M £bc Canterbury ipocts. Edited uy William Sharp. AUSTRALIAN BALLADS. FULL USX OF THE VOLUMES IN THIS 5ERJU v ( END OF BOOK. qnfrUSTRALIAN BALLADS AND J^^LOTHER poems, selected AND EDITED BY DOUGLAS B. W. SLADEN, B.A. Oxon. ; B.A., LLB, Melbourne. ■(7/ SECOND EDITION. LONDON : WALTER SCOTT, LIMITED, 24 WARWICK LANE. NEW YORK : 3 EAST FOURTEENTH STREET. Gbfs Xfttle volume, Inspired by Life in the Greater Britain Under the Southern Cross, 3s S>eMcate^ TO THE ENGLISH OF THREE CONTINENTS. We all are sprung from men who fought at Crecy ; We all were Englishmen when Shakspeare wrote ; And we are still compatriots in esse, Though called Australians, Yankees, and what not. Yes, we are English : centuries will find us Living in homes with old familiar names Of England's towns and battles, to remind us That we, who now are pilgrims, have our claims To those whom Westminster entombs in glory, To Devonshire's sea kings and Chaucer's Tales, To Wiclif and the proud Armada Story, Alfred the Great, and him who conquered Wales. vi DEDICATION. We all are English, one in our devotion, Whether the York we boast be old or New, And whether Boston face the German Ocean, Or have the broad Atlantic in her view. Wc all are English, though new Melbourne poses Upon Port Philip as a southern queen, And old in dales of Derbyshire still dozes, A fit handmaiden for a rustic scene. We all are English, born in one great union Of blood and language, History and song, All English, and to cherish our communion We will present a common front to wrong. Douglas B. W. Sladen. CONTENTS. The Dedication. pace To the English of Three Continents v Douglas B. W. Sladen in Australian Lyrics. Anonymous. A Voice from the Bush. Temple Bar . . I Austral. Fairyland. The Australasian ... 5 A Spring Afternoon, New Zealand. Th>; Australasian 6 Austealie. From the Clyde to Braid wood. The Balata e of Pain 8 The Explorer's Message. The Balance of Pain 13 Alex. W. Bathgate. Our Heritage. N.Z. Papers . , .20 The Moko-Moko (Bell Bird). N.Z. Papers . 22 H. H. Blackham. Forsaken Homes and Graves . . .19 John Bright. When I am Dead. Wattle Blossoms and Wild Flowers 263 Vlll CONTENTS. Jennings Carmichael. page Tomboy Madge. Weekly Times, Melbourne . 24 Alfred T. Chandler. Bess. A Bush Idyll 28 Catching the Coach. A Bush Idyll . . 31 A Bush Idyll. A Bush Idyll ... 34 Marcus Clarke. Lines in a Lady's Album J. F. Daniell. The Jubilee of Melbourne. Times Rhymes for the 26 38 Alfred Domett. The Prelude. Hanoi/ and A mohia . . 40 The Legend of Tawhaki. Ranolf and Amohia -\2 The Haunted Mountain. Ranolf and, Amohia 4S The Tink Terraces. Ranolf and Amohia . 50 Lindsay Duncan. Christinas Guests. Adelaide Paper . . 55 William Forster. Then are there Gods indeed ? etc. Midas . 5S Frances Tyrrell Gill. The Wind in the She-oak. The Australasian &2 Beneath the Wattle Boughs. The Australasian 0'4 Love's Loyalty. The Australasian . . 65 KEu:nr,hYGooDCJiiLi>. While the Billy Boils. Who are you . 07 CONTENTS. ix Adam Lindsey Gordon. page The Sick Stock- Rider. Volume published by Massina & Co C9 The Exile's Farewell. Temple Bar . . 73 Henry Halloran. Vide Introduction ..... Charles Harpur. The Cloud. Volume published by Geo. Robertson & Co 75 The Creek of the Four Graves. Volume pub- lished by Geo. Robertson, & Co. . . 78 A Storm on the Mountains. Volume pub- lished by Geo . Robertson & Co. . . t>6 The Aboriginal Mother's Lament. Volume published by Geo. Robertson & Co. . 9i E. S. Hay. Ideal Beauty. N.Z. Papers ... 93 Thomas Heney. The Hut on the Flat. Fortunate Days . 94 FHILIP J. HOLDSWORTH. My Queen of Dreams. Station- limiting on the Warrego . . . . . .104 Station-Hunting on the Warrego. Station Hunting on the Warrego . . .105 R. H. Horne. Vide Introduction. x CONTENTS. John Howell. Page Selections from the Cantata. Rose-leaves from an Australian Garden . . .120 John Liddell Kelly. • The Arrival at Tahiti. Tahiti, the Land of Love and Beauty 121 Henry Kendall. Vide Introduction Frances Sesca Lewin. The Story of Abel Tasman. Songs of the South 122 George Gordon McCrae. Balladeadro. Balladeadro . . . .125 Arthur Patchett Martin. The Cynic of the Woods. Fernshaive . . J4;> A Romauce in the Eough. Femshawe . 145 A Bush Study, a la Watteau. Femshawe . 147 The Storm. Fernshaive .... 150 My Cousin from Pall Mall. Fernshaive . 151 E. G. Millard. The Black Warrigal Horse. Sydney Mail . 155 Agnes Neale. Australia. Adelaide Papers . . .158 The Blue Lake — Mt. Gambier. Adelaide Papers 161 Sir Henry Park is. Solitude. The Beauteous Terrorist . . 164 ROBVBl RlOHABDSON. On the River. Sydney Echo . . .105 CONTENTS. xi J. Steele Robertson. Page Musk Gully, Dromona. Melbourne University Review 168 J. Howell Ross. In Memoriam : Henry Kendall. Melbourne University Review 1G9 Tercy Russell. The Birth of Australia. Tasmanian Paper . 171 J. Sadler. The Proclamation Tree. Adelaide Paper . 172 William Sharp. Bell Birds. Earth's Voices . . . .174 The Stock Driver's Ride. Earth's Voices . 175 In the Ranges. Earth's Voices . . . 178 Australian Transcripts. Earth's Voices . 179 Charles Allan Sherard. Solaced. The Australasian . . .184 Lost in the Mallee. The Australasian . 18'J Satan's Ganymede. The Australasian . 190 Douglas Brooke Wheelton Sladex. The Squire's Brother. Frithjof and Ingebjorg. and Australian Lyrics . . . 194 Out West in Queensland. A ustralian Lyrics . 204 To Australia. Australian Lyrics (2nd Ed.) . 205 Mrs Watson, a Queensland Heroine. Aus- tralian Lyrics ..... 210 A Christmas Letter. A Poetry of Exiles (2nd Edition) 213 xii CONTENTS. A. C. Smith. page The Bushman. Australian Paper . .216 Walter Smith. . The Drought. The Death of Oswald . . 261 J. Brunton Stephens. The Midnight Axe. The Queenslander . 218 The Black Gin. Convict Once and other Poems . 231 My other Chinee Cook. Convict Once and other Poems 235 Drought and Doctrine. Convict Once and other Poems 238 James Thomas. To a Water Wagtail. Australian Paper . 242 Garnet Walch. The Little Tin Plate. The Little Tin Plate . 245 Wool is up. The Little Tin Plate . . 252 Wool is Down. The Little Tin Plate . . 254 William Charles Wentworth. Australasia. Briton's Poets and Prose Writers of N.S.W. . . . .256 Envoi. Thomas L. Work. To Caxton. Printer's Keepsake . . .261 Notes 205 A Study of Hknky Kendall as a Kusji Poet . 277 INTRODUCTION. AUSTRALIA is the country of the future Separated by oceans from every consider- able land except impenetrable and equa- torial New Guinea, blessed with an unmalarious climate more brilliant and equable than that of Italy, and peopled from the most adventurous of the colonising Anglo-Saxon stock, this round world in the far South-eastern seas gives race- development its amplest scope. The vigorous man must be strangely constituted who does not love Australia, with its glittering air, its vast space, its infinite possibilities ; and strangely constituted the light-hearted girl who does not revel in its pleasure-days unspoiled by rain, its lustrous nights secure from chill. Those who have contributed to this volume are for the most part people who love the free xiv INTRODUCTION. air of the mountain-top, and the mysterious- ness of the forest, the fierce excitement of race and chase, the honest thrill of manly sports, and the glory of nature — from the magnificent Aus- tralian sky down to the fringed violet or the azure wren. Not a few of them have, in what Gordon calls the "old colonial days," had their lives hang- ing on a thread in the perilous march of explo- ration or guerilla warfare with bushrangers and aborigines. This volume is essentially the work of people who have meditated in the open air, and not under the lamp ; and if its contents often- times want the polish that comes only with much midnight oil, they are mostly a transcript from earth and sea and sky, and not from books. Not that Australia has lacked poets like her own child Kendall, as smooth as a pebble polished with the tireless patience of the waves. But these are the exceptions, and we confess that for the most part we hope to please the reader with what our poets have to say, rather than the way in which they say it. What is the raison (Vetre of this book ? A Scotch paper, well known for the soundness of its criticisms, in referring to it, laid down that to be of any value it must be confined to the productions of Australian natives. This, then, would be an anthology of Australian verse into which admission INTRODUCTION. xv was denied to Adam Lindsey* Cordon, the poet par excellence of "the old colonial days," to Alfred Domett, the immortaliser of the lost Pink Terraces of New Zealand, to Brunton Stephens, to Marcus Clarke, to William Wentworth (born in Norfolk Island), and half a dozen others whose names are household words in Australia. Indeed, the only two poets popular beyond the borders of their own particular colony, who were born in Australia, are Charles Harpur and Henry Kendall. What, then, is its raison d'etre f To lay before the English public A SELECTION OF poems in- spired BY LIFE AND SCENERY IN AUSTRALIA. Such being the case, no further answer is necessary to the clever New Zealand writer in The Weekly Press, who urged that by this limitation much of the best work of many colonial writers would be excluded, and indeed, by implication, that all local poetry is a mistake. This volume is a collection of local poetry. Poems by Austral- asian colonists on non-Australasian subjects will find their fitting place in the larger anthology of Australasian poems which the editor is preparing for Messrs. Griffith, Farran, & Co., in which the * It has been customary to spell Gordon's name Lindsay ; but in the Register of Cheltenham College, presumably lilled in by his father, who was a master, his name is given as Adam Lindsey Gordon. xvi INTRODUCTION. only limitation is that the poems should be by Australian or New Zealand colonists. There are, however, a very few poems in the volume in which our limitation has not been enforced : they have only been admitted where some one who was a pillar of literature in Australia yet wrote nothing at once Australian in colouring and sufficiently poetical. Such a man was William Forster, one of the most distinguished of Australian writers. His " Devil and the Governor," almost his only Australian piece, is of historical success, but not as a poem, and he therefore had to be represented from "Midas" — his posthumous