouds on the light's wide way. And the dead leaves rose and whispered — "Too long on the earth we've lain, Too long on its old bare bosom, We will follow the winds again. 5J And out of their blown brown gardens They sped at a sudden breath. And the river reaches blossomed With the argosies of death. The hedgerow caught the splendour Of crimson and purple and gold, As the wandering Bedouins clustered Under its sheltering fold. Ruddy and etiolated, Withered and faint and sere, Russet and scarlet and amber, They covered the earth's wan bier — 39 40 THE POEMS OF J. B. O'HARA They who had known her beauty, Her glory of colour and form, When the Springtime rode from elf-land, And took the world by storm ; They who had seen the vision Of life on meadow and wold, When the year of the rose was round them, And the rose was cloth-of-gold ; They who had lived by favour Of light from the high great God And stored in their cells the colours He showered from sheath and pod. Sunlight and moonlight and dawnlight, Shadow, and wind, and rain — These were the cosmic forces Working from seed to grain. For them had the ichor of' springtime Run riot through wood and vein, Now to earth, their ancient mother, They are giving their wealth again. The powers of the chemic forces. That fashioned their lives sublime. As they lie in the procreant furrows, Conceive in the womb of time. DEAD LEAVES 41 They are emblems now of the Autumn, Of change and decay and death ; They have passed from their green dominions, Blown forth of the wan wind's breath. They are hearkening now to the voices, The words that the sad year saith ; And are haunting the mystic cradles Of life with the dreams of death. THE MAGPIES' HOME FLIGHT NOW twilight scatters from her hand The shadows faintly falling, And far I hear along the land The grey-plumed plover calling : With hues half stolen from the night They come while day is dying, By twos and threes in broken flight, The magpies homeward flying. With brave black wings against the sky, Their homeward flight slow urging. Wing-weary to the homestead nigh The noisy crowd is surging. Where the dark brotherhood of gums Above the home roofs whisper. As tangled in their star-proof plumes Lie captive winds at vesper. And now upon the rosy fall The day has dipped and darkened ; To evening's sweet and restful call The weary swain has hearkened ; And still the thickening glooms they breast With dusky vans outplying ; I watch them east, I watch them west, The magpies homeward flying. 42 THE MAGPIES' HOME FLIGHT 43 Lo, deep amid the wrangling leaves They take the night's caressing ; Contentment's note of sweetness heaves Its sigh of rest, night blessing ; And dipped in gloom they sink, they fade, They melt into the shadows, Lost atomies whose music made The joy of morning meadows. Rest, weary wings, the day is done ; Sweet after toil is slumber ; We too must sleep at set of sun In nests that know not number ; The ghost of twilight takes our hand And guides us unreturning Beyond the schemes of passion planned, Beyond the world's harsh spurning. And happy who, when summer gleams Of love and joy have perished, Can unregretful wake the dreams That youth and fancy cherished ; Can see too o'er the darkening land, From Hope's irradiant portal. The beckoning of an angel hand, Immortal to a mortal. A WINTER THOUGHT WHERE has it gone, the golden-hearted summer, The rose-time of the blossom-scented year ? And who is this grey-robed, grey-headed comer, This traveller old who hath no word of cheer, No hint of the lost loveliness where rolled The waves of green and gold ? Where are the skies, as blue as Aphrodite's Wide eyes that seaward-faring sought the foam ; The flowers with hearts unfolding where the light is ; The noonday hush beneath the forest dome ; The songs of birds, the evening's solemn dreams, Beside slow-singing streams ? Where, too, has fled the dawn in robes resplendent, Whose march made all the hills of morning sing ? And where, ah ! where, the golden-shod attendant Of sunset gone to rest his weary wing ? Where the ethereal ardours of flushed day. The gold that grew to grey ? They are not dead — deep in our souls they glimmer ; The memories of their glories linger yet ; And when the days of life are waxing dimmer They drive away the ghosts of drear regret, And in our hearts with rhapsody rebuild The fire that age has chilled. 44 A WINTER THOUGHT 45 Yea, in our hearts they live — the seasons sunny — They are the joys our souls unconscious quaff ; They are the songs of memory whose wild honey We taste with lips that know not why they laugh ; The swift delight, the sudden exultation. Amid life's perturbation. They are the singing voices in the story The wind brings down from morning's coloured height ; The spirit-premonition of the glory That clothes the naked soul's exultant flight Beyond the fierce desires, the passion-strife, The deadening coil of life. THE SEA-MIST GREY is the sky, and the sea is grey, And never a wind blows free, For a mist hangs heavily, — A shroud on the gloomy brows of day. On the breast of the soft grey sea. No sound is heard on the dim low strand, No breath of the breathing brine. That scarcely stirs, as it leaps to land, The sea-blooms clinging with restless hand To the changeless reef's low chine. The winds are dumb, and the heavens hold No sign of a pallid sun To shine on a world undone, For under the morning skies are rolled Grey mists, with the sea made one. And ever the sea-fog drifts and strays, — A phantom of creeping fear, A shadowy dread that blots the bays And gulfs from the sailor's fearful gaze, When the reaches of death are near. Now, dim as a hopeless dream, the world Lies stricken with sense of death. Nor heeds what the far wind saith. Nor sees when the rose of the dawn uncurled Breathes earthward with odorous breath. 46 THE SEA-MIST 47 But sudd6n a scented sea-wind sings, And the shadow of death subsides, And the grey sea-Hne of the coast outrings With ripple and revel as shoreward swings The life of the chiming tides. The sea's heart quickens with light mist-thinned, As the sea-fogs shudder and quail ; On the deep that was grey and pale, Made glorious and golden with sun-bright wind, Lo, triumphs a sun-bright sail. And the lands unbarred from cliff and scar Where the harbouring sea-fogs clomb, Rejoice, as the waves, v/ith the winds at war, Leap laughing, and whiten from shoal and bar Green fields of the sea with foam. THE VOICE OF THE MOPOKE A SOLITARY cry and clear It fills the ranges round, — No music in the note I hear, No sweetness in the sound. And yet I listen for that voice In spectral forests spanned By night, and in the cry rejoice That fills a phantom land. It breaks across the songless gloom, — Almost it seems of pain, A cry from some far years whose bloom Lies dead, with lost springs slain In days when light than life was more, When life was scarce begun. And earth a rainbow raiment wore, Rolled round beneath the sun. O bird, what though thou bringest not A dream of passioned hours, Nor wearest out a royal lot In morn's imperial bowers. 48 THE VOICE OF THE MOPOKB 49 Yet still the autumn and the spring, The hints of summer blue, May be more than a visioned thing Of changing life to you ; For still to us the mystery Of things is faint and far, Whose only hope is what shall be Beyond the morning star. THE HILLS OF BLUE WE rode in the spring to the hills of blue, On a day when the tide of life was flowing Vivid and rapid the long leagues through, And the honeyed winds from the south were blowing"; Blowing on us twain with a sense of rapture, That only the season of love finds true. As we rode through the lazy land to capture A dream of the distant hills of blue. So we rode away to the hills of blue. Where the iron breath of the wind blows keenest, By banks where the silver wattles grew. And the river ways of the year were greenest ; And our hearts beat time to the tunes that gladden, When the radiant season of youth rings true, With never a sound or sight to sadden Our way as we rode to the hills of blue. Yea, northward far to the hills of blue, In the dreamy haze of the pleasant weather. We rode till the heights familiar grew. As hope and youth in our hearts together ; But vain were the visions fondly cherished. They died away as we nearer drew. The dim blue dream of the morning perished — A grey mist hung on the hills of blue I 50 THE HILLS OF BLUE 51 So the dream died down with the hills of blue, Upheaven peaks that are ageless warders ; And all discrowned of the dream that drew Our hearts that day to the land's blue borders We turned, though we heard the heavens o'er us Ringing with song where the magpies flew. To the darkening leagues, out-stretched before us, As we rode away from the hills of blue. THE CRY OF THE CURLEW FOR hours along the range's slope We rode till day's declining, Till from the night's aerial cope The autumn stars were shining. At length through valley lands we crossed, Where early mist was lying, Where, though unseen, we felt the frost His fretted work was plying. We heard the river's ceaseless croon, The Austral cuckoo crying, And saw upon the dim lagoon The duck's dark squadron lying. At times across the gleaming fen We saw the rushes quiver, And heard the heavy water-hen Plash through the reedy river. Then, as the night laid darker hands On hills to slumber falling. We heard across the weird low lands The wild grey curlew calling. 52 THE CRY OF THE CURLEW 53 Along the hill the lonely note Rose weird and wild and wailing, A shrill cry on the dark afloat, A sound in sadness failing. Was it the pained heart of the bush, The sound of dark woods fretting, Or some poor soul to whom the hush Of night was God's forgetting, Or some unbodied, wan despair That all its life-time never Unlocked the fervent lips of prayer. But sinned to death forever ? How sudden changed our calm delight. How died our sense of gladness, — The quiet of the autumn night Had less of joy than sadness ; For still would fancy hear that cry, Keen, chill as sea-winds flying ; Still hear a lost soul's agony Upon the darkness dying. TO A GROUND LARK ABOVE the tangled tufts of grass, Wan phantoms of the autumn day, The drifting shadows slowly pass, The low winds wing their way ; And, startled from its earthy dream. The lark, loud fluting its surprise, Winnows a breathing space the wind, And, where the low grey grasses gleam. Deep havened from my prying eyes It seeks again a covert kind. No rapture of my bird may ring Along the low rims of the sky. Doomed evermore by fate to sing Where earth alone is nigh ; Its song may never reach the halls Of morning, tipt on every spire With lucent gleams that heavenward climb, May never beat the radiant walls Of cloudland, like that song of fire Its congener flings out sublime. Yet sweet the note, and wildly sweet, That rings defiance on the air. As through the grass with careless feet I wander here and there, 54 TO A GROUND LARK 55 Breaking, perchance, some sweet bird dreams Of far-off things we never know. Of happiness — no mortal's thrall — For all of truth but only seems. And all that seemeth is but show. And lust of living snareth all. Perchance, thou scorner of the sky. The green old earth hath more of bliss For thee than for the wings that ply The golden-banked abyss ; And haply more in joy for thee The ruined rose-lands glimmer red, The rapture of the wind is born, When nature's golden revelry Breaks in, and winter days are dead, And spring salutes the smiling morn. When life hath younger dreams again, And dancing currents of the blood Sweep as the sap that wins amain The green heart of the wood, Ah then, perchance, thy life is one With such wild joy that never here May mortals match that bliss of thine ; May never till their days are done, And o'er the stormier atmosphere Of life are hailed the heights divine. THE BELL-BIRD WE heard the wild swan's organ note, The wild swan northward flying, And said, " What sweeter echoes float Of echoes faintly dying ? " The plover's challenge, wild and shrill. Came o'er the shining shallows. And now embushed the waters spill Through haunts the bell-bird hallows. What cared we if the magpie's throat A wild waste chorus drifted While loud and clear the bell-bird's note The wind of summer lifted ! It filled with sound the tinkling dells. It rose in rapturous gushes, With melody more sweet than swells From throats of English thrushes. Ring, sudden bells of birds, for dear Your notes to leafy covers, Your carols of the yellow year In haunts where springtide hovers. 56 THE BELL-BIRD 57 Ring, forest bells ; your mission fill For all the fiery summer, — To hidden stream and ferny rill To guide the thirsty comer. Ah, oft methinks some sweet Undine Thou art, my bell-bird bonnie, Thou hidden minstrel of the green, Unhiving song's rich honey. Some echo of God's summertide That fills in song's completeness The chancel of the forest wide With hints of Sabbath sweetness. THE CATTLE DROVERS HO, forward, comrades ! Of the good Of life take brimming measure ; For ours the unconventioned wood. And freedom's priceless treasure. The noontide burns upon the hill, The locusts' song is ringing. And, chiming down the mossy dell, The bush-born stream is singing. Now, where unravels through the bush The track to yonder crossing, We watch the dusty phalanx rush, We see the broad horns tossing ; Nor fear they now the sounding line. The drovers' classic wishes, While drinking of the purest wine That from the mountain issues. Anon across the level plain, Knee-deep in browning grasses. By waving widths of golden grain We drive the surging masses ; Still onward, wheresoever leads The track o'er hill and valley. O'er summer-smitten streams and meads, Our rushing herd we rally. 