work, finished in the rough only, but a great poem, rival- ling in parts the facility and felicity of the " Ranolf and Amohia" of the New Zealand Lucretius. The next questions that may occur to the reader will perhaps be, Why have we so little of Gordon ? Why does Kendall only appear in the introduction ? Where is Home? Surely these are the poets of whom we hear most from Australians. To answer in inverse order : the author of " Orion " (the poem which its author thought so unacceptable to the public that he published the first three editions at one farthing, and which proved so acceptable that ten editions of it have been sold already) wrote very little inspired by Australia, and that little not conspicuously good, INTRODUCTION. xvii but he would have been represented in the volume, as would Kendall, if their representatives had vouchsafed their consent ; but the editor was wholly unsuccessful in eliciting any proof of their existence, and the publisher of this series is serving the cause of internat onal copyright by ordering that the author's consent shall be obtained in every case — an order that has been observed with only three exceptions, noticed in their places. As no permission had been sent for Kendall to be repre- sented in the text, an essay, with numerous illustra- tions, has been devoted to his work as a Bush poet. With Gordon the case was different. The real author of a poem which has brought Gordon much popularity, ' A Voice from the Bush," not only freely gave his permission for it to be used, but has given the correct version of the poem, which has suffered much at the hands of printers. His name is an open secret to all students of Australian poetry, but he desires that it should not be given in this volume. Messrs. Bentley, the well-known publishers, also freely gave their permission to reprint "The Exile's Farewell," sent to them by Mr. A. Patchett Martin. But Messrs. Massina of Melbourne, who have acquired the copyright of the bulk of Gordons poems, thought it would be prejudicial to their interests to give leave for more than one of these poems to be used. For this xviii INTRODUCTION. permission the publisher and editor of this volume tender their best thanks. The public must judge if Messrs. Massina acted in their own and Gordon's interest in sending him forth equipped with only one poem to contest the place of honour with poets like Domett and Stephens, who had given carte blanche. Everyone who knows anything of the man would like to pay Gordon his tribute in full, and the editor is more than most men bound to Gordon by coming from the same great school, Cheltenham College, and the same great colony, Victoria, and having a special love for all verse breathing the spirit of Anglo-Saxon manfulness. But he cannot gainsay the wishes of the owners of copyrights, and, therefore, he must content himself with giving as good an estimate of Gordon as he can without quotations. Gordon has one supreme merit, he is interesting to everybody — as much to the stable- boy and stockman as to the scholar, as much to the schoolboy as to the sentimentalist ; his poems are "ringing"; he carries one away like Lord Macaulay or Professor Aytoun in their stirring battle-pictures. He is generally rhythmical, musical, sonorous. Some of his Swinburnian verses, we feel sure, Swinburne would be proud to father. He is full of homely sayings, that could not be put better if they had been rounded into proverbs in the mouths of millions, in the course of centuries INTRODUCTION. xix — to speak of proverbs, he is a very Burns in begetting them — indeed, one can give strangers no better idea of his power in Victoria, than by calling him the Australian Burns ; not that his poems bear the least resemblance to those of the immortal ploughman, but because he is essentially the national poet, he who dwells on the tongues of the people. He is a very manful poet — the man ready to fight anyone for two straws, or to jump a horse at anything that mortal horse cculd jump, is reflected in his poems — but there was one element lacking in his manfulness. Accomplishment did not enter much into his life or writings. Leading a " forlorn hope," selling one's life dearly, succumbing desperately to hopeless odds, were familiar ideas with him, but not " enduring to the end and winning a crown of life " in their plain earthly sense. Gordon could understand a blind King of Bohemia riding forward to be killed at Crecy, bu*- not a Horatius thinking that he might guard the bridge and yet survive the day. p- He could write at least four kinds of poems excellently. His ballads, such as " Fauconshawe," are distinguished by unusual ring, and lilt, and go. His Swinburnian poems, besides their metrical merits, are often, as in "Podas Okus," "Doubtful Dreams," etc., full of solemn, dignified man- fulness, and, once read, can never be wholly xx INTRODUCTION, forgotten. His few Bush poems are written as only one who knew the " Bush " so intimately, and had such brilliant poetical gifts, could have written them ; and his horse-poems are unequalled in the English language. No other poet of any- thing like Gordon's gifts has approached him in knowledge of the horse ; and it is as a horse- poet that Gordon will principally be remembered. Indeed, riding and swimming are the only branches of sport which his poems show him to have known much about. Shooting, fishing, cricket, etc., receive hardly more than bare mention ; but in horse-pieces he stands alone— not, we think, good as they are, for pieces like " How we beat the Favourite," but for pieces like "The Sick Stockrider " and " From the Wreck." " The Sick Stockrider" is a poem that deserves a place in any selection in the English language, a master- piece, and a masterpiece that no poet whom we know of but Gordon could have written. It was necessary that poetical genius, ringing, spirited, rhythmical writing, manfulness, experience of the "old colonial days," and intimate loving acquaint- ance with the "Bush," should unite in one man before a poem like " The Sick Stockrider " could be born. Gordon's faults are want of culture and knowledge, narrowness of scope and sympathy, and perhaps a little carelessness, though very INTRODUCTION. xxi likely much that passes for the last is due to faulty printing. But within his scop^ and sympathies, to find his rival we must look among the great masters of song, as his laurels in Australia and his increasing popularity in England would show. Compared with Australian poets he is not so musical as Kendall, but is very strong in Kendall's weakest point — awaking interest in the semi-culti- vated. With Brunton Stephens it is difficult to compare him. Stephens's genius revels in the light and delicate, or light and humorous, while Gordon's strikes strongly and vibratingly ; but in their long poems, the exquisitely-finished, highly- cultured, rich, passionate, poetic "Convict Once" is far ahead of " Ashtaroth," as is Harpur's "Witch of Hebron," though Harpur has written very few other poems that could be mentioned with Gordon's. The one man who towers above him is Alfred Domett, a writer whom it is as impossible to represent fairly in selections as it would be to represent the Iliad or the De rerum Natura, By far the principal achievement of Australasia in poetry is Domett's great "Ranolf and Amohia." Through six or seven hundred octavo pages it never drags. It is as full of close reasoning as Mr. Browning's masterpieces, while it is written in rhymed, rhythmical, ever-varying metres. The knowledge of books, the knowledge xxii INTRODUCTION. of human nature displayed in it is stupsndous. It has embalmed the mythologies, customs, and tribe wars of the Maoris — and with a crowning piece of good fortune has immortalised, in a passage of the most delicate beauty, the famous Pink Terraces, geysers, and mountain marvels, overwhelmed in the recent earthquake. A charming love-story runs through it, and has its surprises to the end of the book ; and the language of the poem is a model for describing colloquial subjects in suitable, unstilted, but thoroughly poetical expression. "Waring,"* as Mr. Browning fondly calls him in his poem, has many years ere this been offered his laurels at the hands of Longfellow, Browning, and other great fellow-poets. Marcus Clarke, it must be borne in mind, though he has written a few poems that will always be remembered, made his fame as a novelist (author of the famous His Natural Life), a journalist, and a critic. The first Australian poem of note was Went- worth's "Australasia," published in 1823; but Charles Harpur, who published his first volume a * " What's become of Waring Since lie gave us all the slip, Chose land travel or seafaring, Boots and chest or staff and scrip, Rather than pace up and down Any longer London town 1 ' INTRODUCTION. xxiii good many years afterwards, is generally regarded as the grey forefather of Australian poets. The sixties saw the rise of both Gordon and Kendall, the former dying by his own hand in 1870, and the latter just living into the eighties ; and it was only on the 3rd of November last that Alfred Domett died, while Brunton Stephens is still alive, and holds a government appointment in Queensland. Alfred Domett's "Christmas Hymn" was pub- lished in Longfellow's Poems of Places, and Longfellow wrote to him very handsomely about it. Having mentioned the very best known Aus- tralian poets and their chronological order, before proceeding to individualise further, we should wish to discuss some of the characteristics of Australian poetry. The character of Australian poetry is now deter- mined a good deal by the taste of the editors of the great weekly papers. These in Australia are the substitutes for magazines, and consequently, until pieces are collected into a volume, their columns afford the only medium for publicity, except the capital literary clubs like the Yorick. This must influence authors, and the editors, patriotically, have shewn a desire to encourage an Australian School of Poetry. Most young Colonial poets, therefore, except the few who have an original genius, draw their inspiration from English xxiv INTRODUCTION. poets through the medium of either Gordon or Kendall, who are considered the two most standard poets of Australia. They in turn seem to owe most to Swinburne, Bret Harte, and Edgar Allan Poe. But Tennyson, Shelley, Longfellow, and Wordsworth have exercised a large influence, and Kendall and Brunton Stephens have written much in the vein of the late C. S. Calverley, Kendall also writing a good deal that was thoroughly original. Consequently the commonest types of Australian Poems are Bushman's Ballads a la Gordon, often very spirited, but often also very rugged ; Bush landscape-painting a la Kendall, in which much polish is lavished on workmanship ; Swinburne Australianised a la Gordon, and acclimatised " Bret Harte." And from these types, notably the first and third of them, many beautiful poems have been produced. Gordon himself, for instance, and C. A. Sherard have written in these styles noble pieces that must command appreciation wherever they are read. Blank verse has found little favour in Australia, which is not surprising, as to a great extent it is the offspring of a classical education. William Morris, quite the founder of a school in Oxford, has exercised hardly any influence in Australia, and Browning has only two prominent disciples, though it is to be owned that one of them, "Waring," INTRODUCTION. xxv wrote the greatest of Antipodean poems, and the other was the author of " Midas." And only one considerable poem has been inspired by Walt Whit- man, "The Hut on the Flat." "Australian Lyrics" are lyrics of Australian society, and Arthur Patchett Martin, Garnett Walch, and others among the younger generation of poets whose writings have been inspired by Australia, had previously written several poems of this kind. A. P. Martin and Garnet Walch are busy and successful journalists, which prevents their having more to display in the way of poetry. But both have shewn brilliant capacity, and turned out work so good as, in spite of its small quantity, puts them in the front rank of Australian poets. A. P. Martin may in many respects be called the Australian R. L. Stevenson, and Garnet Walch has the " curiosa felicitas " of Hudibras or Dr. Syntax. George Gordon M'Crae, a poet of first-class reputation and achievements, is difficult to classify ; but in his most valuable "Bush" work, his two great lays of the Aborigines, he has followed in the footsteps of Scott, and has gone into his subject with the conscientious care and re- search of that poet. The poems of Henry Halloran, who has for many years been before the Sydney public ; of G. H. Supple, author of " The Dream of Dampier" ; of Thomas Bracken, one of the best poets of New Zealand ; of E. B. Loughran, the xxvi I A TROD UCTIOA\ contributor ol some of the most delicately beautiful pieces which have appeared in the Australian ; and those of Farrell and Victor Daley, which have recently been spoken of in the highest terms by the Australian press, we have unfortunately been unab'e to procure ; and the copy of his poems ordered for us in London by one of the most liter- ary and distinguished of Australian pressmen, Francis Adams, was unfortunately out of stock, sold out We should have welcomed all of them, and their absence is a distinct gap, which is further increased (we are writing this preface almost a fortnight after the text of the book has gone to press) by the arrival too late for insertion of poems from the well-known sculptor and artist, Margaret Thomas, from Mary Colborne-Veel, Nellie S. Clerk, Mrs. C. Watkins, Mrs. J. A. Bode, the Havilands, and others. James Thomas, of whose pieces we have, to our regret, in our limited space, only been able to quote one, has written many fine poems, reminding one, in their exquisite appreciation of Nature, of Emerson's " Humble Bee," or Bryant's bird-life poems. Of William Sharp, a visitor " out from home," whose photographic " Transcripts from Nature" in Australia we have quoted, it be- fits us to say nothing, since he is general editor of the series in which this book appears. \\ e have purposely deferred our remarks on INTRODUCTION. xxvii Philip J. Holdsworth and Alfred T. Chandler, the Uvo young native-born Australians whose poems have attracted most notice in England. They are thoroughly Australian, and their volumes are a dis- tinct contribution towards a National literature, a remark which applies equally to a little volume by Keighley Goodchild, and to the poems of Charles Allan Sherard, which, as far as we know, have not yet been collected into a volume. (We believe him also to be an Australian by birth.) Holdsworth has written some poems, notably, " My Queen of Dreams," which most conclusively show where the mantle of Kendall has fallen ; and Chandler's volume proves him to be a genuine poet of the widest sym- pathies, with (what is sometimes forgotten in phil- anthropists) a good backbone of manhood in him. The gravely beautiful poem which has been chosen as an envoi to the volume comes from a Printers' Keepsake, the joint effort of some brilliant Victorian compositors, full of good things, but none of the others, except the one quoted, unfortunately within our limits. Australian poetesses we have not yet mentioned, because one of them is the link between Australia and New Zealand. Judging from the very serious tenor of their poems, (ew of them can be like the typical Victorian young lady, hit off to the life in this spirited little poem — xxviii INTRODUCTION. AN AUSTRALIAN GIRL. " She's pretty to walk with, And witty to talk with ; And pleasant, too, to think on." —Sir John Suckling. She has a beauty of her own, A beauty of a paler tone Than English belles. Yet Southern sun and Southern air Have kissed her cheeks until they wear The dainty tints that oft appear On rosy shells. Her frank, clear eyes bespeak a mind Old-world traditions fail to bind. She is not shy Or bold, but simply self-possessed ; Her independence adds a zest Unto her speech, her piquant jest, Her quaint reply. O'er classic volumes she will pore With joy ; and some scholastic lore Will often gain. In sports she bears away the bell — Nor, under music's siren spell, To dance divinely, flirt as well, Does she disdain. — ETHKli Castilla, Melbourne. Though Miss Nellie S. Clerk, who sends us some poems from the very depths of the Gippsland INTRODUCTION. xxix Forest, may possibly answer to the description. She writes from an altogether original point of view — the oppressiveness of the forest ; to her the forest means ennui — and a prison. She hails with welcome the fall of every tree as opening a new window to sun and sky and air, and writes with considerable grace. Her poems arrived too late for inclusion in the text, otherwise she would certainly be represented. Here are some verses from her poem : — TO MY FIRST GARDEN FLOWER. Short a monarch's life was dipt Where you reign, Geranium ! There once a mighty Eucalypt High plumes in heaven's azure dipped, And cumbrous bark robes yearly stripped, Revealiug hidden beauty. Great the fall that left a throne For you, royal Geranium ! The cruel axe cleft through the bone With rattling crash and thunderous groan, He fell ! a cairn of soft sandstone I built to mourn his beauty. 'Twaa then you came to glad my eyes, A welcome gilt, Geranium. This wilderness of foliaged skies You brightened with your scarlet dyes ; You were my first ilower, — 3*011 T prue Above all rival beauty. INTRODUCTION. So slight I thought, three years ago, This slip of a Geranium, Above, around trees restless blow. Thick tangled bushes crowd below, Oh ! where can it in safety grow And best display its beauty ? Tramped the grass-plot on the mound, No place for my Geranium, With long bark hut the summit's crowned, A lazy packhorse feeds around, And ringing axes ceaseless sound : — No pleasure here but duty. Ah ! that headless trunk will hold You safely, sweet Geranium, Ou his broad breast some pliant mould Shall, 'mid the cairn, your roots enfold. No more I'll mourn his grandeur bold, II is scars hid by your beauty. You have watched our homestead ris3, Shining-eyed Geranium, Felt the falling forest's sighs, Blessed each widening glimpse of skies, Heard the first Hock's bleating cries, And traced all growth of beauty. Those who enjoy the greatest reputation in Australia are — "Austrahe" (Mrs. Hubert Heron), Frances Tyrrett Gill, Agnes Neale (Mrs. Aheane), INTRODUCTION. xxxi Lindsay Duncan (Mrs. T. C. Cloud), Frances Sesca Lewin, and Philip Dale (Mrs. C. Haviland). Nearly all Antipodean poetesses are native-born. Most of them exhibit the influence of Adelaide Proctor strongly — one of them, Agnes Neale, may fairly be called the Australian Adelaide Proctor. Frances Gill is a beautiful writer of what one may perhaps call the Victorian school — if one may mean thereby C. A. Sherard, E. B. Loughran, Jennings Carmichael, and a few other charming writers who have sprung up in the footsteps of Gordon, and developed that kind of style of their own, modelled originally on Swinburne, to which we referred above in such high terms. To this school in a way also belongs "Austral" (Mrs. J. G. Wilson), a Victorian by birth, but resident in New Zealand, who has written some of the most beautiful things which have appeared in the Australasian. New Zealand scenery, the most glorious blending under Heaven of the sub-tropical and the Alpine, a perfect fairyland of palmy foliage and mountain waters, has not, so far, inspired many writers of more than local fame, but besides "Austral," several of them are very high-class. Alfred Domett, as we have expressed an opinion above, towers over Antipodean poets in his achievements, and Thomas Bracken has had a most favourable reception from xxxii INTRODUCTION. the English press (we were unfortunately unable to procure a copy of his poems for this volume). Alexander W. Bathgate has written poems of mature excellence — -all the poems that he sent us being at an unusually high level in taste and work- manship. Ebenezer Storry Hay is, unhappily, dead. He had all the makings of a New Zealand Shelley, and has left us some of the most exquisite little pieces in Australian literature. The list of the front rank of New Zealand poets would not be complete without the names of J. L. Kelly, a poet with plenty of imagination, a great command of metre, and an eye for the picturesque, who has made a study of the customs and traditions of the natives, and from whom great things may be expected. Great things may also be expected of Mary Colborne-Veel, whose poems arrived too late for this volume, but will be represented in the other. The few