58 THE CATTLE DROVERS 59 And when, like spectres, fall the gaunt Slow-creeping things of shadow, And the grey ghosts of twilight haunt The sun-deserted meadow. We rest by stream or lone lagoon. Our herd sore spent and weary, The while the pale arc of the moon Springs from her mountain eyry. What though we miss the gentle light Of home, in rugged places, When, solemn-browed, the sable night Her mystic symbol traces ; What though no voice our tread may greet, Yet round the camp-fire gleaming, With mossy carpet for our feet, What pleasure fills our dreaming. Ah, then, when toil to slumber yields. In dreams of fitful changes We breast the fioods and scour the fields, The gullies, and the ranges ; The reckless ride on blackened slopes To check some truant's sally ! Or, where the dark glen rugged opes. The wild rush down the valley ! Up ! up ! — it is the waning moon — Ere morning broadens wider. The furnace breath of hell at noon Will roast the luckless rider. , 6o THE POEMS OF J. B. O'HARA Up ! up ! or ere the peaks sun-tipped With gold are loud with warning, While, pinioned in its valley crypt. The mist awaits the morning. Ah ! often round the quiet hearth, When restless days are over, Shall fancy sit by glowing mirth. And play again the drover ; With many a story sweeter far Than young Romance may fashion From golden themes of love and war In lands that throb with passion. Yea, round the great fire-log will glow The light in sweet home faces As scenes and times of long ago Old Mem'ry fondly traces. Then forward, comrades ! of the good Of life take brimming measure. For ours the unconventioned wood. And freedom's priceless treasure. A DAY AT THE CLOSE OF WINTER THE earth to-day is blossoming ; The keen crisp air Seems like the courier that spring Sends everywhere About old forests bourgeoning With bud and brere. A languid joyance stirs the blood, Foreshadowing The time of flowers, when in the wood New raptures ring. And richer glories brightly flood The face of spring. A laughing light of sunshine fills The fields. A gleam Of haze is trembling on the hills, And the far stream Betrays its windings, where the frills Of wattles gleam. Ah ! now no more the noisy town Breaks on my view ; The surging tide of life dies down ; In visions new I only see the skies that crown The woods with blue. 6i 62 THE POEMS OF J. B, O'HARA And yielding to the day's glad mood That half is spring's, I watch in idle quietude The flash of wings, Or listen to the murmurous brood Of sun-born things. Well-knowing loveliness will last, That earth and sky. All beauty that has ever passed The seeing eye, Stamp on the soul impressions vast That never die. THE CORN SONG ALL through the days while frosty dawns Were fretting wide the meadow, And sun and cloud alternate played With changeful shine and shadow ; While May upon the meadow pools Was building icy bridges, From dawn to dark our ploughshares heaped The furrow-lands with ridges. Yea, while young winter vexed the hills We ploughed the lowlands mellow ; And spring brought forth the scattered seed That summer thrilled to yellow. And now while all the woods are bright. And leafy tints grow deeper, A music fills the valley-lands, The clicking of the reaper. And over all the yellow fields The tasselled corn is lying, The treasure of our sunny South, In richness far outvying 63 64 THE POEMS OF J. B. O'HARA The vine-vat's wealth of Northern lands,— A sweeter gift bestowing ; 'Tis nature's own, and from the horn Of golden plenty flowing. Then blessings on our pleasant farms ; Long may they proudly flourish ; Still year by year the kindly corn Our growing millions nourish. And when in years to greatness grown The Southland shines in story. We'll point to them — the old-time farms,— As landmarks of our glory. c THE SPIRIT OF THE FLOWERS 'OME away to the meadow, there is dew upon the grass,— Come away, there is sunlight on the lawn ; And through the forest bowers together we Will pass In the splendour of the rosy dawn ! " 'Twas a maiden's voice went singing through the glory of my dreams : ! I could not choose but follow her into the woodlands wide ; And we passed by shining meadows and by splendour- winged streams That glimmered in the morning-tide. " I'm the Spirit of the Flowers," and she loosed her flowing braids, As she smote her shining spirit into the rosy hours ; " Where I tread the flowers are springing in the dells and in the glades, And in the windy woodland bowers. *' The glimmering meads I spangle with the green and with the gold ; See, spring is on the mountains ! — I'm the herald of her plans — Above the wasted woodlands, where the thunder trumpet rolled, She hovers on extended vans." 65 66 THE POEMS OF J. B; O'HARA We passed the waking lowlands as the magpie's song outrang ; And the rosy heather hailed her, and the blue flowers in the corn ; The wild briar shook his petals down on scented winds that sprang New-washen from the golden urns of morn, On the tuneful forest fountains she turned her dazzling eyes And fringed their breezy margins with the starry bells of blue, While shrinking in their nakedness at glances from the skies The blushing daisies bathed in the dew. " haste," she cried, " November will soon be on the wind ; October swiftly passes in the march of shining hours ; Great Summer then will follow,~hark ! I hear his steps behind, — Come away ! " said the Spirit of the Flowers. Then we crossed the great grave ranges, whose tiaras cleft the skies, Mighty ranges, silent symbols of sublime eternal Power, And we shot through purph farlands like a swift flame from the eyes. And we rested in the noontide's golden hour. THE SPIRIT OF THE FLOWERS 67 " Now I'll weave a splendid garland, ere I vanish like the dew, When the morning golden-sandalled walks upon the mountain tips," — Through the wattle's sleepy pulses her subtle breath she blew In fresh odours from her dewy lips. Lo ! a flower of yellow beauty brightly garlanded the trees, And a perfume, deep, ambrosial, thickened in the sudden hour. And my soul appeared to swoon in the languid essences. While the wattle bloom was bursting into flower. " Now my task is done ! " She vanished like an iris on the mere, And the sweet dream left mine eyelids with the breaking of the dawn ; Yet methinks her happy spirit walketh in the yellow year When the feet of spring are tripping on the lawn. THE CORNFLOWER FRESH fragrance fills the morning air, A gladsome presence everywhere, That freely lends to all the rare, Rich bounty of its changes ; While now the early summer sings, And blossoms are atilt with wings, And every straying cloudlet flings Its white robe on the ranges. And in the yellow lands the corn Rejoices in the wind of morn, Mayhap to see thy beauty born. Glad flower, whose home is fashioned Of golden pillars not too high To hide the summer-tinted sky, Whose light and colour beautify Thy life with hues impassioned. Yea, 'mid the waving corn thy frail Blue blossoms lure the summer gale. And laugh to know they never fail To win his swift caresses. The lingering Sybarite whose wings, In his voluptuous wanderings. Caught nothing from the heart of things More happy than their kisses. 68 THE CORNFLOWER 69 Ah, joyful flower, to hear all day The blissful wind of summer stray Through golden lanes, away, away, The mate of bird and river ; Or when the quiet twilights fall. The old weird plaintive plover-call. Till morning to the mountain wall Its message sweet deliver. But when December's flaming days Redden the ruined woodland ways, And north winds to the forest stays Speak loud of fiery weather, And sun-browned reapers go afield, Ere morning's eye is half unsealed. Thou and the ripe rich corn must yield Your brief lives up together. Sweet fate — with love to live and die, While yet a fragrant youth is nigh ! Kissed of the rain, the sun, the sky, In love's seclusion growing Deep under all the golden ears. If wind and cloud and you were peers, Ah, surely nature wept sad tears The night before the mowing ! IN A ROSE-GARDEN ALL the garden ways, with greenest borders bound, Shine with roses in a red bewildering maze ; Nodding roses, where the leafy winds ring round All the garden ways. Surely, surely here are born Pierian days. When the glories of the summer shine and sound, And the blue, glad weather blows on bights and bays. Arching roses, roses trailing where the ground In a sea of splendid colour heaves and sways. With the crimson of what sunset have you crowned All the garden ways ? 70 SONNETS THE SUPREME ARTIST HE paints in colours beautiful the walls Of the impassive mountains and the skies, Whether the golden oriflammes uprise At dawn, or leaf by leaf the red rose falls Out of the sunset's withered coronals. Or night usurps the sphered heaven with eyes That range the world. He is the Artist Wise Whose deathless works are hung in nature's halls. Yet all the glories of the Master Hand, Limner of earth and sea and moon and sun, Are but faint adumbrations of the one Irradiant picture Love Divine has planned For us, when life's prelusive days are done, And in the golden Gallery we stand. 73 MARLOWE AND SHAKESPEARE THE light of one that lit his lustrous age With brief bright splendour sank ere yet the day Caught half the glow of its triumphal ray, Or gave to time song's perfect heritage ; And hope fell stricken, hope that should assuage Grief when within the tragic arms of May Her golden melodist in silence lay, — When Marlowe's light died from the English stage. But up the clouded darkness men saw climb The quivering splendour of a dawn supreme, A sovereign glow that lit the face of time With light as bright as man's most radiant dream Conceived of Godhead ; such a light sublime As death should slay not, nor time's self unbeam. 74 ROMANCE AND POESY ROMANCE and her pale lover poesy Charm us no more. The wonder paths that led To gates of dreams are gone, the days are dead That heard the pipes of Pan sound joyously. No longer nymphs of river and of tree Haunt the clear streams or piney mountain-head ; Demeter from the old green earth has fled, Poseidon rules no more the purple sea. Old myths are dead. From mountain wood and stream Where Musagetes sat upon his throne, The green divinities afar have flown And left the lands to silence. All things seem Sterile and songless, cold and loveless grown, As the world hardens round the poet's dream. 75 A NATURE LOVER (to m. s.) You dwell by happy meadows where the bleat Of quiet flocks makes silenter the day, Far from the clamorous tumult of the grey Smoke-shrouded cities, loud with fever heat Of tarnished life. For you the air is sweet With song and scent of blossoms proud to lay Their purple deaths along the happy way That wins the enchanted mission of your feet. And that divine foreknowledge, deepest felt When bursting life breaks through the odorous sod. Has touched you with its glow, — you, who have knelt At nature's shrine, and in her chancel trod, And, where all mighty sounds in silence melt. Found her the true interpreter of God. 76 KEATS AS when the strengths of mighty billows meet In congregated tumult on the shore, Then swift recede, and the iron rock, before Deep buried in a dream of waters sweet, Wakes as a million glittering glories fleet Over its heart — so on our spirits pour The flood-tides of his music, and no more The soul dreams on, but wakens to their beat. O brief light-bearer to that heaven of song Where splendour kindles splendour, and the still Bright stars of truth are tremulously born. Why did not beauty, when man wrought thee wrong. Unveil her clouded loveliness and fill Thy soul with most immitigable scorn ? 77 DE MORTUIS I SAW the serpent lightning's gHttering fang Lick the dark sphery hollow, and the bright Brief purple flames' delirious delight, Whereat apart the deep dense heavens sprang With drowning rage reverberate that rang From throats of thunder. Earth shook with affright At that titanic speech. The shuddering night Cowered, as the mutinous winds together sang. And in the momentary silence shed From the dark ridge of thunder cloud that bound The fiery force that cleft the skies apart, I thought how happy were the dreamless dead Who slumbered on their mother's breast too sound To hear the tumult of her beating heart. 78 WORDSWORTH THE song of meadows in an English June, The lark — unseen musician of the skies — The leafy spring of singing memories When nightingales set all the woods in tune ; Nature's pure world that wins us late or soon With some divine foreknowledge in her eyes, Some dim foreshadowings and prophecies Of quiet after life's enfevered noon, — These were his gifts. A world-remembered rhyme Gives him a radiant heritage, renown ; The joy eternal of the victor crown. High-seated where the immortal singers climb Above the envious Death, the night of Time, That thrust the unblest generations down. 79 AUI^ MUS/€ OWIND of song, now sweet with melodies Of bird and brake, and the full-throated sound Of airy summer in his painted round. Now deep with night's intoning harmonies, Now with the sigh of multitudinous seas By the grey land's eternal borders bound. To me thou art more dear than dreams love-crowned^ More lovely than Time's loveliest memories. None knoweth whence thou comest, keen and strong, From what bleak land or rose-land amorous Imperative to smite the chordic soul ; None knoweth how thou goest, wind of song, And whither, down the ways eluding us. To what life's unimaginable goal. 80 A SEA-LOVER HERE lieth one whose eyes will light no more, A friend who in the old-time loved with me Sea-music, and the haunting melody Of broken voices wailing on the shore ; The loud, imperious, thund'rous ocean roar. And the wind-reapers gleaning constantly A harvest when the furrows of the sea Run deep between the ridges flowered o'er. We know not the least mystery of death, No vision comes from out its shadow grim. No voices break the silence of its night, Yet, somehow, I believe the mighty breath Of his loved sea will breathe again for him In the Elysian land of love and light. 8i SPRING NATURE awakens from her sleep. The old Grey-hearted earth requickens, and again Life flows to flood in each regenerate vein, As all her green ranks rally in the wold, And all her flute-like singers. There is rolled Down every hill, new washen with the rain, A river of bloom that sweeps the dappled plain With green waves flashing out with crests of gold. The songs reiterate of sea and sky Ring rapture. In the green enchanted wood The wild delirium of spring goes by, The pageant of the year's glad interlude. The masque of Love's triumphal revelry, And the old miracle of life renewed. 82 ON THE CLIFFS HERE break the azure waves exultingly, And here the winds dash down the blown wet flowers Of broken foam against the iron towers That bravely take the broadsides of the sea. Here sings the voice that bids man's spirit be Hope-winged to mount the heaven of larger hours Than here pen in his unavailing powers To break old custom's barriers and be free. Yea, here are all things glorious and glad, — Sunlight upon the hyacinthine flood Whose green translucent billows shoreward throng, And the stern shout of freedom, and the mad Delight that stirs the spirit and flres the blood As with the wild delirium of song. 83 DAWN SCARCE had the morn, arrayed in royal gold, Throned her bright being in the orient. Scarce had her winged herald earthward sent A message to the mountain summits cold. When from the choir invisible outroUed A flood of forest melody, and blent With that harmonious utterance there went A thrill of life new-born through wood and wold. Touched with the pencil of the dawn the dew Hung pearly splendours on the shimmering clew Of the faint gossamer's diaphanous lawn ; A ridge of cloud burned fiery in the blue. The sea's face flowered a hyacinth, as through All Nature went the infusive spirit of dawn. 84 VOICES OF THE NIGHT THE soul-impressive voice of nature clings About the earth, even when the day is sped, And from the heart of darkness there is shed An influence of immaterial things. Hark, how the silence from the river sings, And in the valley whence life seemeth fled There is a spirit abroad as if the dead Were communing in haunted whisperings. joy made spiritual, now at length I hold thee fast here where the mountain height, And the dim starlit windings of the vale, And the dark hill-heads where the winds win strength, And the far cataract falling through the night, Whisper of God no visionary tale. 85 SCIENCE IMMORTAL spirit moving to thy prime, Undying and indomitable maid, In shining truth's refulgent robe arrayed, What height is left thy venturous feet to climb, Who flingest now across the heavens sublime Thy pathless utterance, even too hast laid The abysmal darkness naked, and hast strayed Through the least protoplasmic world of time ? Yet wilt thou, linked with her who lifts the soul Beyond the world's reverberating din To morning heights, raise slowly from the sod The slave to manhood, from the masses roll The inveterate environment of sin That mocks the revelation of a God, 86 AT NIGHT SOFT as the breathing of a babe the flower Of daylight died into the soundless west, And peering twilight bared awhile her breast To the cool wind's first reverential hour ; Then, as the last lights died above the bower With one wide smile whose valediction blessed The old green earth, night rose from her dim nest, Impalpable, with universal dower Of darkness, and the ever youthful tryst Of ancient worlds — far-peopled mysteries — That hide before the day's great alchemist. Rejoicing when the cloudless silences And the pale crescent — night's evangelist — Hear faintly the eternal harmonies. 