poems which have reached us from Tas- mania have not come within our limitations, but one from Mr. Arthur Green will appear in the anthology. We have received a good many poems from drovers, stockmen, miners, and others engaged u up the country" — the very men from whom one would have expected the kind of pieces desired for this volume— but, with a very few exceptions, they were INTRODUCTION. xxxiii not eligible, most of them because they were not upon the " Bush " subjects on which the writers were so well qualified to write, and others because, though they did relate to the " Bush," they were upon subjects already appropriated in the most famous Australian poems. For it has been the aim of the editor to give as much variety of subject, as many different aspects of Australian life, as he found possible. He could have formed one whole volume of the exploration-poems, another of the wild-horse and other hunts, another of the Bush-landscape- poems, ct la Kendall, which have been submitted to him ; but he has endeavoured to make the volume representative of Bush-life as well as Bush-poems. It will be noticed that the editor has dispensed with the title of "Mr." In writing of a poet, to drop the " Mr." is to pay him a mark of honour ; it, in fact, stamps him as public ; and the question was where one was to stop affixing this opprobrious badge of unimportance. To an Australian, "Mr. Gordon," or " Mr. Kendall," would sound as absurd as " Mr. Chaucer," and it would therefore have been invidious to manumit them and yet apply the "Mr." to Stephens, Martin, Walch, and half-a- dozen others. By the kindness of the editors of the great weekly papers of Australasia, the editor of this volume was able to give his invitation for contri- xxxiv INTRODUCTION. butions the widest publicity in the colonies. Those who did not contribute, therefore, he has judged to be unwilling for their poems to appear. With the exception of three little poems, the volume is selected entirely from the contributions sent, every one of which, except those which were in unde- cipherable manuscript, has been read. The three poems which did not come direct from their authors were the poem by Sir Henry Parkes, which the late Alfred Domett sent as a favourite of his ; the Album-verses of the late Marcus Clarke, sent by his friend, Patchett Martin ; and the extract from the "Australasia" of the late William Wentworth, inserted as coming from the first well-known Australian poem, and the first great statesman of Australia. The publisher and editor wish to tender their best thanks to the authors who sent contributions, and the publishers who allowed their copyrights to be used ; also to the editors of the great Australian papers, for generously giving in their columns publicity to the scheme ; and to Francis Adams, Patchett Martin, and the managers of Griffith, Farran, & Co., in Sydney (Mr. Empson), and George Robertson & Co., in Melbourne (Mr. R. P. Raymond), for procuring by personal appli- cation some of the most important contributions to the volume. AUSTEALIAN BALLADS AND RHYMES. A VOICE FROM THE BUSH. "0/ mihi prceteritos ..." Hioh noon, and not a cloud in the sky to break this blinding sun ! Well, I've half the day before me still, and most of my journey done. There's little enough of shade to be got, but I'll take what I can get, For I'm not as hearty as once I was, although I'm a young man yet. Young? Well, yes, I suppose so, as far as the seasons go; Though there's many a man far older than I down there in the town below — Older, but men to whom, in the pride of their man- hood strong, The hardest work is never too hard, nor the longest day too long. But I've cut my cake, so I can't complain ; and I've only myself to blame. Ay ! that was always their tale at home, and here it's just the same. A. A VOICE FROM THE BUSH. Of the seed I've sown in pleasure, the harvest I'm reaping in pain. Could I put my life a few years back, would I live that life again ? Would I ? Of course I would ! What glorious days they were ! It sometimes seems but the dream of a dream that life could have been so fair, So sweet, but a short time back, while now, if one can call This life, I almost doubt at times if it's worth the living at all. One of these poets — which is it? somewhere or another sings, That the crown of a sorrow's sorrow, is remembering happier things. What the crown of a sorrow's sorrow may be I know not ; but this I know, — It lightens the years that are now, sometimes to think of the years ago. Where are they now, I wonder, with whom those years were passed ? The pace was a little too good, I fear, for many of them to last ; And there's always plenty to take their place when the leaders begin to decline ; Still I wish them well, wherever they are, for the sake of auld lang syne ! Jack Villiers— Galloping Jack— what a beggar he was to ride ! Was shot in a gambling row last year on the Cali- fornian side : A VOICE FROM THE BUSH. And Byng, the best of the lot, who was broke in the Derby of fifty-eight, Is keeping sheep with Harry Lepell, somewhere on the River Plate. Do they ever think of me at all, and the fun we used to share ? It gives me a pleasant hour or so — and I've none too many to spare. This dull blood runs as it used to run, and the spent flame flickers up, As I think on the cheers that rang in my ears when I won the Garrison Cup ! And how the regiment roared to a man, while the voice of the fielders shook, As I swung in my stride, six lengths to the good, hard held, over Brixworth Brook : Instead of the parrot's screech, I seem to hear the twang of the horn, As once again from Barkby Holt I set the pick of the Quorn. Well, those were harmless pleasures enough ; for I hold him worse than an ass Who shakes his head at a "neck on the post," or a quick thing over the grass. Go for yourself, and go to win, and you can't very well go wrong — Gad, if I'd only stuck to that, I'd be singing a dif- ferent song ! As to the one I'm singing, it's pretty well known to all. We knew too much, but not quite enough, and so we went to the wall ; A VOICE FROM THE BUSH. While those who cared not, if their work was done, how dirty their hand3 might be, Went up on our shoulders, and kicked us down, when they got to the top of the tree. But though it relieves one's mind at times, there's little good in a curse. One comfort is, though it's not very well, it might be a great deal worse. A roof to my head, and a bite to mouth, and no one likely to know In "Bill the Bushman" the dandy who went to the dogs long years ago. Out there on the station among the lads I get along pretty well : It's only when I come down into town, that I feel this life such a hell. Booted and bearded and burned to a brick, I loaf along the street ; And I watch the ladies tripping by, and bless their dainty feet. I watch them here and there with a bitter feeling of pain. Ah ! what wouldn't I give to feel a lady's hand again. They used to be glad to see me once : they might have been co to-day ; But we never know the worth of a thing until we have thrown it away. I watch them, but from afar ; and I pull my old cap over my eyes, Partly to hide the tears, that, rude and rough as I am, will rise, FAIRYLAND. And partly because I cannot bear that such as they should see The man that I am, when I know, though they don't, the man that I ou^ht to be. Puff! with the last whiff of my pipe I blow these fancies away, For I must be jogging along if I want to get down into town to-day. As I know I shall reach my journey's end though I travel not over fast, So the end of my longer journey will come in its own "Ood time at last. FAIRYLAND. Do you remember that careless band, Biding o'er meadow and wet sea-saud, One autumn day, in a mist of sunshine, Joyously seeking for fairyland ? The wind in the tree-tops was scarcely heard, The streamlet repeated its one silver word, And far away, o'er the depths of woodland, Floated the bell of the parson-bird. Pale hoar-frost glittered in shady slips, Where ferns were dipping their finger-tips, From mossy branches a faint perfume Breathed over honeyed clematis-lips. At last we climbed to the ridge on high, Ah. crystal vision ! Dreamland nigh ! Far, far below us, the wide Pacific Slumbered in azure from sky to sky. A SPRING AFTERNOON, N.Z. And cloud and shadow, across the deep Wavered, or paused in enchanted sleep, And eastward, the purple-misted islets Fretted the wave with terrace and steep. We looked on the tranquil, glassy bay, Oil headlands sheeted with dazzling spray, And the whitening ribs of a wreck forlorn, That for twenty years had wasted away. All was so calm, and pure, and fair, It seemed the hour of worship there, Silent as where the great North Minster Rises forever, a visible prayer. Then we turned from the murmurous forest land, And rode over shingle and silver sand, For so fair was the earth in the golden autumn We sought no further for Fairyland. Austral (Mrs J. G. Wilson). A SPRING AFTERNOON, N.Z. We rode in the shadowy place of pines, The wind went whispering here and there Like whispers in a house of prayer. The sunshine stole in narrow lines, And sweet was the resinous atmosphere. The shrill cicada, far and near, Piped on his high exultant third. Summer ! Summer ! He seems to say — Summer ! He knows no other word, But trills on it the livelong day ; A SPRING AFTERNOON, N.Z. The little hawker of the green, Who calls his wares through all the solemn forest scene. A shadowy land of deep repose ! Here where the loud nor'-wester blows, How sweet, to soothe a trivial care, The pine trees ever-murmured prayer ! To shake the scented powder down From stooping boughs that bar the way And see the vistas, golden brown, Stretch to the sky-line far away. But on and upward still w r e ride Whither the furze, an outlaw bold, Scatters along the bare hillside, Handfuls of free uncounted gold, And breaths of nutty, wild perfume, Salute us from the flowering broom. I love this narrow sandy road That idly gads o'er hill and vale, Twisting where once a rivulet flowed. With as many turns as a gossip's tale. I love this shaky, creaking bridge, And the willow leaning from the ridj Shaped like some green fountain playing, And the twinkling windows of the farm Just where the woodland throws an arm To hear what the merry stream is saying. Stop the horses for a moment, high upon the breezy stair, Looking over plain and upland, and the depths of summer air, Watch the cloud and shadow sailing o'er the forest's sombre breast. 8 FROM THE CLYDE TO BRAID WOOD. Misty capes and snow-cliffs glimmer on the ranges to the west. Hear the distant thunder rolling, surely 'tis the making tide Swinging all the blue Pacific on the harbour's iron side. Now the day grows grey and chill, but see on yonder wooded fold, Between the clouds, a ray of sunshine slips, and writes a word in gold. Austral (Mrs J. G. Wilson. ) FROM THE CLYDE TO BEAIDWOOD. A winter morn, the blue Clyde river winds 'Mid sombre slopes, reflecting in clear depths The tree-clad bauks or grassy meadow flats Now white with hoary frost, each jewell'd blade With myriad crystals glistening in the sun. Thus smiles the Vale of Clyde, as through the air So keen and fresh three travellers upward ride Toward the Braid wood heights. Quickly they pass The rustic dwellings on the hamlet's verge, Winding sometimes besHe the glassy depths Of Nelligen Creek, where with the murmuring bass Of running water sounds the sighing wail Of dark swamp-oaks that shiver on each bank; Then winding through a shady-bower'd lane, With flickering streaks of sunlight beaming through The feathery leaves and pendant tassels green Of bright mimosa, whose wee furry balls Promise to greet with golden glow of joy The coming spring-tido. FROM THE CLYDE TO BRAWWOOD. Now a barren length Of tall straight eucalyptus, till again A babbling voice is heard, and through green banks Of emerald fern, and mossy boulder rocks, The Currawong dances o'er a pebbly bed, In rippling clearness, or with cresting foam Splashes and leaps in snowy cascade steps. Then every feature changes — up and down, O'er endless ranges like great waves of earth, Each weary steed must climb, e'en like a ship Now rising high upon some billowy ridge, But to plunge down to mount once more, again And still again. Naught on the road to sec Save sullen trees, white arm'd, with naked trunks, And hanging bark, like tatter'd clothes thrown off, An undergrowth of glossy zamia palms Bearing their winter store of coral fruit, And here and there some early clematis, Like starry jasmine, or a purple wreath Of dark kennedia, blooming o'er their time, As if in pity they would add one joy Unto the barren landscape. But at last A clearer point is reached, and all around The loftier ranges loom in contour blue, With indigo shadows and light veiling mist Rising from steaming valleys. Straight in front Towers the Sugarloaf, pyramidal King Of Braid wood peaks. Impossible it seems To scale that nature-rampart, but where man io FROM THE CLYDE TO BRAIDWOOD. Would go he must and will : so hewn from out The mountain's side in gradual ascent Of league and half of engineering skill, There winds the Weber Pass. A glorious ride : Fresher and clearer grows the breezy air, Lighter and freer beats the quickening pulse As each fair height is gain'd. 8tern, strong, above Rises the wall of mountain ; far beneath, In sheer precipitancy, gullies deep Gloom in dark shadow, on their shelter'd breast Cherishing wealth of leafage richly dight With tropic hues of green. No sound is heard Save the deep soughing of the wind amid The swaying leaves and harp-like stems, so like A mighty breathing of great mother earth, That half they seem to see her bosom heave With each pulsation as she living sleeps. And now and then to cadence of these throbs There drops the bell-bird's knell, the coach whip's crack, The wonga-pigeon's coo, or echoing notes Of lyre-tail'd pheasants in their own rich tones, Mocking the song of every forest bird. Higher the travellers rise— at every turn Gaining through avenued vista some new glimpse Of undulating hills, the Pigeon-house Standing against the sky like eyrie nest Of some great dove or eagle. On each side Of rock-hewn road, the fern trees cluster green, Now and then lighted by a silver star Of white immortelle flower, or overhung FROM THE CLYDE TO BRAIDWOOD \\ By crimson peals of bright epacris bells. Another bend, a sheltered deepening rift, And in the mountain's very heart they plunge — So dark the shade, the sun is lost to view. Great silver wattles tremble o'er the path, Which overlooks a glen one varying mass Of exquisite foliage, full-green sassafras, The bright-leaf'd myrtle, dark-hued kurrajong And lavender, musk -plant, scenting all the air, Entwined with clematis or bignonia vines, And raspberry tendrils hung with scarlet fruit. The riders pause some moments, gazing down, Then upward look. Far a3 the peeping sky The dell-like gully yawns into the heights; A tiny cascade drips o'er mossy rocks, And through an aisle of over-arching trees, Whose stem3 are dight with lichen, creeping vines A line of sunlight pierces lighting up A wealth of fern trees ; filling every nook With glorious circles of voluptuous green, Such as, unview'd, once clothed the silent earth Long milliards past in Carboniferous Age. A mighty nature-rockery ! Each spot Of fertile ground is rich with endless joys Of leaf and fern ; now here a velvet moss, And there a broad asplenium's shining frond With red-black veinings or a hart's-tongue point, Contrasting with a paie-hued tender brake Or creeping lion's foot. See where the hand Of ruthless man hath cleft the rock, each wound Is hidden by thick verdure, leaving not One unclothed spot,- save on the yellow road. Reluctant the travellers leave the luscious shade To mount once more. But now another joy — 12 FROM THE CLYDE TO BRAIDWOOD. An open view is here ! Before them spreads A waving field of ranges, purple grey, In haze of distance with black lines of shade Of ocean-blue o'er whose horizon verge The morning mist-cloud hangs. The distant bay Is clear defined. The headland's dark arms stretch (Each finger-point white-lit with dashing foam) In azure circlet, studded with rugged isles — A picturesque trio, whose gold rock sides glow In noonday sunlight, and round which the surf Gleams like a silvery girdle. The grand Pass Is traversed now, the inland plateau reach'd, The last sweet glimpse of violet peaks is lost, An upland rocky stream is pass'd, and naught But same same gum trees vex the wearied eye Till Braidwood plain is reached. A township like All others, with its houses, church, and school- Hare, bald, prosaic — no quaint wild tower, Nor ancient hall to add poetic touch, As in the dear old land — no legend old Adds softening beauty to the Bunddawong Peak, Or near-home ranges with too barbarous names. But everything is cold, new, new too new To foster poesy ; and famish'd thought Looks Lack with longing to the mountain dream. Austkalie (Mrs Hubert Heron), THE EXPLORER'S MESSAGE. THE EXPLORER'S MESSAGE. Golden, crimson, glows the sunset o'er the wild Australian scene, Gilding e'en the lonely desert with a glory-tinted sheen, Purple, purple, gloom the mountains towering in their distant height, And the blushing air is quivering with the joy of rosy light. Glorious beauty ! — heavenly radiance ! beaming o'er the barren earth, While the weary land is stricken with a life-destroying dearth. But no joy that glory bringeth — ominous that sunset blaze, Telling but of rainless sunshine, burning on through cloudless days ; Parch'd, the thirsty ground is gasping for one shower of cooling rain — Shadeless trees stand gaunt and withering on the grassless arid plain. Not a sound of living creature, not one blade or leaf of green ! E'en the very birds have vanish'd from the desolated scene ! Hark ! what sound of coming footsteps breaks the silence of the air 2 Can it be a human being all alone that rideth there ? Jaded, drooping, horse and rider slowly wend their dreary way, Toiling on as they have toil'd through many, many a weary day. 14 THE EXPLORER'S MESSAGE. Wan the rider, wan and fainting — mind and body overwrought ; Worn the steed, and gauntly fleshless, perishing of bitter drought — ' ' Water, water ! oh, for water ! " Now the horse sinks to the ground ; And the faithful beast here resting a last halting-place has found ; Now the last, last link i3 broken ! e'en the poor dumb friend is gone, And the pioneer must turn his eyes unto a heavenly bourn. But six months a gallant band, the brave explorers had set forth, Resolute to pierce the mysteries of Australia's unknown north, Strove they nobly, daring danger, hardships cheerfully endured ! Recking not of death or failure, still by patriot hopes allured. Onward they had pressed adventurous, till by want and sickness tried, One by one their ranks had thinn'd, lost, or spear'd, or famish'd, died. Each day saw a martyr added, each night heard some dying moan, Till at last one man was left in that great wilderness — alone — Solitary, all untended ; none, none left behind to mourn, Now the last of the explorers lies on dying bed forlorn. Faint the lonely man is growing, yet before he turns to die, With one strong expiring effort, with one long-drawn weary sigh, THE EXPLORERS MESSAGE. 15 Draws he from his breast a locket — with onstalking death he fights, While, upon a slip of paper, painfully he trembling writes — " Mary, loved one, in the desert my last thought is still of you. God be with you, guard and bless you. To my memory still be true." His last signature he signeth, gazing lovingly and long On the face within that locket — tender memories o'er him throng As he folds the tiny letter, mournfully to parch'd lips pressed — Clasps it in the golden casket, lays it to his loving breast: Then with one deep prayer for mercy — ere the last glow leaves the skies, Resting on his Father's bosom, calm the lone explorer dies. None are near to close the eyelids — none weep o'er that bronzed face, Only night is .stealing softly ; shrouding him with tender grace. Springs have fled, and summers faded, ten long years have come and gone, — Mary's face still wears its sweetness, though with long, long waiting worn ; Many a one has sought to win her — clear her answer- ing words and few — " I my love long since have plighted — to that love I will be true." Brave men, searching, have gone forth upon the last explorer's track, Unsuccessful, disappointed, they have aye returned back • 16 THE EXPLORER'S MESSAGE. Yet, within the maiden's bosom, hope 'gainst hope will quenchless burn, Still his death is all unproven — still the wanderer may return ! " Let me know his fate," she prayeth, " only one small token send, Then my heart in resignation to God's holy will shall bend." Ride two horsemen through the wild lands where man's foot scarce trod before. "We, the pioneers," they murmur, "we now first this land explore." Ah ! but see what is it then, that on the plain is gleam- ing there? Hush'd and lcnely is the desert— motionless the silent air, As with solemn pace the travellers to the hallow'd spot draw nigh, Where a famish'd lone explorer years agone lay down to die ! By him close his steed is lying — skeleton with harness trapp'd, While in life's worn mouldering garments still the master is enwrapp'd. Awe-struck gaze they on the ruins whence a brother's soul has fled ; Then, all loath to leave a comrade nameless on his desert bed, Search the men for note or journal — some faint clue to name and fate. Not a trace or record rind they— not one letter, word, or date ! THE EXPLORERS MESSAGE. 