87 AD MUSAM HERS was the beckoning hand that led me on, When life was all a summertide of bliss ; Hers were the honeyed lips I loved to kiss, When the low moon of dreaming fancy shone ; And now that boyhood's golden day is gone, The first wild music of her voice I miss — The joy that made a wider world of this. Her pure ethereal beauty waxeth wan. Mayhap it is that 1 shall lose her quite, In the grey years across the gulf of time. When life shall lessen from its radiant prime And love be as a far-off fairy light — Ah then, methinks, how dark will be the night, How clouded, too, the pathway I must climb. 88 YOUTH WHAT cloudless joys of life to youth belong ! What hopes whereby the spirit of man is led In dreams sublime to fame that lifts its head Up to the stars' imperishable throng ! — Its world a wild of sweet elusive song, Its seasons born of summer and the dead Sweet scents of lovely springs that, perished, Still ghostlike wander all the land along. And what if when its fleeting days are o'er And time's invasive step is in our ears. We catch no sound from its receding shore. Revive no happy mem'ry of its years, With joy recall the dreams of youth no more, — Ah ! what if thought should only waken tears. 89 IMPERISHABLE BEAUTY WHO say the beauty of the world is dead Have never felt the magic touch that thrills The soul when sudden sunrise storms the hills, Or when the moon-dawn trembles overhead ; Have never seen the season's beauty shed On flow'ry lands, the glory wild that fills The forest choirs, the rapture of the rills, The purple pillars when the west is red. Earth is a fairy realm of joy, and we Possess the magic wand that opens wide The inmost shrines of beauty to the gaze ; And whoso in their wanderings never see The glory of the perishable days. For them, indeed, the beautiful has died. 90 MOUNTAINS THE grim grave peaks in solemn splendour rise, Vast vague above a world in misty shroud, Where the blue loneliness of heaven speaks loud, A symbol of eternal verities, Whereto we gaze from youth to age with eyes Of exaltation — to the summits proud, Where light and thunder speak from cloud to cloud, And the storm sings its awful litanies. O grave majestic peaks, whose foreheads take A sudden glory for the morning's sake, How may we learn the secret of your calm ? — The solemn pride that clothes the naked height, The steadfast strength that looks up for the light Where the wind wakes its deep authentic psalm ? 91 A SUMMER STORM WE watched the grey tempestuous spears of rain Pierce the wild landscape, and the giant form Of the inner mountain that all day was warm With light and colour of skies without a stain, By wraiths precipitous of vapour slain, As up its sides the cloudy legions swarm, And in the van of the insurgent storm The red outriders of the hurricane. But soon the tumult died — the royal sun Scattered the rebel rains with jewelled hand. Till far and wide the light spake clear and bland, And o'er the world a crescent glory spun, And when the rainbow-angel's work was done A holy calm transfigured all the land. 92 RESURRECTION NOW the wide laughter of the wind, and now The clarion of the golden spring is clear On the green slopes, and on the summit sheer That bares to heaven its cold eternal brow ; Song, too, takes heart, and every singing bough, Made vocal with the resurrected year, Wakens with love's glad melodies the ear That scarce the lovelier symphonies allow Of wind and wave. The soul of all things free Opens to life, regenerated, pure, Out of the dark which doth awhile endure ; So, too, in heaven's eternal spring shall we, Knowing that one thing of all things is sure — The life renascent — wake renewedly. 93 TO MY MOTHER IF when our mortal days are done, and we, Sad waifs of life, have crossed the hidden bar For the great summits of the soul, too far For thought to climb, but not for hope to see ; If in the hour that hides away from me The light of sun and moon and naked star, And sets me where majestic splendours are. And supreme beauty of the heavens that be, I know thee not, then dark upon my gaze Will fall the shining of the Angel throng. That the high Presence only maketh dim. The boundless vision of immortal days, The multitudinous glories that belong To the enraptured, radiant Seraphim. 94 TO NATURE THEE, Nature, I have worshipped with no less Of love than ever mortal maiden knew, ■ Have followed where thy shining presence drew My willing feet through many a green recess, Where woods forever felt the bland caress Of winds flower-scented ; yea, and where the blue Lone waste of heaven round the ranges threw Its night of clouds to clothe their nakedness. And so thou art to me immortal grown, A maid invisible with flying feet. That evermore I follow through the heat Of life's laborious days. Perchance thy throne Beyond our world is set — there I may meet. There clasp in death the loveliness unknown. 95 THE DAWN WIND OR ere the keen wide wings of dawn arise Out of the soundless rose-bed of the East, Red as a reveller from a kingly feast, A low wind wakes and fills the hollow skies ; At first more faint than a lone lover's sighs, Slowly it quickens ere the dark has ceased, Or the first dew-gleam, by the day released. Yearns to the dawn with hope's heroic eyes. So blows a breath mysterious (ere the hour Death seals our sight) and whispers in our ear Of light and sweetness, and the sunrise clear Beyond the dim horizon — soon to flower With rose-red radiance — and the perfect dower Of joy in love's enkindled atmosphere. 96 ON THE DEARTH OF NOBLENESS HOW rare is nobleness ; methinks our age Of gain and greed has crushed the morning sense Of life. The brick-walled slaves of pounds and pence But build for time a worthless heritage. For darkness is man's portion should he wage War with his better angels for the sake Of soulless happiness, and never take To heart this lesson from sweet nature's page : — Be steadfast in the purpose that is pure ; Be truthful, hedged around by many lies ; Be noble in a world of much deceit ; Then will thy station as a star's be sure Within the light of God's compassionate eyes, Where dowered with grace we touch the Saviour's feet. g 97 A CHILD'S FACE AN eye more blue than noon's mid-heaven, a smile Whereby the gloom is brightened, and the day Assumes a sudden splendour as if May October's fleeting glory caught awhile. A face more soft than flowers that in the aisle Of a most ancient wood make holiday ; Lips like twin roses, and the golden sway Of locks that some old summer did beguile. Here love looks out and shines from eyes all bright With lustrous childhood, in whose laughing light Are radiant hopes and rapturous memories Of golden nothings, and the lingering trace Of such pure gleams as lit the sinless face Of the sweet Maid assumed to Paradise. 98 THE COMMON WAY ONCE standing in the silent place of tombs, Awed by the evening stillness, I saw pass Across the mounds of greenly growing grass A maiden in the flush of life's first blooms ; Then spake I : " Fear'st thou not the gathering glooms Here, where a ghostly silence haunts the day ? " " Nay," said she, smiling, " 'tis my only way ; For yonder, see, the glimmering homestead looms," Then thought I on our common lot — how all The moving throng of sad humanity, To reach the haven of life's perfect bliss, Must pass adown the paths where shadows fall, Through death unto that sweet society Where unifying love for ever is. 99 TRANSFIGURATION OFT have I seen a sullen evening cloud Close to the sun uprear its ominous form, And seek to dim his glory in a shroud Woven of the murky shuttle of the storm ; Anon the golden beauty it would hide, The iridescent splendour of the light, Breaks through the sombre dullness in its pride. And lo, a cloud diaphanously bright. So have I seen a nature, swift to slay Truth's splendour with a lie of ancient creed, Recoil beneath the radiance of her ray, And all its error, growth of evil seed. Transformed to light and beauty at whose shrine Truth heavenward lifts her chalices divine. lOO AN ANSWER TO WILLIAM WATSON'S "LAST WORD: TO THE COLONIES" FOR thy brave words of wisdom and of cheer, Strong singer of the music-cradled North, We whose brave fathers went from Britain forth, Back in the day-dawn of a wild old year. Send thanks. O never may thine England fear That we, born, bred of British stock, shall fail, Should the Colossus of the North assail. Nay, we thy far compatriots are here Ready, aye, ready. Let the word be said, And we, her sons in this young world afar, Will rise for her, the mother of our might ; We who upon the sands of Egypt bled ■ And later, when the green veldt thundered war, For England faced the desert and the night ! lOI TO AN OLD-TIME FRIEND HOW long ago we parted ! Do you yet Thrill with memorial pride of manhood's prime, Or faint remembrance from the days sublime Ere yet the frosts of years had risen to fret The meadow-lands of memory and set Their seal on hope's bright fountain, or grey time Had blotted out the peaks we fain would climb With folding mists of doubt and drear regret ? Or is the perfect silence that we crave About you ? Is the greater mystery yours ? And have you passed, uncarnate in death's stole, Beneath the shadowy lintel of the grave. To the immortal land where love endures Through the eternal summer of the soul ? X02 LYRICS OF FEELING DESERTED BLEAKLY it stands, the fabric tall Of an old-time home ; There's a lingering trace on the mouldering wall Where the ivy once in its freshness clomb. The dark pines moan like a spectral throng, And the brook hard by As of old still sings its slow sweet song To the wooded heights and the summer sky. But the tramp of feet resounds no more Through. the silent rooms; There's a change o'er hall and corridor, And the garden is reft of its red rose blooms. Ah, happily once, in the days that were, Sweet children shook The sunlight out of their golden hair, With a music born of the woodland brook. But they passed like shadows, one by one, Like the falling leaves ; Now the old home stares to the setting sun. With its broken roofs and its ruined eaves. 105 io6 THE POEMS OF J. B. O'HARA And the seasons pass on their viewless feet With their noon-Hghts warm, September's shine, and the tasselled wheat, And the clover-fields for the smiling farm, And the checkered shades on the woodland streams, And the silver rills. When the wattle-bloom in the river dreams And the lightwood speaks to the distant hills. Yet they bring not back the old-time swing Of the children's chime, The echoes that made the rafters ring, In the saffron close of the evening-time, 0, moaning pines, the birds yet build In the rustling leaves ; And the woodland lap with flowers is filled ; But a spirit over the old home grieves, Yea, grieves with the round of the changing year Where the haunted eyes Of a nameless Horror blindly stare Forever up to the lonely skies. WILL-O'-THE-WISP OR STAR I FOLLOW the light that runs before me, Will-o'-the-wisp or star ; What if the clouds are closing o'er me — Storm in their ruins afar — O'er hill and hollow I follow, I follow, Will-o'-the-wisp or star ! I follow the light that leads me onward, Will-o'-the-wisp or star ; On to the peaks that climbing sunward Watch for the morn afar ; Through dim woods haunted, I follow, undaunted, Will-o'-the-wisp or star ! I follow the light that Fate has given. Will-o'-the-wisp or star ; Which does it matter ? The end is heaven, God is the goal afar. So, hill or hollow, I follow, I follow. Will-o'-the-wisp or star. 107 RESIGNATION IF I am girt by wind of stormy wings And ruin of red lightning on the sea Of life, whose shore is filled with murmurings Of that great life to be, I will not be rebellious through my trust In Thee, and Thy fulfilment of a day, When the soul, severed from its prison dust, Shall seek its homeward way. Yet every day more timorous it grows, Though nearing no Nirvana, but the bliss Of days without desire, of deep repose, Of joys that clasp and kiss. Even if my days were brighter in the lands Than when the East with light is all aflood, When dawn has slain the darkness and his hands Are rosy with her blood, I would not say, " Behold my happiness ! " Knowing full well that grief and searing pain Are the strong ministers that rise to bless And make us whole again ; 1 08 RESIGNATION 109 That from the ruin of the storm we win The after-brightness wonderfully blent With darkness ; and that sorrow's discipline Shapes life to calm content ; That he is wisest who will strive to be Little of earth, where hopes are shadows cold, Who, missing not God's meaning here, shall see The dark clouds backward rolled. THE ROAD THAT LEADS TO HOME ALONG the road that leads to home — the road we all must go, Discrowned of pride, the king and serf, the high-born and the low, Throwing down the burdens of the old years moving slow On the road that leads to home ; We are moving, moving onward to the final hour that brings To us the mighty mystery that love triumphal sings. Showing to our unveiled sight the naked truth of things On the road that leads to home. Along the road that leads to home, the old grey road worn thin. That ravels through a rosy land when first its ways begin, Winding on and winding down away through golden whin On the road that leads to home, Like moving shadows in a dream we watch the glories fade, The flowers that mourn, the grasses seared that grieve for wind and shade. Nature drooping weary wings, displumed and disarrayed, On the road that leads to home. no THE ROAD THAT LEADS TO HOME iii But on the road that leads to home when sunset embers die, And evening's star of hope lights up the grey, dim, ashen sky. When upon the quiet lands the quiet twilights lie, On the road that leads to home. As wearied children we shall come, from wanderings far and wide. To rest in God's eternal calm beyond life's moaning tide, Knowing the naked truth of things that passion glorified On the road that leads to home. A FLOWER OF BABYHOOD WHEN spring winds danced upon the tasselled hills, And light and shade alternate floated o'er us, And, sunlight-led, the amorous river rills Rejoiced in happy chorus ; Yea, when the flowerets lifted up in prayer To kindly skies the faith of timorous faces, There came to us a flower of beauty rare Made out of all sweet graces. For something had she of the lily's hue, And of the rose she surely was a sister — Some golden fairy of the wattle, too, Upon her sweet head kissed her. Deep in her eyes you saw the violet, Her cheeks had subtle hints of ruddy clover, Her sleeping lips two crowning daisies set Their crimson tippets over. But summer drooped upon a withered bier, And autumn, in the ruined woodlands keeping In vain a flowery vigil of the year, With solemn winds went weeping. 