17 Least a grave they will make for him ! Gleameth now a yellow sheen, And amid the quiet ashes, where the faithful breast has been, Shining lies a golden locket, with a, simple name en- graved. Ah, that name ! long mourn'd and honour'd — now from cold oblivion saved ! Eagerly they ope the locket — in that dreary desert place Beams there now upon these rough men, sweetest, gentlest woman's face, linage of some cherished loved one ; who, perchance these words may tell, See! here lies a tiny letter, —the explorer's last farewell Anxiously, yet almost doubting, lest a sacrilege it prove, Strangers now unfold the message from the martyr to his' love ; Trembling is the pencill'd writing, but the touching words are clear, Mists cloud o'er the eyes now reading, e'en the strong men drop a tear On that tender last love-letter — warm voice from the quiet dead ; Reverently they gently lay it on that face he would have wed, And they vow to rest nor linger till that relic they have placed In the keeping of the maiden by such love so deeply graced. Autumn wanes and winter cometh ; Mary's hair is tinged with grey ; But her eye is beaming softly with calm resignation's ray. iS THE EXPLORERS MESSAGE. Loving cares have left their traces on the peaceful gentle face, And youth's beauty now has softened to a sweet diviner grace. Still her plighted troth she keepeth, bears no ring of circling gold, But one ornament she weareth, of a fashion quaint and old, For a golden locket lieth on her bosom ever- more. One alone that true heart loveth — one who long that relic wore, While his message in its dearness to her soul is ever new — " God be with you, guard and bless you — to my memory still be. true." Ah ! that blessing seems to follow e'en where'er her footsteps go, While his monument she buildeth in the homes of want and woe. Dedicated, all unfetter'd, ever sister, never wife — To God's suffering poor she yieldeth the devotion of a life. Lonely to the world she seemeth, all unknown her gentle fame, But in lowly homes soft blessings gather round her well-loved name, And the lost explorer's lone death, and the maiden's anxious pain, To full many a sick and sad one have proved yet a deeper gain. Soon shall come life's golden sunset, and the evening shall close in, And to heaven's distant mountains Mary then her way may win. FORSAKEN HOMES AND GRAVES. 19 There, perchance, in perfect beauty, free from earthly taint or tie — We cannot tell, we know not how — her love may be fulfilled on high. Australie (Mrs Hubert Heron). FORSAKEN HOMES AND GRAVES. I'iiksk mountain wilds that rest so still, These woods and wastes so vast and deep, These ravines round each rocky hill, Where long-lost cattle roam at will Beneath the eagle's ken and sweep. Far from the settlers' haunts are found Rude vestiges of life and death, Forsaken home and burial mound Of those whose names still cling, around, To circling wilderness and heath. These olden walls, whose ruins low Are met in many a lonely ride, Deserted hearths whose fires did glow With homelight in the long ago By Ti-tree flat or gully side. Round them the sheen of summer- da;/ Falls drearisome and desolate ; Thin shadow lines of branches stray* O'er waifs of childhood's broken play, Untrodden path and fallen gate. 2o FORSAKEN HOMES AND GRAVES. The notes, of wild birds, that elsewhere Bring tones of gladness, seem to change To coronachs of sadness there ; The curlew's cry upon the air Sounds like a shriek along the range. The very dreariness seems rife With low and stealthy undertones, Footfall and voice of former life ; Wraith -presences of sire and wife And children cling to wood and stories, Some woman's hand did plant and train That runner by the shattered door, Which clambered through the splintered pane And pallid turneth out again, As if from spectre en the floor. Once Life o'er Death hath made its moan ; There hath been sorrow even here ; In one small grave with weeds o'ergrown A child sleeps in the wild alone, With only silence crooning near. Here the night-zephyr, passing, wings At midnight to that she-oak nigh, Plays, harplike, on its drooping strings, And to its dreary cadence sings The wildwood's soothing lullaby, IT, 11. Blackham. OUR HERITAGE. 21 OUR HERITAGE. A pkrfect peaceful stillness reigns, Not e'en a passing playful breeze The sword-shaped tlax blades gently stire The vale and slopes of rising hills Are thickly clothed with yellow grass, Whereon the sun, late risen, throws His rays to linger listlessly. Naught the expanse of yellow breaks, Save where a darker spot denotes Some straggling bush of thorny scrub ; While from a gully down the glen, The foliage of the dull-leaved trees Rises to view ; and the calm air, From stillness for a moment waked By parakeets' harsh chattering, Swift followed by a tin}" thrill Of bell-like notes, is hushed again. The tiny orbs of glistening dew, Still sparkle gem-like 'mid the grass, While morning mist, their mother moist, Reluctant loiters on the hill, Whence presently she'll pass to merge In the soft depths of the blue heav'nc. This fertile isle to us is given Fresh from its Maker's hand ; for here ft o records of the vanished past Tell of the times when might was right And self-denial weakness w*as, But all is peaceful, pure, and fair. Our heritage is hope. We'll rear A nation worthy of the land ; 22 TO THE MOKO-MOKO. And when in age we linger late, Upon the heights above life's vale, Before we, like the mist, shall merge In depths of God's eternity, We'll see, perchance our influence Left dew-like, working for the good Of those whose day but dawns below. Alexander W. Bathgate. TO THE MOKO-MOKO, OR BELL-BIRD. Merry chimer, merry chiraer, Oh, sing once more, Again outpour, Like some long-applauded mimer, All thy vocal store. ir. Thy short but oft-repeated song. At early dawn, Awakes the morn, Telling that joys to thee belong, Greeting day new-born. IIT. Alas ! we now but seldom hear Thy rich, full note Around us float, For thou seem'st doomed to disappear, E'en from woods remote. * Now rapidly dying out of our land. TO THE MOKO-MOKO. 23 Some say the stranger honey -Lee, By white men brought, This ill hath wrought ; It Bteala the honey from the tree And it leaves thco naught. v. The songsters of our Fatherland We hither bring, And here they sing, Reminding of that distant strand Whence old mem'ries spring. VI. But as the old, we love the new ; Fain we'd retain Thy chiming strain, Thy purple throat and olive hue- Yet we wish in vain. VII. Thy doom is fixed by nature's law — Why ? none can tell. Therefore, farewell, We'll miss thy voice from leafy shaw — Living silver bell. VIII. Why should we ever know new joys. If thus they pass ? Leaving, alas ! Wistful regret, which much alloys All that man now has. Alexander Y» r . Bathgate. 24 TOMBOY MADGE. TOMBOY MADGE. O ! for a swim thro' the reedy river, And one long pull with the boys at dawn ! Only a ride on the high-backed Rover, And one tennis-round on the grassy lawn ! Once more to see the sun on the wide-waves, And feel once more the foam at my feet j Give me again the wind in the sea-caves Rocking the weeds on the "Tomboy's seat." Only last week, when the sky was brightest, iio single cloud in the vaulted blue, The boys and I, when the sea was calmest, Rowed thro' the waves in the Black-eyed Sue. Fred, you remember the great-eyed fishes Shining star-like thro' the emerald sea, How the waves foamed with their gleaming riches ? Splendid fun for the boys and me. Is it a week since we forded the river (Low and clear for the time of the year) And found the wattles and tall red clover, Scenting the air from far and near ? Is it a week since we all went jumping From the bent arm of the creeking gum ? Who would have thought that the half -bent stumpling Would lay the Tomboy crippled and dumb ? Fred, were you frightened when I lay wailing, With eyes closed away from the dazzling sun ? As in a dream I saw your face paling Before the sky grew distant and dun, TOMBOY MADGE. 25 I can't remember the homeward wending Thro' the dark trees and the long spring grass ; Nor how you stopped at the river's bending And bathed my face in the stream as we passed. I woke in this room, where the blinds were darkened, And saw the face that was bent o'er mine : And there was a voice to which I hearkened — A voice that rings in my brain like a chime. " She will linger on for a time," it was telling ; " Years may pass and ten seasons turn ; But never again will these feet, weak and failing, Rise to walk thro' the ilov.