112 A FLOWER OF BABYHOOD 113 And with the passing glory did she go, The little maid too tender here to tarry, The little hands that never learnt to know What burdens they should carry ; The little feet that never knew to stray Into the gloomy borderland of sorrow, With questionings of why 7 and whence ? to-day, And whither ? of to-morrow. Mayhap 'tis better so — though love distrust — That fate in sweetest guise of life hath found her- A blossom scarcely risen from the dust, With no rude winds around her. Yet hath she left a fragrance wondrous sweet Here in a world where all is fret and flurry, A memory, cool as waters, for the heat Of burning life's wild hurry. THREE YEARS OLD DEAR little eyes, wherein blue summer glows And smiles like hope girt with gold memories ! What love on earth is love that never knows Dear little eyes ? Such light as shines in unimagined skies Within their lovely life enkindled shows, And makes earth heaven and heaven a glad surprise. Time, gather not, I pray thee, where this rose Of love illumes our trembling paradise ; Nor touch to tears, before night seal them close. Dear little eyes. 114 A GARDEN BUD NOW while the grey skies harden, And send their white-haired warden To guard chill-hearted earth, A bud in love's own garden Glows ringed with greenest girth. It blooms, and sullen winter Flies forth to shake and splinter High, cloudy mountain towers ; For here nought dark may enter Where love illumes the bowers. Yea, love whose hand discloses The fairest of all roses That hope might deem to be Dropt down from where reposes, In heaven, one sacred tree. It smiles, and lo, the glory Of sundawn transitory Breaks radiant in bloom — A rainbow rings the hoary, Dark, sunless gulfs of gloom. 115 Ii6 THE POEMS OF J. B. O'HARA We listen — lovelier laughter, Than 'neath the forest rafter Upripples from white streams, Breaks o'er us, and thereafter Heaven colours all our dreams. Let others seek their heaven, The brotherhood, sin-shriven, By loveless ways and lone, Without the light, God-given, Of blossoms earthward blown. But we find heaven nearer In children, lovelier, dearer Than aught of heaven we crave, Whose radiant joy rings clearer Than all the sea's loud wave. TO A BABE DEAR little feet, dear roses red and white, Soft blossoms making all our lives more sweet ; May love lead ever to His kindly light Dear little feet ! Wearily winds before them through the heat Of life's loud day the pathway to the night That gathers round us rest and joy complete. Fate at our sternest bidding will not write One sign — no stars of hope conjunctive meet; Yet trust is ours that God will guide aright Dear little feet. 117 LOVE'S VIGIL IN the peerless time of your beauty's pride, When a mother loved grew weak and frail, And the rose that reddened, the blooms that dyed Her cheek gave way for the lilies pale, You fashioned your life to a purpose true, — A vigil of love the long years through. The tide of the city life rolled by ; The laughter loud of the careless throng ; The days that gladden, the nights that die To sound of music and dance and song ; But you turned away, though the warm young blood In your rosy veins ran full to flood. You turned away from the wild old lure Of pleasure and passion, whose red lip stings, To the quiet life of a purpose pure. To a sense of loss of the old glad things. The hopes that beckon, the dreams that call In the rose-lit garden of love to all. And evermore by her side you stood Till the shadow, shod with silence, came ; But for you, ah ! then, life's interlude Was played, and the chill grey years had claim On your lingering grace. Yet, I vow, you trod The surest way in the fields of God. ii8 THE GLEANER YOU stood with a sheaf in your bare brown hands, In the last low light of the setting sun ; Yellow and gold were the gleaned lands, For the harvest days were done. And I watched you there in your girlhood's pride, A strange new note in a world-old tune ; In your heart was the glow of October-tide, In mine was the chill of June. The rose that flowered on your warm young face, On your lips the clover-blooms half-born, And the subtle hint of the lithe, swift grace You caught from the moving corn, Brought back to me, like a love dream fleet, A sense of the old glad-hearted things, A whiff from the years too sadly sweet For a man's rememberings. You stood in the light of the sun, unstirred, Perchance in a dream that the days held true ; What was it ? — the call of a secret bird When the green earth laughed to the blue ; When your wayward fancy loved to roam, As red as a rose of dawn uncurled. Away and over the hills of home To the rim of a fairy world ? 119 120 THE POEMS OF J. B. O'HARA Alas, that the years grow grey and long ; Alas, that our dreams prove false and few ; He is wisest who follows the wild birds' song Through the flowers on the hills of blue ; Who bravely turns at the topmost peak To gaze on the weary miles he trod, With a heart untired, and a voice to speak His praise of the world of God. My thanks for this hour so deeply true. It has sweetened life and its loveless ways ; Now I turn to the tasks of men — but you To the lure of quiet days. I turn from the peaceful paths untrod By the feet of fame in his tireless quest — You gather the blossoms of love that God Has dropped on the dark earth's breast. A LEGEND OF ROSES DAILY she stole from out her palace door To seek with gifts the ghettos of the poor, To save with bounty of her kindly hand The dying in her famine-stricken land. Lone secret ways she sought as one abhorred, For he whom she looked up to as her lord, Through idle rumours sown of evil seed, Forbade on pain of death the holy deed. But to her soul still pure and virginal Came as a voice divine the heavenly call ; And still she stood for pity's sake each day, One of God's angels where the Shadow lay. So once, when dusk had dimmed the western flame, Out of her halls with store of food she came ; But scarce had passed the garden's flowery space, When lo, her lord rose wrathful in her face. And fiercely cried, " What hast thou, woman, here ? But she, all pallid with a white-faced fear : ' " Red roses in this basket, sire, I bring, A gift to one who lies in suffering." j» 121 122 THE POEMS OF J. B. O'HARA Whereat he tore apart the frail white Ud, To bare the secret bounty that she hid ; And lo, she saw a sudden swift surprise Gather a glancing wonder in his eyes. And there, great marvel, to her wild amaze, Red roses were unfolded to his gaze ! While soft as song she heard a voice above : " God never fails the creature of His love ! " THE STORMY WIND RAN DOWN THE FELLS THE stormy wind ran down the fells And shook the ancient trees, The old-time titans of the dells, Tortured through centuries. But close to earth's green breast the fern Scarce felt the windy shock, Low nestling by its nursling urn Beside the mountain rock. So humble lives feel in repose No passion's warring flights ; Only the great in stormy throes May battle on the heights. 123 A SUNSET THOUGHT I LOOKED toward the sunset's cloudy fires That lit, with gradual change to ruin grey, The threshold where the dying sun expires And darkness seals the sepulchre of day. One brief, bright line of splendour ! — then the night, With wings replumed, dipped to the darkling sea, And all the fluctuant glory of the light Was but a dream that memory set free. And in the sorrow born of beauty lost I thought of one, to me more lovely far Than to the lonely mariner, storm-tost, The beacon light that breaks across the bar. And for a moment came the thought, if she Should sudden perish like the sunset lire In subtle beauty, there were left to me Only the dark of memory, death's desire. 124 A LEGEND OF ST. GREGORY F ROM olden days of Rome's imperial state This tale is told of Gregory the Great. Once to his temple on the Coelian Hill A beggar came, an outcast worn and ill, And prayed " O master, from thy bounty give, For Christ's sweet sake, an alms, that I may live.' And Gregory cried, " Alas ! poor friend, as bare Of gifts my cell as is the wayside there. Nor food my lips have tasted since the light, Though now the nooa is sloping to the night. But stay ! " Then in his temple he withdrew And brought therefrom a cup of silver hue, A gift his mother gave — more prized a one, Than ever yet was cherished by a son. " Take thou this gift, 'tis all my store, yet I Most gladly in the name of the Most High Will help thee, for thy sun of life is dim. And I have youth and strength in every limb." Time passed away, and Gregory had become The ruler and crowned head of Christendom, And far and wide the lustre of his fame For goodness spread as an exceeding flame. 125 126 THE POEMS OF J. B. O'HARA And (as the legend tells) he once prepared A feast which, at his word, twelve beggars shared, And as he sat beside them, lo, the door Opened, and came unasked one beggar more. And Gregory cried, " Friend, to the festive board I asked thee not, but as thy gracious Lord Would welcome thee, so now I ask thee in. Take thou thy place and let the feast begin." But when he ceased the stranger lifted up Before his gaze a time-worn silver cup, And o'er his face a holy sweetness broke, And in a voice of heavenly charm he spoke : " Behold, O master, him to whom once ill And fainting by the temple on the hill You gave for pity, in the days of old, Your mother's gift, the silver cup I hold ; " Even as you gave it in the name of Him, Without whose glory all the world were dim. So shall you live by grace divine, for know They reap God's harvest who in goodness sow." He spake and vanished ; each one in his place Knew he had gazed upon no mortal face. But Gregory saw across the festive board The vision of the glory of the Lord. AN AUSTRALIAN ANTHEM ETERNAL Spirit, who hast led From shores where sleep the mighty dead Our fathers with Thy guiding hand In safety to this morning land, To Thee with radiant hope we bend : Guide Thou Australia, Father, Friend ! In wisdom's ways, O lead us, still Submissive to Thy holy will ! Be Faith and Hope and Charity The links that bind from sea to sea The children of this. goodly State, Heirs to a still more glorious fate. O give to us the gifts of peace. The teeming flocks, the year's increase. The glad gold widths of waving corn Outpoured from plenty's flowing horn, — Those bounties shed from nature's hand When freedom rules a smiling land ! And grant us prophet-heroes strong To stand for faith, to trample wrong. To shed the light of love and hope Where sin and error blindly grope, And draw around us and above The symbols of Thy perfect love ! 127 128 THE POEMS OF J. B. O'HARA Yea, guide us that our land may grow Upon no conquered nation's woe, But mighty by that love which shone Resplendent through Thy sinless Son ! — To Thee with radiant hope we bend, Guide Thou Australia, Father, Friend FOEAS OF FLACES A DAY IN MOURILYAN HARBOUR, NORTH QUEENSLAND I BY pine-clad slopes, where noontide glowed With tropic splendour, north we sailed, Where vague, vast mountain-clusters showed Dinn blue, or silver vapour veiled Far isles that ever rose and failed. Betwixt the green land and the reef The sea, in breathless, sunbright rest, Shone blue as heaven, ere the brief Bright noon-flower, on its glowing breast, Death -smitten, withered to the west. How sank from sight and sound too soon Seas sown with isles of pine and palm. In that blue miracle of noon That led us on by isles of balm. Past lone Lucinda's tropic calm Till night, enthroned in moonless skies. As north by Hinchinbrook we ran, Laid softly on our weary eyes The seal of slumber — sorrow's ban — Or ere we won Mourilyan. 131 132 THE POEMS OF J. B. O'HARA II Rest softer than slumber was round us, As dawn, on the waters confined, Leaped over the barriers that bound us Away from the world of the wind ; Away from the thunder of breakers That broke where the outer reefs form. The leagues of the wild land-shakers Whose god is the pitiless storm ; For the light that the sunrise kindled Shone over a land-locked bay, As the gloom on the shore edge dwindled And died in the dawn away ; And the pine-clad hills upstarted. Dark-dewed by the morning mist. And — lovers the long night parted — The sea and the sundawn kissed. Yea, swift as the serpent levin That coils on the dark hill-head. Light spake in the pure wide heaven, And the dawn and the sea were wed. Then sudden the glory and rapture Of life in a world of delight Sprang forth for the spirit to capture On sunbright hollow and height. No passion of love's unreason More swift through the spirit ran Than the joy of the sudden season Of light on Mourilyan. A DAY IN MOURILYAN HARBOUR 133 III The last fleet hour of the dawn has faded, The first wild dance of the day is done, And, veering west, has the noon invaded The heights and hollows its light feet won ; And the sea that for lack of the swimmer swaying, Tosses the weeds, as with light locks playing, Is fearful not of the rocks' wild fraying, Where never the race of a storm is run. And here, where the thoughts of the wild world slumber, The passions that grovel, the hopes that climb ; Where scarcely the eyes, turned seaward, number The glad sea-birds on their wings sublime. Not strange were the sight if the god, re-risen, Triton rose from his palace-prison. With nymphs whose robes are the flowers that dizen The locks of Thetis untouched of time. But see, where the noon is westward waning. The storm's rude sign on the outer deep. As the wind takes heart, and the waves, complaining, Rise like a god refreshed from sleep. And the day dies down with its visions splendid. And the languid dreams of the noon are ended. As shoreward sweep, with their white crests blended. The roaring cohorts that storm the steep. 134 THE POEMS OF J. B. O'HARA IV And the wings of the storm flashed over, and the thunders broke on the bay, And the whole sea rose in anger — a spirit to bar the way — As we sailed through the mouth of the harbour to the foam of the outer sea, Where the cast of a stone might measure the limit that death set free. But the good ship, shuddering, shattered the strength of the weltering wave, As she clove through the boundless water, and ever through darkness drave ; Like a spirit that battles undaunted with death and his fateful odds. She sprang through the roaring hollows, that cried to their feeble gods, A live thing girt by the hissing of serpent waves that recoiled In the frenzy of seething passion, whose purpose of death is foiled. Yet the ravenous deeps, anhungered, still cried as the prows dipped low. Like wolves whom the whips of Winter send blind through the drifted snow ; But the ship sailed on through the tempest, and ever triumphant ran, While the baffled seas still thundered at thy mouth, Mourilyan. A COUNTRY VILLAGE AMONG the folding hills It lies, a quiet nook, Where dreaming nature fills Sweet pages of her book, While through the meadow flowers She sings in summer hours. Or weds the woodland rills Low-laughing to the brook. The graveyard whitely gleams Across the soundless vale. So sad, so sweet, yet seems A watcher cold and pale That waits through many springs The tribute old Time brings, And knows, though life be loud, The reaper may not fail. Here come not feet of change From year to fading year ; Ringed by the rolling range No world-wild notes men hear. The wheels of time may stand Here in a lonely land, Age after age may pass Untouched of change or cheer ; 135 136 THE POEMS OF J-. B: O'HARA As still the farmer keeps The same dull round of things ; He reaps and sows and reaps, And clings as ivy clings To old-time trust nor cares What science does or dares, What lever moves the world, What progress spreads its wings. Yet here, of woman born, Are lives that know not rest. With fierce desires that scorn The quiet life as best ; That see in wider ways Life's richer splendours blaze. And feel ambition's fire Burn in their ardent breast. Yea, some that fain would know Life's purpose strange and vast, How wide is human woe, What wailing of the past Still strikes the present dumb, What phantoms go and come Of wrongs that cry aloud, " At last, O God, at last ! " Here, too, are dreams that wing Rich regions of romance ; Love waking when the spring Begins its first wild dance. A COUNTRY VILLAGE 137 Love redder than the rose, Love paler than the snows, Love frail as corn that tilts With morning winds a lance. For never land so lone That love could find not wings In every wind that's blown By lips of jewelled springs, For love is life's sweet pain, And when sweet life is slain It finds a radiant rest Beyond the change of things. Beyond the shocks that jar. The chance of changing fate. Where fraud and violence are. And heedless lust and hate ; Yet still where faith is clear, And honour held most dear, And hope that seeks the dawn Looks up with heart elate. MOUNTAIN PICTURES THE CATARACT At length we came Where from the immeasurable height it leaped, White-haired and luminous, down to the dell, With inexhaustible delight of life. So high the rocks that caverned its lone roar That fern and moss — the lovely things that grow By shy worn water-ways — were blended there Continuous to the all-observing eye. No wind was in the trees that hung aloft Their dark green banners on the giddy edge Of the bewildering height, whose sheer descent Made the live water gladder, till its shout Of exultation woke the gentle sleep Of the lone hills. The drizzling ledges gleamed And gathered into slippery urns the spray That from august unfathomable depths Upfloated soft. How dwarfed, meseemed, we were In the dark glen with all that thunderous war Incessant over us, the Titan sport Of nature, the strong pulse of cosmic force ; And with each moment our soul-pleasure grew And deepened into reverence for Him Who planned this wonder in the lonely wilds. 138 MOUNTAIN PICTURES 139 MOUNT BLACKWOOD The top was reached And we beheld, for glorious recompense, The mighty panorama of the land With its far Protean splendours. To the rear Dim misty lines of mountains shut us out From sky and verdure. But far forward gleamed The vaporous bosom of the sailless sea By whose dim marge our stately city reared Its lordly spire and dome and pillared height. Between, the pleasant lands lay green and glad In summer's arms, and fields of yellow corn, And happy homes where unremitting toil Had garnered half the season's golden fruit. Eastward there stretched the dark untrodden range To where, the mist-wreaths clinging to his sides. The blue lone summit of bold Macedon Cleft the high splendours of the summer sky. 'Twas all a beauty so divinely souled That we were sileYit, worshipping in thought That brooked no bondage of life's lowly fate, The power that made our land so beautiful. I40 THE POEMS OF J. B. O'HARA THE YARRANGOBILLY CAVES Through the swift gorge The foaming waters leaped, as though the gloom Of overhanging hills might gather in To its embrace their life delirious. And on the side of heaven-aspiring cliffs, By tortuous paths of grim unfriendliness. We reached at length the dark forbidding mouth Of the wild hill-side cave, wherethrough we passed Into the unvext life of loneliness, And awful revelation strangely wrought Of nature's immemorial miracle ; For sleeping silence and gross darkness filled That temple of old time whose aeons wrought The slow will of their dark divinities : But when upon our sudden sense the guide Flashed to the gloom the welcome of his torch And made a wonder of the illumined dark, A thousand gems renewed their quivering life And shook out radiant splendour, till the eye Beheld the red magnificence of dawn Written on alabaster palimpsests Fashioned in seasons when the world was young. From every roof the gleaming stalactites Drooped, draped with snowy fretwork of the past, Perchance to win the kiss of sister forms That rose to their embrace divinely robed. White pillars flashed to life resplendently As when the sunlight gilds the architraves MOUNTAIN PICTURES 141 Of palaces of porphyry and gold. 'Twas glorious, beautiful. But when the light Faded, and all the garments of the gloom Again invested us, lo, came a sense Upon us of that still primordial dark Ere earth took shape from chaos. 142 THE POEMS OF J. B. O'HARA IN THE VALLEY OF THE MITTA Among the northern valleys many days We rode from morn till noontide and from noon Till eve. The winding Mitta was our guide And led us pleasantly through lands that took The changing hues of summer ; past the peaks That towered o'er Tallandoon to where the vale Most lovely of green Noorongong outstretched, Beneath the quiet of the fringing hills, Its waving pastures rich with willows green, And clustering gums beneath whose grateful shade The slow kine dreamed away the noontide hour. And further still we passed a gracious land Of hill and grassy dale and streams snow-fed And orchard plots rich fruited of the year — Thy lovely land, Eskdale. And then we came To waving maize-fields fringing far along Grey sinuous flights of water. From the edge Of windless hills we gazed on long lagoons Half choked with rude memorials of floods What time the white plumes of the Austral Alps — Bogong and all its cloudy ring of hills — Withered before the spring's first genial ray. There we beheld the wild fowl numerous, Black duck and flocking ibises and cranes. Old, silent, solitary sentinels. In dim seclusion of the marshy pools Where the locked reeds gave shelter to their broods. And where our journey ended we beheld MOUNTAIN PICTURES 143 Thy confluent waters, crystal Snowy Creek, Lost in the gold-discoloured river bed Of the fair stream that led our jubilant steps At last to this wild spot, where quaintly slept, And nestled lovingly beneath the range, An old world town among the towering hills. CUDGEWA CREEK LONE stream of the mountains, by margins of moss, By falls where the grey rocks thy white waters toss, The fays of the hills from their slumbers in awe Awake to thy music, wild Cudgewa ! Thy home is the home of the wild and the free ; The song of the king-parrot soundeth for thee, What time to replenish his life-blood he flings On the winds all the strength of his tropical wings. Thy waters are wooing the many-toned rills. Sweet sisters that sing in the bracken-clad hills. Till with many a curve, and with many a turn, They laugh on thy breast through the fronds of the fern. Beloved of thy waters the giant gums form A bridge where came down all the wrath of the storm ; In its arches the lizard has fashioned a cell. And the grey father time his decayed citadel. stream of the mountains, the darkness that rolled O'er thy waves, in the shadowy seasons of old, Is passing like leaves which thy swift eddies draw Down deep to thy bosom, O wild Cudgewa ! 144 CUDGEWA CREEK 145 No more, as of old, where thy glad waters stray Shall the children of darkness arise for the fray ; No more shall the boomerang, nullah, and spear Ensanguine thee, river, low laughing and clear. Soon, soon by thy banks of wild beauty a world Of progress shall walk with its banners unfurled ; Soon, soon to the rush and the roar of the wheel, Unbeaked of the parrot, thy waters shall steal. O mountain-bred streamlet, though dawnings of change Break swift where thy laughter outrings on the range, Yet year after year will one fond lover draw The veil from thy beauty, wild Cudgewa ! ♦?» MILFORD SOUND, NEW ZEALAND I BUT north for a night we travelled, and just as the dawning drew The grey of its robes asunder, and bared to the boundless blue The breast of its quivering splendour, the wings of its broadening flame. The prow of our ship sped shoreward on the shuddering waves that came, Thrilled with the kiss of sunrise, to the ravenous cliff that draws The narrow seas where it opens the rage of its iron jaws ; And we passed through the towering portals till the tremulous deep delight Of the wave in the wind grew softer, subdued of the frowning height ; For unscalable cliffs rose round us, and the way of the strait seemed barred By the clouded peaks that nature had set o'er the Sound as guard. And the snows flashed out from their summits whenever their brows unglobed, And the thin streams ribboned their sides in a dark green raiment robed ; And we saw the falling of water, and watched where the lawny stream 146 MILFORD SOUND. NEW ZEALAND 147 To the wine-dark wave plunged headlong, unkissed of the morning beam ; So we sailed in the silence, and ever a wonder about us grew For the beautiful island whose lover, the sea in a robe of blue. Had guerdoned with passionate beauty, far back in the ages unseen. And crowned her with splendour and throned her, abiding for ever his queen. II Dawn climbs the arch of heaven ; the whirling mist Crowns for a space the awful peaks sublime, Till the argent lips of morningtide have kissed The snow-soft brows that brook no touch of time,- The grey eternal pinnacles of snow No centuries of storm may break or brand, Above a world that smiles to them below — A sea that fawns, a green and gracious land. The rocky ramparts of The Mitre rise, Twin sharers of the storm whose lightest breath Bids the blind vapour mock their straining eyes, And sheds around their pride the shadow of death. 148 THE POEMS OF J. B. O'HARA Death that they fear not. Kingdoms wax and wane, Age after age shorn of its splendour dies, But robed in grim austerities they reign — The symbols of eternal verities. For thee time is the shadow of a breath, O, Pembroke, with thy brows in morning bathed Above the glacier edge that harbours death, And ledges that old winds have scarred and scathed ; A king by tempest crowned, unvext, unjarred By shocks of changing fate or blighting chance, To reign for ever, and for ever guard These lonely, lovely waters of romance. Ill What loveliness Of summer lightened nature's sweet recess ! What strange dim underwold of glorious green Shook out her royal robes, a radiant queen ! What lonelier land of ferny beauty drew A softer splendour from the waters blue, Or saw the rata, beautiful and red As rosy shame, a richer glory shed Over the forest, soft with summer rain, Wherein old mossy pillars long had lain And withered under greener ferns that spread Through the waste wonders of that garden bed. MILFORD SOUND. NEW ZEALAND 149 Which heard at times the wild sea-water sing A song that made the mighty fiords ring ; And in the circle of the ancient hills — The towering peaks that sunrise thrills and fills — It mingled with the sound of runnels fleet From icy summits where the thunders meet ; For, girt about "by cliffs that rose as high As in the ocean dipt the under sky, We saw the rivulets jubilant from the snow That fettered them in ages long ago ; Or over Pembroke saw a wraith of wind In triumph beat the mighty morning blind ; Or watched the blasts, that ravin and rend, o'erthrow The tottering parapet of drifted snow. But on the circlet of our inland sea The sapphire ring of sky shone cloudlessly. As though the very heart of heaven it were And God had laid its perfect beauty bare ; Save when the blind night from its haunted dells A grey ghost crept above the brooding fells, And darkened every throbbing wave that yearned All night until the sunrise broke and burned, And every snowy blossom, far withdrawn, Transfigured in the rosy light of dawn. ISO THE POEMS OF J. B. O'HARA IV Immortal land of fleeting shine and shadows, Where nature keeps A dream unvext of dark green mountain meadows, Of snow-clad steeps ! Sweet land of fern, this song o'er sea I send thee Who need'st no song To hymn the beauty morn and evening lend thee All summer long. Far flame thy peaks through forest-woven sky lights, Vast, vague, sublime. They meet the morning and they take the twilights, Strong towers of time, Where the wind only revels all year thorough, And no lives roam. The wind that reapeth in the green sea furrow Soft flowers of foam ; Save when the winter on the grey height hardens. And wild mists spin Down the blind summits to the gracious gardens Of green wherein A little while the summer laughter dieth. And all flowers fail, And bow their faces to the voice that crieth, The homeless gale. 0, Milford, over no twin summits brighter Shall morning break ; Nowhere the charmed water whisper lighter For love's sweet sake ; MILFORD SOUND. NEW ZEALAND 151 Nowhere the noontide, robed in raiment rarer, Set softer feet, And nowhere evening, silent slumber-bearer, Fare forth so sweet. Thy peace rebukes the feverous flood-tide storming Life's narrow ways ; Thy loneliness upbraids the strife deforming Our clamorous days ; Far be the time ere toil's harsh din shall waken Thy quiet shore. Thy waters lonely as thy days forsaken By trade's dull roar. THE BAY OF ISLANDS (on the otway coast) THEY gleam through the spray and the misty light, They front the waves where the reefs are keen, Where sheer as the depth of a sea-mew's flight Wild cliffs to the dark seas lean. No sound of the inland's voice they hear, No cry save that of the seething foam, As ever they wait the whole long year For the ships that come not home. Here in and out, where the sea's white bird Is tossed like foam on the wind's wild wings, Where the cliff's heart shudders to hear the word That the storm to the night-rack sings, The tide-streams rush where the land and sea Hide hollows the keen wind whips to pain With a cry as of hopeless agony From the ghosts of the dead sea-slain. No light of the sea-blooms, sweet and bland, Takes heart from the cliff's long vigil here. Though the miles are glad when the lone sea-land Laughs out in the brief grey year ; When inland far through the driftwood dead The wild heath reddens, the wild heath glows. Till the leagues of the borderland are as red As the heart of a radiant rose. 152 THE BAY OF ISLANDS 153 The grim heights lean where the waters swirl With rage to the red cliff's iron core, For as lions loosed are the waves that hurl Their strengths on the loveless shore ; And the caves that are filled with passion shake, And in thunder roar, when the ringing swords Of the serried ranks of the storm-waves break, And fail on the red-plumed hordes. Yet they lose not heart, and they charge again And their white plumes toss, and their stormy cry Rings out on the pent-in ridges fain Of death as the ranks ride by ; Ride ever to fall ; but the cliff's loud glee Is fraught with dread of a weird long planned. For it knoweth that time is lord of the sea. But the sea is lord of the land. So they struggle and strive the whole year's span, But the sea on the clouded cliffs and caves Hath graven more deep than the might of man. Doom's sign with his warring waves. And the rocks in the Bay of Islands stand As a during proof that his might must be. For once they were towers of the steadfast land, But now they are serfs of the sea. AUSTRALIA LAND of my birth, my boyhood's hours, Most dear in memory's hallowed bowers, Where childhood's sunny day took wing, Unbodied, perishable thing ! Thou mighty cradle of dead years Rocked by the rugged pioneers, The brave adventurers who hurled Against the gateways of a world Chained fast by death, by fear made blind, Their iron strength of soul and mind ; Who in primeval woods of gloom Saw one thing sure — a noteless tomb ; And yet on rugged plain and hill Wrought the stern purpose of their will, While rounding into shape and form, Through fire and flood, through stress and storm, The