-ers and fern." " Ton seasons turn ! " One glad month of spiingtime With ferns and flowers I cannot see, Will make me long for the heavenly sunshine, Where you and the boys may come to me. How can I live under walls and ceiling When all my life has been spent in the breeze ? Whenever the bells of the birds are pealing I will pine and long for their nests in the leaves. ! Auntie dear draw the blinds up widely, Let stream the sun thro' the bow'ry trees. ! see the clouds on the deep blue gliding, And watch them ride and sport on the breeze. And, Freddy, boy, I hold your hand gently, With its boyish, hard, familiar palm — The hand I will fe^l in the far-off country, When "Tomboy Madge " will be safe from harm. May, with the dove eyes gentle and shining, Come nearer, darling, and smooth my hair, And tell me the tale from the deep past chiming The saintly mother and infant fair. 26 IN A LADY'S ALBUM. Not long ago these same " Good Tidings " That brightened the blue of your loving eyes, Would seem to me but as wearisome eludings Heavy as clouds in autumnal skies. But now I must lie here far from the cool-wave, Far from the sounds and the scenes I love, With nothing before but pain — and a green-grave — And nothing to seek but the hope from above. No grand long walks thro' the dusk at evening, Or long-drawn swims in the wind-tossed wave ; No light to seek but the one that's waning Down the dim path to the Tomboy's grave. " Ten seasons turn " will have seen the grasses High and green near the sea-shelled cave, And the dull stonecrop that Fred pulls as he passes Will have twined and hidden my early grave. The boys, when they swing on the blue-gums bending, And hear the hoarse voice of the ocean roar, Will sometimes think of the Tomboy's ending, And wait for her voice on another shore. Jennings Carmicuael. "IN A LADY'S ALBUM." ( Written in the Album of Mrs H. G. Turner, of Melbourne. ) What can I write in thee, dainty book, About whose daintiness quaint perfume lingers — Into whose pages dainty ladies look, And turn thy dainty leaves with daintier fingers ? IN A LADY'S ALBUM. 27 Filter my ruder muse for ruder song, My scrawling quill to coarser paper matches, My voice, in laughter raised too loud aud long, Is hoarse and cracked with singing tavern-catches. No melodies have I for ladies' ear, No roundelays for jocund lads and lasses, — But only brawlings born of bitter beer, And chorused with the clink and clash of glasses. So tell thy mistress, pretty friend, for me, I cannot do her 'hest, for all her frowning, While dust and ink are but polluting thee, And vile tobacco smoke thy leaves embrowning. Thou breathest purity and humble worth — The simple jest, the light laugh following after, I will not jar upon thy modest mirth With harsher jest, or with less gentle laughter. So some poor tavern-hunter steeped in wine, With staggering footsteps thro' the streets returning, Seeing, through gathering glooms, a sweet light shine From household lamp in happy window burning, May pause an instant in the wind and rain, To gaze on that sweet scene of love and duty. But turns into the wild wet night again, Lest his sad presence mar its holy beauty. Marcus Clarke. 22nd May 1809. 28 B£SS. BESS. Kh ? Why am I keeping that old crippled mare t She ought to be shot ? Come now, steady, lad, there ! I keep her because she is crippled— that's why. ]Sot much of a reason? Well, that I deny. You see she was true in a test that was rough, And did what no man could have done — that's enough ! But come down to the paddock, and let me relate How Bess, through sheer courage, fell down at the gate. In seventy-one — yes, sir, that was the year, My Mary and I had selected round here ; Those farms on the flat were then sheep walks I guess, For we first invaded the lone wilderness. We'd only been wed for a twelve-month or so, Were happy and hopeful, like lovers, you know ; And then came a cherub one warm summer morn— 'Twas death or a doctor when " Stranger " was born ! I trembled with fear as I saw my love lie, For help was away where the earth touched the sky ; Some thirty miles there and some thirty miles back, Through swamps and through mallec, with scarcely a track. I sprang to the back of that bonny old mare, And felt, without uttering, a sort of a pray'r : One look at my Mary, and off then we sped, Straightway at a gallop— T gave Bess her head. BESS. 29 The sun had just reached yon northern hill's crown, And we'd to get back before he had gone down : A life was depending on that, maybe two, And Less seemed to know it as forward she flew. Ten miles of good pacing, without a mishap Brought Willonghby's Bridge and Victoria Gap, When right on ahead there I saw to my woe, The scrub was all smoking, the forest aglow ! 1 Twaa straight through or round it — an hour or a day— But time was too precious, so fear fled away ; I spoke to Bess cheerily, called her by name, Then started to rush through the region of flame. We soon were amidst it — her strides never broke Through fierce flying curtains of thick sultry smoke, Through failing of timber and cracking of boughs, Through showers of sparks and my mutt'ring of vows ! Bess struggled for love — aye, the noblest of strife — While I urged her on for love and for life ; We passed through a miracle — 'tis now like a dream, But God somehow guides when the danger 's extreme. Then two creeks we passed where the bottoms were stiff And rose on the ranges at Robertson's cliffs ; Away on the plain where the rivers turned south, I saw my one hope with my heart in my mouth. Ere noon we ran into the little bush town, And Bess was so heated, I watered her down, Then sought out the doctor, and stammered with pain. In telling my message — then sped off again. 3o BESS. He rode a stout pony — a deep iron grey, And made a hand-gallop from first right away, A long line of dust marked our journey behind, As eight clattering hoof -strokes sent thuds ou the wind. Some fifteen miles racing, still Bess onward press'd, Though snow-flakes had whitened her flanks and her breast ; I patted and coaxed her, and told her my fears — She galloped on gamely, and flickered her ears. But flush as we came to the bush fire with speed, The grey pony stopped and declined to proceed ; Persuasions both gentle and sterner were vain, He wouldn't face flames, and he put it quite plain. And then in the throes of my anxious distress, I handed the doctor my noble mare Bess ; Away they went flying through danger and heat, When reckless, though scared, the cob followed as fleet. We got through that hell looking burnt-up and brown, And pulled at the gate e'er the sun had gone down ; Well, Mary was saved, but the marc she wa3 done, And fell at the end of the race she had won ! We nursed her for months, and we watched her with care, For gratitude gets to be purer than prayer ; Though paralyzed then into maimed helplessness, We'll love her for ever, our bonny marc Bess ! Yon colt is her foal, and that lad on his back Is " Stranger "or " Cherub " — we now call him Jack. A beautiful pair ? Well, that colt is worth ten — I'd sooner trust him than my own fellow men. A. T. Chandler. CATCHING THE CO AC II. xv CATCHING THE COACH. At Kangaroo Gully in " Fifty-two ' ; The rush and the scramble was reckless and rough " Three ounces a dish and the lead running true ! " "Was whispered around concerning the " stuff." Next morning a thousand of fellows, or more, Appeared for invasion along the brown rise — 8ome Yankees, and Cockneys, and Cantabs of yore. And B.A.'s from Oxford in blue shirt disguise. And two mornings later, the " Nugget " saloon, With billiards and skittles, was glaring with signs, A blind fiddler, Jim, worried out a weak tune, Beguiling the boys and collecting the fines. Then tents started up like the freaks of a dream. While heaps of while pipeclay dotted the slope, To " Dern her — a duffer ! " or " Creme de la Creme ! ' That settled the verdict of lagging hope. And bustle and jollity rang 'mong the trees In strange combination of humankind traits— With feverish searchings and gay levities The fires of excitement were fully ablaze. Well, three mornings after, the stringy-bark gums All rustled their leaves with further surprise, They'd seen old stagers and limey new chums. Bat here were galoots in peculiar guise. 32 CATCHING THE COACH. With nondescript uniform, booted and spurred, A fierce-looking strap on the underneath lip, An ominous shooter, a dangling sword, A grim leather pouch above the right hip 1 And maybe a dozen came cantering so, All clanking and jaunty — authority vain — When down through the gully rang out the word " Jo," And " Jo " was sent on with a sneering refrain. There was hunting for "rights," and producing the same, Or passing them on to a paperless mate, Or hiding in bushes or down in the claim — Such various expedients to baffle the State. Then " Who put him on ?"— " Twig his illigant scat ! " "Cuss me, but its purty ! " — "The thing on the horse ? " " His first dacent clothes ! " — " What surprise for his feet ! " Such volleys as these were soon fired at the force. But duty was duty. Just then through the scrub A digger made off — he a culprit no doubt ! " Dismount, you then, Wilson," roared Sergent Hubbub ; " Quick ! follow the rascal, and ferret him out." The sapling cadet with budding moustache, Then sprang to the ground in dauntless pursuit, And, filled with zeal and a Boldier-like dash, Ho felt a true hero of saddle and boot. CATCHING THE COACH. The gully quick echoed with taunts that were real — Keen chaff of defiance allied to revolt — Such sharp wordy weapons as might have been steel— From skirmishers laughing on hillock and holt. Away went the fugitive, spurred on by haste, Escaping the undergrowth, leaping the logs, Yet ne'er looking back — did he know he was chased . Said Wilson : " He's one of the worst of the dogs ! " Some greater misdeed must have blackened his hand ; I'll have him — promotion ! Stop there, or I'll shoot !" The other ahead didn't hear the command, But sprang on irnheeding o'er dry branch and root. Tin; chase settled down to a heavy set to ; They ran o'er the hill and across the clear flat ; And Wilson was chuckling— the villain he knew Was making a bee line for gaol — Ballarat ! "I'll follow the rogue safely into the trap — Confound him, he's speedy : I can't run lain down ; But there, quite unconscious of any mishap, I'll fix him up neatly in gay canvas town ! " Then over a creek where a line of sage gums All flourishing grew, then away to the right ; Their loud breathings mingled with strange forest hums, And Wallabies scampered with terror and fright. And cockatoos screeched from the loftiest trees, The minahs and magpies all iluttered and flew, The drowsy old 'possums were roused from their ease, The locusts and lizards quick stepped out of view. 34 A BUSH IDYL, But on went the pair never noticing this, For both had a serious business in hand : With one there were feelings that prophesied bliss, The other saw capture and glory so grand. O'er hillside and creek, beyond hollow and spur, Thro' brief strips of woodland, they hurried on still ; The trooper lost ground, but he wasn't a cur ; Besides, they were nearing on Bakery Hill. Then suddenly broke on each sweltering sight The thousand of tents in the city of gold ; And straight to the thick of them ran with delight The chased and the chaser — what luck for the bold ! The coach was just starting for Melbourne that day As Wilson rushed eagerly on to his man. "I'll put you with care where you won't be so gay," The trooper in triumph already began. " You've led me a dance in a lively hour's sun ; Now trip out your licence, or waltz off to gaol ! What ! got one ? Oh, ho ! Why the did you run 2 ; ' " To post this here letter for Nell by the mail." A. T. Chandler. A BUSH IDYL. Why, Ruby, hulloa ! you are pricking your ears ! Come, what is the matter, old fellow, to-day ? I thought at your age you had lost all your fears, And, like my own youth, they had long passed away. A BUSH IDYL. 35 So steady, now steady ! Don't ask me to think That you're bat a colt scarce a year from your dam, All quiv'ring, and nervous, and frisky, and *'pink," — It's only a bell on a little white lamb ! Well, how could you shrink at the melody sweet? There's surely no harm in the silvery sound, Or ribbon of blue knotted carelessly neat, Encircling a neck in a delicate round ; Some babe at the station just up on the rise Hath decked out her darling in innocent play, And, while a soft sleep hath come o'er her young eyes, Released from caresses her lamb leapt away. We men often grow just as weak as a child, And, Ruby, again you are surely a foal ; For you as a youngster were skittish and wild, And trouble enough in those days to control. Why now dread a bell with a rippling ring ? 