embryonic world that grew Another Britain, whence we drew The strength that nerves our bosom still And our supreme enduring will. Beloved land, when fading time Shall sound for me its vesper chime. And fill life's modulated day With breathings of its holier lay, be my fondest wish to see 154 AUSTRALIA 155 Thy full-orbed glory crowning thee ; Thy years resplendent sound and shine, And linked in brotherhood divine Thy stalwart sons united be To guard thy young democracy ; Strong under freedom-loving skies, Made doubly brave by peril's ties. Reliant through the gains that come From toil's all-glorious martyrdom ; Till nerved by honour, steeled by truth, A noble manhood crowns thy youth, And virtue's trumpet sounds afar The presage of love's avatar. A MOUNTAIN GIFT (from " ROCKALPINE," VICTORIA) RED roses from your tender hands And starry bells of azure hue — Wild glories born of wilder lands — Sweet friend, I take from you. O welcome, early flower and leaf. And welcome thrice the gifts that bring To toiling hours a golden, brief. Bright memory of spring. Though the dark season's frost may fret White August, now she softly sings With one fair hand in winter's set And one in shining spring's ; And bringeth early summer dreams. To waft sweet memories o'er the soul Of breezy dawns, where fretting streams Round wild " Rockalpine " roll. 156 A MOUNTAIN LAKE, NEW ZEALAND WE wandered o'er the hills of blue, To that still lake we came, About it silent forests grew Unscathed by frost or flame ; All peacefully it slept between The green hills stern and grave, As though the soul of some Undine Were dreaming in its wave. The clouds lay chained within the sky Like islands in the deep, For not one wandering wind went by In their blue heaven of sleep ; And nature hushed her lightest breath That day the hills between, Not silenter was sleep or death Than that dim world of green. With silver speech no laughing brook Broke from the ancient wood. No falling water lakeward took The thunders of its flood. No lapsing wave with murmurs bland Broke on the reign supreme Of silence in a lonely land, A land of sleep and dream — 157 158 THE POEMS OF J. B. O'HARA A land where peace inviolate Had set her ancient throne, Where echo moaning for her mate Might feed her grief alone. A land of hilltops shadow-lined, In white-robed silence set, Of soft green underways that wind Through forests twilight-wet. Ah, quiet lake, 1 often long In dreams to be with you Far from the city's feverous throng. Far in the hills of blue ; To sink in nature's loving arms, And, folded to her breast, Still see through half-shut eyes the charms That hush tired hearts to rest. Where never sign of evil bides Nor shadow dark of sin. Where God's cathedral has for sides The hills that heavenward win. Where nature on the reverent sod Still works her changeless plan, For that which shares the smile of God Survives the hate of man. POE/nS OF PEOPLE AND OCCASIONS CALYPSO EMBOSOMED in the central sea there lies, Beyond the faintest limits of the land, An isle where dwelt the maid of Atlas, him Who set against unconquerable Zeus His titan strength, and learned too late that ill Befalls the man who wars against the gods. Deep, dense the forest overflowing the isle ; But where the palace of the nymph upclomb Through azure mist, cypress and poplar grew. And all about the trellised vine-branch hung Breaking with wine-dark clusters. Far away The mountain torrent fed the lone ravine With cool green mosses, where dim dreams were born Of drowsy summer as he lay at ease On dewy solitudes. The flecking clouds Floated adown the vales, or darkling ran Up the green hillsides, white with wings that broke The blue abysmal spaces. To that isle Drifted Odysseus on the purple flood. Worn was he with his wanderings on the wave And buffetings of fate. But him the nymph Caught from the swirling currents of the deep ; i6i i62 THE POEMS OF J. B. O'HARA (Sole relic of the impious band that dared To harm the fateful herd of Helios), While to her heart sang pity, that on love's Bright summit, ever watching, waits to bring Divine forewarning of the mystic hour That sets all life to music, and makes earth Sweeter than any dreams the gods may give Of high Olympus. In his heart was born Glad gratitude, but never flower of love ; For still he heard, far off, a voice that called To his own rocky isle — Penelope's — And in his faith he showed more mighty far Than when around the walls of Ilion He was a name to shake the fears of men. And as a flower, beleagured by the gloom, Through some chance hand resumes its fellowship With light and air, and sudden breaketh forth In fragrant blossom, so her soul-flower grew Divinely in the splendid light of love, And drank the honeyed sweetness of the morn Of radiant passion, silently absorbed The dreaming glory of its noon of joy, And rested in its twilight of content. But him no kingdom of unfettered love. No promises of immortality. Could win a moment from his supreme vow. His olden loyalty. CALYPSO 163 So seven years long The jewel of her love shone lustreless To eyes tear-dimmed for Ithaca and home ; But in the casket of. her heart it lay Untarnished by indifference — serene In quiet beauty, there for evermore To be a glad triumphal memory Of love's all golden morning, and the dream That drew her soul first through the clouding mist Of ignorance, though now for ever doomed To know the pathos and the pain of love Unanswered, unrequited, unreturned. But when the eighth year shed the yellow leaves About her wasted vines, and sea-born clouds Bare off from all the torrent-nursing peaks The high pure sunlight, and the star that sings To sunset and sunrise, to her there came Fleet-footed Hermes, bidding the sweet nymph Speed forth her guest, and sadly she obeyed, For who may murmur when a god commands ? Then straightway did Odysseus frame a raft Of mountain ash and pine, and for the sails The nymph wove, night and day, a flaxen sheet Shot through with silken cords ; and when the deep Lay hushed in breathing slumber, and one wind Went doubting o'er the waters, one sad wind 1 64 THE POEMS OF /.- B. O'HARA Blowing seaward all her joy for evermore, She led him to the island's borderland — The limit of the ocean. On the wave He launched the raft and spread the eager sail, With eyes set seaward to their utmost bounds ; But she saw not, only about her moaned A chill grey wind, and chill grey mists arose And blotted out the land and sea and sky. IN MEMORY OF WHITTIER I THE dark year wanes. The glad hours swiftly bring Back to the flow'ry South the minstrel year ; Life quickens with the rapture of the spring, And woods awake with sounds of vernal cheer. But, ah, they bring not back to us again The voice whose notes of freedom clearer rang Than music loud of spring's reiterant strain, Notes sweet as ever morning singer sang. The blossom of his life is withered now Whose living perfume lingers through the night ; He sleeps in liquid slumber on whose brow Fame, faultless fame, set its supernal light. Yea, sleep is his, and all we know of sleep, The sudden joy of that diviner birth Whose mighty consummation is the deep, Strong love that stirs the pulses of the earth. For if beyond this life be purest bliss. And joys that breathe of happiness divine, And perfect peace more deep than slumber is. Where souls in undecaying beauty shine, 165 i66 THE POEMS OF J. B. O'HARA Where grief is not, nor touch of searing time, Where no sense quickens save in joys that Uve Immortal as the harmonies sublime The spheres in perfect diapason give, There surely none before the throne of Him More stainless stands, while hearkening to the roll Concordant of the raptured seraphim Hymning the advent of his sinless soul. There surely none who waked a deeper faith In goodness and the human love which fills Our hearts with hope that fearless looks on death. Though girdled with circumfluence of ills. For standing on life's tempest-shaken shore He kept his faith unbroken through the night Of dark despair, while leading evermore Man's struggling spirit upward to the light. And while the mighty morning rose and sang — The mighty morn of duty — none the less For him the voice of nature loudly rang, And glowed her deep ambrosial loveliness. And now the mother holds him to her breast. Where dreamlessly the sleeping singer lies. While folded in the raiment of white rest He wears the inviolate vesture of the skies. IN MEMORY OF WHITTIER 167 O deathless poet of the weeping West, O brave forerunner, sweet is thy release, — God gives to thee the shining gift of rest, Who gave to men the perfect gift of peace. II The singer sleeps ; but we who linger here In darkness from his perfect life will take A sweeter note of comfort. O'er the year The dewy blooms of spring in beauty break. Yet nature, flushed with radiance of flower. And sweet with resonance of wind and wave, Strews not to-day his bier with vernal dower. Nor glows around the quiet of his grave. Ah, no, the northern year falls leaf by leaf ; Him too she takes, ripe fruit of autumn bland, And influent the ebbless wave of grief Rolls sobbing o'er a loud-lamenting land. While nature lacks the sweet interpreter, The child she held with rapture to her breast, Whose love-enkindled spirit sang with her The songs of all things beautiful and best. Whose clear voice rang unbated where the din Of life made loud the beating heart of day ; Waxed strenuous with eager strength to win Truth trampled in life's unbelieving way. 1 68 THE POEMS OF J. B. O'HARA He saw with clearer eyes the flawless love That filled the universe, while round him fell The discord of rebellious sects that move The hinges of the jarring gates of hell. He saw proud freedom stripped of all her pride, Too frail to lift the burden of a flower, Saw slavery ubiquitously ride Triumphant on the topmost wave of power ; And with a voice whose trumpet note was clear He made his day a scorn of hate and lies, — The prophet of a dark, despairing year, He saw beyond the fringes of the skies. For him the light of duty ever cleft The darkness with the splendour of its flame ; Truth's low reveille called to right and left. And faith a living fact to him became. And when the hydra-headed fiends of wrong Departed, and old errors drooped and died, Truth blessed her bravest hierophant of song. Fame crowned him who had fought on freedom's side. And now the silence gathers o'er his head ; Yea, o'er his head the silence gathers now : Eternal rest ! — for down among the dead He slumbers with the laurel on his brow. IF THOU SHOULD'ST BE NO MORE IF thou should'st be no more, and pallid sleep, Discrowned of dreams, sit by thy quiet head. And set upon thy loveless lips the deep Dumb silences that clothe the naked dead With perfect peace, and all forgetfulness Of life's unending stress. Nature would change not. As of old her dawns Would dance through their wild rosary afar ; Her pale moon-maidens pace their lilied lawns. Plucking the fading blossoms of each star ; And wind and wave uplift, while life should be. The music of the sea. Nay, she'd rejoice. Her universal soul, Swift interfused with thine, would feel the thrill Of added beauty ; hear new echoes roll In refluent waves of music ; know thee still In fruit and flower, in song and leaf and tree, And earth's wild wizardry. But I would hold thee only in the thrall Of fevered dreams and visions of the night, Never again to hear the sweet voice call. Never again to see the sweet love-light Rain from thine eyes and flood my spirit o'er, — If thou should'st be no more. 169 THE NOVITIATE PALE as the lily when the rose is nigh, She leaned against the garden wall, and sighed To hear the glad, sweet carolling of spring — The song divine, whose subtle passion wakes The odorous life of beauty in lone wilds. Which stirs in leaf and blossom. Round her blew Balmiest buds with hearts of flowering gold That the green sheath embosomed. Heavenward shone The blue abysses, blue as her young eyes That gazed upon a green ambrosial world Of unveiled loveliness, whose sounds and sights Levelled the walls that girt her senses round. So that she looked on beauty raimented In glory and glow of light ineffable. And, looking, all her spirit spurned its bonds. Grey convent walls enclosed her darkly round In sombre loneliness, and frowned unfiowered. Save where the green, unaging ivy hid Time's traceries. But all about her feet In lovely riot ran the blossoming ways Of pink anemones and daffodils And deathless daisies, daphne, hyacinth. And lilacs proud, from the first purple bud To the blanched flower, and nestling violets Whose starry clusters opened bluest eyes, To watch the olden miracle of spring — Love's resurrection — when the earth renews 170 THE NOVITIATE 171 Its immortality. O'er all there gleamed The golden wattle-flower of sunny lands, Whose breath inhaled is as a draught divine Of heavenly fragrance. Far through heaven rang The magpie's music — one long note of joy — That crowned the season with delicious sense Of waking life. But, sweeter sound by far, There came to her the glad song and the shout Of life beyond the grim, grey convent walls ; The voice of merry children on the green, The lovely mirth of hope and youth and joy, Whereat her spirit faltered at the feet Of resolution, and her eyes grew full Of strange, vague longing for the happy hills. And careless laughter, of the great wide world That called her with the magic voice of spring, And, with a thousand happy memories. Back from the holy threshold of her vows. And, standing there, enringed with flowering gold, Caressed by winds innumerable, whose wings With fragrance fed the honey-hearted hours. And shook wild music out, till all heaven seemed A vibrant harp by very godhead tuned. She sighed her soul out to the winds of spring, As one who looks on love in death, and knows That nevermore, ah, nevermore in life Will sound for him the music of the voice That fed the amorous air. But suddenly O'er her soft pallor flushed the swift eclipse 172 THE POEMS OF J. B. O'HARA Of tremulous emotion, and she grew Red as the rose is when the Uly's nigh ; For near her stood, stoled in a robe of black. The grey, frail Mother of the sisterhood, Who, unobserved, had watched the passion-play Of feeling in a heart still young and warm. And restless with the longing and regret That chill age deadens. " Oh, my child," she said, " Let us give thanks to God that I have seen Your soul's revolt against the holy vow That we may never break when once we yield Our lives to His pure service. Better far Never to make than break a sacred pledge. For lack of reverence, that in these days Is too much at the heart of worldly things, Is the insidious spoiler of our youth. O, not for you, my child, are convent walls, That shut you out from every sight and sound Of that loud world, whose faintest echo thrills Your youthful senses." But the other : " Nay 'Tis but a vagrant longing in the blood When spring runs down the windy ways of gold, And with loud clarion fills the earth and sky, Breaking the dark abhorred trance of death." " Not so," replied the Mother ; " I am old And age hath wisdom's eyes. Ah, child, I see Youth in your face, and youth is a wild rose That loves the procreant sun and feverous wind, THE NOVITIATE 173 And every sound of chainless liberty In the wild garden-bed that nature ploughs With slanting rains, far from these quiet haunts Of dreaming meditation, where no thought Of worldly things may enter." Unto whom The maid replied, " But, surely sacrifice Of love and liberty, subduing flesh, Is sweet to Him, whose dying agony Made death recoil — the gentle Nazarene." " Yea, daughter, but such sacrifice must come Not from the vanity of youth, not from The swift impulses of the untried soul, Nor love's unreason. We must pass through fire Of deepest passion — love, and hate, and strife — (Far better suffer in a cause we love Than stand aloof in safe indifference) Ere we can say we understand ourselves. As yet you know not what life means, or love. Standing white-robed upon the sinless verge Of time that widens to eternity. These you must learn in that fierce, outer world Ere you can still the longing in the blood, That leaps with the delirious dance of spring. Go forth, my child — it is not yet too late — God loveth action. Action is to Him The sweetest prayer ; and, in life's busy round Weave the true pattern of your destiny. And learn the naked meaning of true life, And of the sacrifice God loveth best. 174 THE POEMS OF J. B. O'HARA " Go forth and learn of love — of love that makes The music of the march of life (I, too, Once heard it), love that is a tender flower, So frail that every insolent young wind Doth buffet it, and yet so strong, with roots Deep set in virtue's soil, 'twill ever cling To life's dark precipice, and bravely take The storms unbroken. Love will lead you safe To that far haven ringed with perfect peace, A green isle set in summers of deep rest. Which I have reached across a perilous sea, After long years of weariness and strife." HENRY KENDALL HE poured a draught of sweetest song From urns of deathless rhyme, To help our feeble feet along The ways he could not climb. Ah, well around his sea-kissed grave The land he loved may grieve. And speak with tongues of wind and wave Its loss from morn till eve. To-day the voice of praise we lift And sound our poet's name — Too late for him the golden gift, Too soon for us the shame ; For him whose civic crown was woe, Too late the wreath we shape, Who sang to all the winds that blow From York to Otway Cape. For us he wandered wide and wrought In nature's golden ground ; The gems of fancy, never bought, Our early poet found. 175 176 THE POEMS OF J. B. O'HARA O, ripening after harvest hours In ghstening fields, how sprang Around our lives the deathless flowers, The songs our poet sang. Till dreaming fancy softly heard Narrara wild and sweet ; Saw storied Ilia, never stirred By sound of stormy feet. And pictures of the past new drawn — The dark woods all aglow With rosy radiance of a dawn A hundred suns ago. May never flower of memory fade, While still by Waverley, Where his remembered shell is laid, There moans the restless sea. New sons of light with faultless art May challenge fame and time, But never one shall win our heart With sweeter gift of rhyme. A PIONEER ALL day the fiery summer heat Upon the blackened ranges beat ; All day the dreaded north wind blew, A wind of death, the forest through ; All day the smoke of rushing fires Hid the low ranges' distant spires, And filled the valley-lands with dun Clouds, hiding all the light of day, And wrapping in their folds av/ay The red disk of the angry sun. But hark, the south wind ! and a change Blew its loud trumpets on the range ; And all the hills took heart and flung Aside the curtains day had hung Above their sleep ; but darker grev/ The sky, like sorrow bent o'er pain ; And the glad welcome of the rain Out of the cloudy bastions blew. And as upon the range the cloud Big with new life its body bowed, In phantom guise the hills appeared, By javelins of the grey rain speared. Till suddenly the sheeted gale Swept floodlike through the roaring vale. m ^77 178 THE POEMS OF J. B. O'HARA Nor whip nor spur had power to force Against the rain the weary horse ; Dismounting, now the tired steed Along the sideHng track I lead. No prospect, save to be the guest Of darkness and of wild unrest ; For twilight now had clothed the range With stormy night's unwelcome change. But lo, across the darksome road A cheerful homelight sudden glowed ; The watch-dog's voice upon the wind Gave greeting loud, though all unkind ; And, 'mid the storm's unceasing roar. The shifting light, the opening door, The burly form, the shaded eyes, And the loud voice of deep surprise. Long years have passed, but memory still Recalls that homestead on the hill ; Recalls the kindly welcome given To me, a stranger, on that even. How glowed the honest host the while The good wife, with her gentle smile, Prepared the homely meal, — to me As rich as was the fabled feast Of the false Caliph of the East That graced one night of sovereignty. A PIONEER 179 Yea, years have passed, and I recall Again on memory's frescoed wall That picture of the happy past. Without, the wild rain-beaten blast Thundered, and on the rattling pane Flapped with his stormy wing in vain. And, baflflled in his anger, blew Defiance down the chimney-flue. Within, the great logs flaming bright Made less the feeble candle-light ; And joyous threw a glad surprise On childhood's laughing cheeks and eyes, Wherein life freshest beauty won. And the glad fifth blue summer shone. We sat before the ruddy fire And watched the truant sparks expire ; And blev/, in brooding attitude, Aloft the grey and curling cloud, More restful as without we heard The whistling gums by storm-winds stirred, The rushing rains, with wide wings fleet, The wild heart of the black night beat. " How uneventfully life fills Its cycles on the changeless hills," Half to myself I musing said. Whereat he slowly shook his head : " 'Tis true ambition holds no throne Kock-hewed upon the hills of stone ; l8o THE POEMS OF J. B. O'HARA For home she needs the ceaseless strife, The lust of living for her life, Where ruthlessly she weareth down Body and soul to win the crown Which, as Hy-Brazil, only hath Form on the dreamer's golden path. Yet here life is an endless round From dawn till evening's brow, rose-bound. Pales low above the western bower ; Yea, e'en till night's first harvest hour, With silver sickle in its hand, Reaps the dark shadows on the land. " But, friend, if you will list awhile With willing ear, I may beguile An hour to tell thee of the strange, The old, wild life upon the range ; The early struggles, hopes, and fears, When life, set in a fresher frame. Saw all the world with flower aflame And love the crown of all its years ; Yea, revelled in the brief, bright time When hope was in its morning prime, And on the dial-plate the shade Of time a noteless pathway made." He paused, then rose and slowly went Toward the window, while he bent His shaded eyes to pierce the gloom Grosser than of the vaulted tomb ; A PIONEER i8i And for a listening space he stood Silent in lowly attitude. His ear was lent unto the gale, Eager to catch its stormy tale : " A wild night, truly ! Such a one I just recall. A twentieth sun Has passed since then, and time has shed Its alien snows on heart and head, Its bitter griefs, its deadening care That mortal hearts could never bear Without the inward sense that brings Assurance of Love's perfect day When, freed from its imprisoning clay. The soul upsoars on mounting wings. " Scarce twenty fleeting summers sped With shining blossoms o'er my head When first I settled in this wild, Where unfamiliar nature smiled ; Alone I lived, alone I won The naked lands from sun to sun. Till I could drive my flocks afield With hope of each year's swelling yield. Still by the creek my old hut stands, The sentinel of vanquished lands ; There night by night 1 heard the call Soul-piercing of the warrigal ; Yea, even in the daytime howled The wild-dog, as he restless prov/led 1 82 THE POEMS OF J. B. 'O'HARA Hard by the rude stone-fashioned dam, Waiting the coming of the lamb. Ah, friend, thy young heart little knows How great and manifold the foes That hard beset the pioneer In early days, from year to year ; The ruthless devastation done. The wasted days, the profits gone, The bitter struggles ere the year Bore the least flower that hope might wear. Yet hope was mine, for youthful-limbed I held my faith through years undimmed To win a home for one whose eyes Outlit the glowing summer skies ; For love can fill the deepest night, Sweet gift of God, with fadeless light, And hallow every meadow where Its blossoms take the sun and air. Yea, love is that sweet light which brings To us the glimpse of angel wings, And with the glow of passion warm Flecks our dark skies of endless storm. " Each year the bush-fires on the range Blasted the land with sudden change ; And often by my very door I heard the fiery furnace roar ; Yea, often heard on hills afar A sound as of wild waves at war, A PIONEER 183 As scrub and bush and giant tree Were clasped in death's extremity By that devouring monster grim That feeds on log and fallen limb ; Have seen the dingoes speed in vain To win the wide and treeless plain ; The diamond and the carpet snake In writhing terror flee the brake ; The hissing tiger shun the strife, For once solicitous of life, As over voice of beast and bird The roaring sound was ever heard Of crackling flame and falling tree, And dying nature's agony ; While from the fields, with smoke aswim, Barely escaped with life and limb The fearful herds. ' Thereafter days They roamed among untrodden ways ; And often weary weeks I spent In the deep scrub's entanglement, Tracing the truants, till I grew Weary and half heart-broken too, Pondering the promise of the spring, Blasted by summer's fiery wing. " And ever when the bush-fire flung Its flaming spears the hiljs among The log-built fences, could they speak, Would tell the tale how week by week i84 THE POEMS OF J. B. O'HARA I toiled amid the plenitude Of blackened timber, wasted wood, Sad relic of the lithe-limbed scourge ; And, friend, thou sawest e'en to-day How all the land in darkness lay, Cloud-crested to the furthest verge. " And when those years had passed, and still Love held me with his sweet wild will, I builded on the clear hillside. And took unto myself a bride ; And all the world, aflower meseemed. Was what in younger days I dreamed, When first young love upon me laid The glory of his accolade. Then round my life there daily grew The higher aims of life, anew Created by the influence Born of a higher, loftier sense : For woman, since the world began, Moulds by her will imperfect man ; Around his rougher days she flings The beauty of her finer life, And, fashioned by a noble wife, From purer life a purest springs. So happy seasons passed, and still From plenty's golden horn outpoured A PIONEER 185 Rich gifts around the smihng board, And of sweet blessings we took fill; But ever with a thankful sense For His all-gracious providence, And ever with a heartfelt prayer For gifts of sun and rain and air. " Four children filled our hearts with glee A little while, — ah me ! ah me ! Three perished. Now we look in vain To meet their sunrly smiles again ; Three golden heads are lying low Where forest winds their perfume blov/, Where wattles breathing spring's delight O'erhang a little fretting stream, And white rails to the daylight gleam, Or ghost-like glimmer in the night. We miss them when the morning breaks Across the hills in rosy streaks ; When noontide slumbers on the slope, When evening dons her grey-hued cope ; When night is on the listening land. Ah, fancy takes us by the hand, And then a little while, my friend, A little while of pain we spend. Yes, they are gone. Ah, faith, be near To whisper with thy voice of cheer That nothing dies ; that all is change As through the cycles vast we range ; i86 THE POEMS OF J. B. O'HARA That life may be but death, and death True life, when ceases living breath ; That we will hear through love again, After brief discipline of pain, The old-time voices that were more To us than heaven's eternal store. We listen for the joy that shone, We wait for them beneath the trees ; The old loved paths with melodies Are loud, but ah, the voices gone ! " Now one alone is left where four Played like the sunshine round the door ; Yes, he alone is left to fill The aching void that ever will Be of our lives a silent part, To purify the errant heart, And teach us how all things decay. Enduring but the briefest day. So may we learn, by grief made wise. Life perfect blooms beyond the skies." And here the speaker bowed his head. Grief-stung with memory of the dead ; But, as the serpent-sorrow passed Swift as the wild wing of the blast, He spoke again in cheerful mood Of life and life's vicissitude ; A PIONEER 187 And wondered, if in coming years Such men as were our pioneers Would rise beneath benignant skies To guide AustraHa's destinies. " Yea, friend," I said, " the coming race Will proudly fill the vacant place ; Such sires, my worthy friend, as ye Beget no craven progeny. All honour to the pioneers Who fought the battle of wild years With dauntless heart and courage high, Winning a bloodless victory Within the fairest land whereon Shineth alway the golden sun. " And thou art one ; and like to thee Yon golden-headed boy will be — Type of that island race, with all Whose glory every sea-wind rings, Of whose vast empire we are wings That ruffie at the foeman's call. " Still, still the southern land will grow, Made great by no world's overthrow. Made mighty by no nation's loss. While light will fill her Southern Cross. 1 88 THE POEMS OF J. B. O'HARA Her sons will wake the lyre whose strong Clear notes will stir the South with song, And, wafted on the winds, will be Borne past her own inviolate sea. Her statesmen, pilots of her fate, Will firmly hold the helm of state, Wisely and just ; one thought for all Moving the nation's seneschal ; Till brotherhood from sea to sea Acclaim with pride — one nation we ! " JEPHTHA'S DAUGHTER UPON the lone Judasan hills the day Fulfilled the promise of the fiery year ; The winds beneath the noon-impassioned sky- Fell fainting for the tenderness of dawn Whose dewy kiss had left no gracious growth, No memory of the green ways of the spring, In noontide hollows where the leaf was mute. No voice, no murmur broke the breathless trance Of silence, save the ceaseless sound wherewith The locust pierced her blue mid-hour of dreams, In that dream-land deep sunk in summer rest. The painted butterfly, a brief bright flash Of stained splendour, sought no swift delight In airy cradles of the mountain flower ; For the soft pastures of the young green spring Were deep embrowned to the lowest vale, While in the far mid-heaven's blue abyss, Inviolated, floated not one least White cloud of hope. Beneath a pine tree stood The sad-eyed daughter of the warrior Who smote the Ammonites. In her dark eyes There grew eternal sorrow — those dark eyes That mirrored all the beauty of the world. Her hair hung low, a ruflled thunder-cloud, In clustered beauty on her shoulders bare. Her cheeks were pale with that ethereal 189 I90 THE POEMS OF J. B. O'HARA Soft touch of loveliness whose bliss bestows A kingdom on its lover. In the light Of melancholy beauty stood the maid, A shadow ringed with splendour, for her heart Was heavy, and the river of her tears. Cradled in sorrow's depths immeasurable, O'erbrimmed the yielding barrier of her eyes. Against her bosom pressed her delicate hands As they would still the tumult of her heart, Its melancholy music ; and her long Dark showery tresses mixed a space with them, As to the cold unconscious hills she spake And emptied her full heart of half its pain, And half of its dark sorrow. " Woe is me. For now the sands of life are running thin, The last hour trickles to its doom and dies, Here where, O everlasting hills, ye lapped My youth and folded me in happy arms. And held my wandering fancies. In your dells I knew the joy of nature's many moods. Its flying splendours. Saw the naked soul Of passion in its tempests. Heard the wild Waste music of the spring, or watched the grave Procession of the painted autumns go Across the lands of ruined gold and red ; Yea, heard the roaring of the forest sea What time the unblest winds of winter cursed The howling glens, and whipped the naked trees That shivered through the moonless nights of storm JEPHTHA'S DAUGHTER 191 Like ghosts for ever chained to grief and time. But now the brief hour trembles to its doom, And dark necessity, that fateful vow, Doth bid me leave the playmates of my youth While youth still grasps me by its fervent hand, Keen, irresistible, as when the dawn. Precipitating brightness, withers night With the intolerable shafts of day. Yea, now the sun of life is setting. Death, The dark abomination, draweth near ; I hear his muffled footsteps and his breath Thickens about me and the lights grow dim. Accursed vov/ that doomed me to the grave Ere yet I felt love's wild delirium That touches life with immortality ! Alone amid the maidens of my youth. Unloved, unwed, uncomforted, unblest. With soul laid naked to the winds of grief I walk the barren way of life to death Where all of high and low in equal state Meet on the dim division of the worlds Of mortal and immortal. Woe is me ! Unwed ! Unwed ! I who in other days Had fondly dreamt a mother's dreams and saw In unimagined glory stretching out The line ancestral to the promised birth Of the Messiah, — yea, saw love and home Where harmony, and joy like angels sit Filling the heart with glad beatitudes ; 192 THE POEMS OF J. B. O'HARA For I was all a woman and I felt Those dim maternal instincts — God's own gift — To sweeten woman in whose heart he set Love, earth's necessity, to solace pain, Virtue that sheds on earthly woe the light Of Heaven's immeasurable recompense, And faith that disciplines the soul to trust. And patience sitting with undaunted mien Under the shadow of life's solemnities ; Yea, and that gentleness in suffering That blesses and is blest. With these she moves, Rich clothed with radiance of angelic love, And the sweet raiment of pity most divine, And meekest reverence. Unwed ! Unwed ! Ah not for me the perfect joy to clasp That precious jewel of a woman's life, A tender child — a rosebud bursting forth From the green covert of love's doubting fears Into the girdling sunlight of glad hope. Nay, not for me to watch the first faint smiles Of dawning love, — to feel the woman rush Into mine eyes as in youth's garden wild 1 watch the rose lose half its heart to him, And in his eye behold the mirrored hue Of violets, and on his tender lip The rich carnation's glov/ing loveliness, While o'er his sunny face run dimpled smiles Racing like lights, when in a driving, sky The sudden rifts of rushing blue uncloud And heaven speaks in lines of golden light. JEPHTHA'S DAUGHTER 193 Not mine to watch the growth of sturdy years In the young frame, made strong by love to meet The ceaseless buffet of the roaring tides Of life and wrestle with the iron years, And the fierce strife for unpredestined power. Nor with a mother's pride behold in him High thoughts, far brighter than the moonless stars. Lighten the green fields of his loving heart ; Hope whose bright eyes outshine the living light Of dawn, and joy with parted lips, and dreams That youth and fancy ever love to weave In meadowy glories of the breaking spring. While yet upon smooth hinges move the gates Of life ere years do rust them, till they grate To every passion gust. Ah woe, alas ! Ah empty aching of my yearning heart ! Would 1 could mingle in the common round Of common things — a woman amid women — With reverence and pure deep love for home. And all the bliss of calm domestic joys Where love doth like a sunflower still unfold In the sweet light of earthly paradise. But vain my empty wailing. Lo, the noon Has left the blue mid-heaven and the day Has drunk the sunlight from the sleeping hills. O bitter waiting, stretching dim and dark To what far end I know not, — this I know, That where it ends there will be happy rest. And quiet sleep, unvexed by troubled dreams, Far from the moaning noises of the world," n "FROM THE CITY I LOVED" FROM the city I loved, where the shrine of my youth was set, I fled afar from a love that fate denied ; And I said : " In a land of summer I will forget Her face that is fairer than aught in the world beside, And the pain of the heart, and its hunger unsatisfied. And the cry of passionate longing and wild regret That ever our lives in their circling orbits met In a blind conjunction of love in a world so wide." But her eyes were there in the blazing starry light. Her cheek in the rose of the golden sun's decline, Her voice in the low sweet wind of summer and night, And her grace in the sweep of the corn and the droop of the vine ; And from every gem in the ring on memory's hand A light that I deemed was dead shone over the land. 194 IN MEMORY OF SWINBURNE O SWEET dead singer, gone dov/n to the shadowy portal That swings not out from the world of the silent dead — The last of the sons of the mighty mother immortal, Fair fame, who laid her hands on thy laurelled head In years when thy blood ran red — Now the face of thy goddess is pale as she stands repeating Faint murmurs of honey'd songs from lips too mute ; While the hands of thy Proserpine are stretched in greeting, As she gathers from death's wan tree her fairest fruit — The flower of his terrene root. And the dreams that rained on thy spirit, as dew on petals Of buds too faint from the parent breast to rise ; And the winged fancies, bright as the blood that settles About the heart of a cloud when the hunter plies His bow in the eastern skies, Have faded now ; but the thoughts that feed our sorrow What hour shall slay, ere time and his griefs lie slain ? O singer of sweetest songs, no sunbright morrow, No anguished cry of our love shall give us again One hour of thy rhythmic reign. 195 196 THE POEMS OF J. B. O'HARA The breast of the grey sea thrills for the passionate lover Whose soul she made as a harp with faultless strings, Whose music and song like a sea-ghost round her hover, For love dies not, though the nest of its fiery wings Goes down to the dark of things. We praise thee dead, whose fame as a star is deathless, While death holds fast the lips that were slow to blame ; In the heaven-lit sphere of our love, where hate lies breathless, The singers eternal, clothed with the light of fame, Thee brother and peer acclaim. EPICEDE GEORGE ESSEX EVANS NOW summer o'er the sunbright fields of foam, Flushed with flower-coloured visions, softly flies On honeyed wings back to her island home, Back to the South of singing memories. She brings again the shadowless young hours, Laughter and triumph, glory and gift of song, Thoughts brighter than the dews that feed her flowers In scented lands where rain-washed roses throng. But vain her gifts who cannot give us thee, Thee whom the supreme Hour with silent tread Has gathered to the pale Persephone, In lands where sounds no farewell from the dead. Alas, too soon, O brother, thou hast gone The silent way of shadows, and no more For me the joyous light, the love that shone When last beneath the lintel of thy door With thee I stood, or on the westward range Of thy loved city, never dreaming soon Thy heaven, shadowless of cloud, could change In the green pleasance of thy life's high noon. 197 iqS the poems of J. B. O'HARA With thee I watched the purple patches twined Round their eternal towers, or saw the mist Its slunnberous arms about the valley wind, Or wavering spires of smoke-wrought amethyst. A glorious land of mountain and of plain, A land beloved, O singer dead, of thee — Love surely she will give thee back again, And fadeless fame and deathless memory. For thou wert one with all her hopes sublime. Her mighty dreams of god-like destiny. Her purpose vast, to rise with radiant time, The lordliest commonweal that man may see. Where justice on her spotless gleaming throne, And wisdom, gazing seaward with wide eyes, And love, with heavenly mantle round her thrown, Should hail bright hope beneath her warless skies. The East holds not the fiery dawn ; the West The rosy star of sunset. In eclipse All things decay. The seal of silent rest Is softly set upon life's fervid lips. Thou, too, art silent — silent as the streams Bound by the spell imperious winter wrought ; The radiant incarnation of thy dreams No more shall flush the pallid brows of thought. EPICEDE 199 No more the music of thy heart like light Shall leap to life ; no more thought upward climb The clouded heaven of doubt, or, deep as night, The labyrinthine ways of faith and time. Farewell ! Thou hast gone forth an honoured name To the bright starry throng in love's abode, And left a light upon the hills of fame For feet grown weary with the long grey road. Farewell ! Thy spirit walks the happier way, The deep, dark way of insubmissive death, To roam in fields Elysian where the day Feeds all its fires with love's diviner breath. Farewell ! In fame's eternal sphere of light Immortal thou abidest. We a few Blind seasons weave the web that glimmers bright Ere the noon drains the petalled urn of dew. FLINDERS HE left his island home For leagues of sleepless foam, For stress of alien seas, Where wild winds ever blow ; For England's sake he sought Fresh fields of fame, and fought A stormy world for these, A hundred years ago. Perchance, he saw in dreams Beside our sunlit streams In some majestic hour Old England's banners blow ; Mayhap, the radiant morn Of this great nation born, August with perfect power, A hundred years ago. We know not — yet for thee Far may the season be. Whose harp in shameful sleep Is soundless lying low. Far be the noteless hour That holds of fame no flower For those who dared our deep A hundred years ago. 200 THE COAAONWEALTH (AN ODE) THE COMMONWEALTH L (an ode) 1 O ! 'tis the light of the morn Over the mountains breaking, And our empire's day is born, The life of a nation waking To the triumph of regal splendour, To the voice of conquering fate, To the rising hopes that send her Fearless upon her way With no thoughts of her yesterday, But dreams of a mighty state. Blest be the men who brought her. Freedom's starriest daughter. Out of the night Into the light, A power and a glory for evermore ! — Let the old world live in the pages Time wrote in the dark of the ages, For us 'tis the light of the morning breaking on sea and on shore. II They found her a maiden with dower Only of seasons sunny, Blue skies and the forest flower Rich to its heart with honey, 203 204 THE POEMS OF J. B. O'HARA And the joy of her glad seas flinging Their voices on fairy strands Where only the winds' soft singing Broke on the sleep of day, Or a whistling spear by the dim green way Of the water and the lands. Green were the woodlands round her, Blue were the seas that bound her ; Streams and dells And the mountain wells. And the voice of the forest were hers alone, And the life of the grim grave ranges, The night and the noon and the changes Of light on the topmost peaks when the rose of the dawn was blown. Ill Brave were the hearts that came Over the warring water ; Not with the loud acclaim Of banner and trumpet they sought her ; Nay, in the secret places, The dells and the woods, they toiled Till the woods by the axe despoiled Were widened to sunny spaces ; But bitter the task each year With the flood and the savage spear And the famine they fought and foiled, THE COMMONWEALTH 205 Winning through toil's defiance, Endurance and self-reHance, The victory great That has fashioned a State And crowned the splendour that dims our eyes ; As the century's dawn breaks gleaming, While the dead East still lies dreaming. We rise in a sacred year with our face to the morning skies. IV With face to the morn of pride, But thoughts of the brave now sleeping In the green graves scattered wide In the land of heroic reaping ; In the fields of their brave endeavour They wrote on the rugged face Of valley and range for ever The signs of the power that drew Its life from the dauntless few. Outposts of a victor race. They lived for their land, for their land they died. With her dust they are mixed in death : Now the years may come and the years may go. Time may silver our heads with snow, But as long as her seasons break and blow, And as long as her sons draw breath, Will memory blossom in flowers of pride From their dust by the four winds scattered wide 2o6 THE POEMS OF J. B. O'HARA On the breast that bears to-day Tower and dome and steeple, With banners of triumph gay, And the flags of a free-born people Who have conquered in bloodless battle, In wars that have heard no groan Of a nation overthrown, Nor the cannon's direful rattle ; Who have seen no tyrant power Lording a little hour Splendid with ruin alone ; Nor a pilot of evil fate At the helm of a doubting State. Nay, they have seen but splendour Of peace in the joyous lands, Peace that bears in the tender Palms of her delicate hands The sweetest gift Life loves to sift From out her golden sands. Lo, on her south lands where are The grasses the green loves best, In her shadowy valleys fairer For rivers that know not rest. The gleam of her fleeces million, The virfe of her sunlight born. But north, where the golden morn Goes forth from the sun's pavilion THE COMMONWEALTH 207 With splendor of kingly mail, Are herds on an endless trail, And downs that are rich with corn. Her west is a wonder golden, Her east, to the sea beholden, For ever waits By her iron gates For the laden keels of the mighty States, And the argosies Of the lands at ease, The Edens set in the summer seas. VI Now raise the million voice Of jubilation ; let the heavens ring With such a cry as v/hen they claimed their King ; Let freedom now rejoice. No more shall hydra-headed error part Sisters long one in heart ; No more shall selfish aims Defeat the force of fate. While right true-hearted frames The charter of a State, And duty holds aloft her awful rod. And order — the first mighty law of God — Springs heavenward elate. Arise ! lift up thy head. To the new century wed, 2o8 THE POEMS OF J. B. O'HARA O, State, whose glory unbegot of wars, Of pain and suffering And horrid births that bring To life the bloody woes that peace abhors, Is a new parable of Him Whose holy ways through peace led to the seraphim. VII Lift up thine honored head ! The skies are all aflame ; The East to morn is wed ; Lift up thine honored head. And fearless keep thy fame ! With strength, that fails not, keep Thy pathway bright with good ; Let honor, justice, sweep Aside the weeds that creep — Grim error, unbelief. And their Titanic brood : Be thine the task to rear The spacious halls of art. To hearken to sweet song ; Be thine the pride to fear No foe while in thy heart The love of truth is strong ; To help the weak, and be Beloved and great and free. Even as thy mighty mother — the grey queen of the sea ! January, 1901. Walker, May and Co., Printers, 429-431 Bourke-st., Melbourne. LMVERSITV OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. Form L9-Serie8 4939 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY AA 000 375 222 7 .•I-,- ■!>?{', .1?-'