'Tis music that murmurs with rhythmical spells, For you to thus tremble 's a curious thing — But somehow you horses don't understand bells. Well, come, let us go — you are older, you see, And I, too, am older. — How memories fly To those golden days when we two used to be By day and by night 'neath the blue southern sky ! How merry we wandered when never as yet That shadow of sorrow had saddened our zest — When all the bright world had no shade of regret, Before I fell weary and wishing for rest. And ! our grand gallops — you bore me so well O'er stretches of plain, up the thick-wooded slope, From rock-covered ridges to never-trod dell, With nothing to think of but roseate hope. 36 A BUSH IDYL. You felt a brave pride then in speeding along — The pride of a conscious and generous pow'r, — While I was so happy that many a song I trilled in those wild woods from hour to hour. And what was the theme ? Ah, the same olden tale ; But is it not good it should ever thus be ? You know when we haunted the wattle tree dale A glorious girl used to linger w ith me. The time was idyllic ! what halcyon days When we in our joy went to meet her in spring ! Then life seemed to run in most beautiful ways, And sorrow was merely a mythical thing. You know how we kissed 'neath the old lightwood tree, That bloom-budding day when the hillsides were greei i, And love was there sealed 'tween my darling and me, And you became glad in the gay laughing scene. Ah ! such was my theme, and to you I would say, That here unto man 'tis the godliest given, For he who can love from his heart clears away Full many a shadow that hides him from heaven. But all that went by and my song note was changed, For sorrow came up like the night on the day, I know I was 'wildered for reasons estranged, Left dark grief to blind me and vanished away The morning they carried her down to the dell To lie near the flowers, the ferns, and the floss : I prayed to be laid with my heart there as well — To sleep or to dream — 'neath the delicate moss ! My prayer was in vain, yet the Lord He is good, And after a season I bowed to TTis will ; Though day unto day did I come by the wood, To sit and to think at her grave 'neath the hill. A BUSH IDYL. 37 Ah ! love shapes our destiny sharper than fate, Till evil or good from the issue doth spring ; The fair bud may burst to dark petals of hate, Or bright passion blossoms that clamber and cling. And so, brave old horse, sped our sweet sunny days- Our revel of galloping, rollicking prime ; Lut why should I grieve that it flitted away, And left but a dream of that golden-born time ? For tho' I am tired as a weariful bird That flutters and longs for a season of rest, One joy is still left : when the summons is heard, To fly to that star where my angel is blest. 5Tefc Ruby, at times I could covet your lot, With no human dread of the leveller death — You'd stand coolly there to be cruelly shot Without the least quiver or bating of breath. And why should we fear? Ah ! no mortal knows, Or ever the wonderful m\ stery can break ; Perhaps 'tis a dreaming that ends with repose, Or maybe we slumber and never awake. Aivay with such thoughts ! Mo you're wanting to roll, Well, wait till we camp at the Warrigal Creek, A bright blazing lire by the old gumtree bole Will light up the gloom — let us spell for a week ! You're done by our seven hours' journey to-day (That sweet bogie bell is some miles to the west) — But why am I strangely and mournfully gay, And weary yet winged to some dreamland of rest? 3 8 THE JUBILEE OF MELBOURNE. Come, Ruby, old boy i . . . What! you tremble- I see Your breathing comes thicker, and following, an fast, Your strong muscles fail you— Oh God ! can it be That Ruby, bravo Ruby — is g oing at last ? And now I'm alone, for my one faithful friend Has left me to battle an innermost pain — To wander all lonely, awaiting the era! When death bids me tryst with my darling again. But there 'neath the starlight the tired bush man die. i.raed Such beautiful dreams in which mingled a moan, But ere the pale dawn o'er the dusky hill gleamed His spirit had passed to the silent unknown ! And down by the creek the rough station hands found Dead rider and horse as they peacefully lay — A verdict laconic — a lonely bush mound — Tell not of the sorrow that bore him away ! A. T. Chandler. THE JUBILEE OF MELBOURNE. For ages, wild and restless waves had cast Their burden on a low, untrodden shore, Which never stately, white winged ship had passed, Or rugged seamen touched with friendly oar ; Where never loving comrades flocked +o pour Their boisterous welcomes, or sweet maidens came To look the language lips were shy to frame. THE JUBILEE OF MELBOURNE. 39 Here 'ncath the scorching heat of summer day3 The shimmering waves stole up to kiss the sands, And the fair moon with peerless silver rays Lent beauty luminous to southern lands Whose lonely wild, yet not unlovely strands 1 -', ad never echoed to the steps of men, Who dreamed of unknown worlds beyond their ken. The waters of this noble bay were fed By a pure stream which no pollution knew; Man's commerce had not stirred its rocky bed, But on its banks sweet scented wattles grew Amidst whose fragrant boughs soft love birds flew, And magpies poured from glossy plumaged throats Their morning song of rich melodious notes. From out the scrub that fringed the river's bank What dusky, strange, and uncouth forms emerge With matted locks which cling like sedges rank Round gaunt old tree trunks on the water's verge, Sons of the forest wild whose plaintive dirge — The mournful wail of hapless destiny — The sad winds carry to the moaning sea. There dawned, at last, a day when all was changed, The restless overflow of northern lands, From Old World thoughts and sympathies estranged, Winged south their way in bold adventurous bands, Bearing courageous hearts and vigorous hands, To carve their way to wealth with manly toil, And plant dominion in productive soil. Here fifty winters since, by Yarra's stream, A scattered hamlet found its modest place : What mind would venture then in wildest dream Its wondrous growth and eminence to trace ? What seer predict a stripling in the race 4o PRELUDE TO RANOLF AND AMOHiA. Would swift, as Atalanta, win the prize Of progress, 'ceath the World's astonished eyes? It is no dream, upon those grass-grown streets, Has risen up a city vast and fair, In whose thronged thoroughfares the stranger meets With signs of all the world can send most rare And costly to her marts. And everywhere Ascends the hum of nervous, bustling strife — The splendid evidence of healthy life. Where stalwart bnshmen lounged through sultry hours, And large-boned oxen bowed beneath the yoke, Arc parks and gardens, rich with plants and flowers ; Mansions embowered in ash, and elm, and oak, Churches where worshippers heaven's aid invoke, And towers and steeples, monuments and domes Rise amidst crowded haunts and peaceful homes. J. F. Daniell. THE PRELUDE TO RANOLF AND AMOHIA, ! if truth be all welcomed with hardy reliance, All the lovely unfoldings of luminous science, All that logic can prove or disprove be avowed ; Is there room for no faith — though such evil intrude — In the dominance still of a spirit of good ? Is there room for no hope — such a handbreadth we scan In the permanence yet of the spirit of man ? May we bless the far seeker, nor blame the line dreamer ? Leave reason her radiance — doubt her due cloud ; Nor their rainbows enshroud ? PRELUDE TO RANOLF AND AMOHIA. \ \ From our life of realities, bard, shallow-hearted, Has romauee, has all glory idyllic departed, From the work-a-day world all the wonderment flown ? Well, but what if there gleamed, in an age cold as this, The divinest of poets' ideal of bliss ? Yea, an Eden could lurk in this empire of ours, With the loneliest love in the loveliest bowers ? In an era so rapid with railway and steamer, And with Fan and the Dryads, like Raphael, gone — What if this could be shown ? 0, my friends, never deaf to the charms of denial, Were its comfortless comforting worth a life-trial, Discontented content with a chilling despair? Better ask as we float down a song-flood unchecked, If our sky with no Iris be glory-bedecked ? Through the glwom of eclipse as we wistfully steal, If no darkling aureoiar rays may reveal That the future is haply not utterly cheerless : While the present has joy and adventure as rare, A s the past when most fair ? And if weary of mists yon will roam undisdaining To a land where the fanciful fountains are raining Swift brilliants of boiling and beautiful spray In the violet splendour of skies that illume Such a wealth of green ferns and rare crimson tree- bloom ; Where a people primeval is vanishing fast, With its faiths, and its fables, and ways of the past ; 0, with reason and fancy unfettered and fearless, Come plunge with us deep into regions of day, Come away, and away ! Alfred Domett. 42 THE LEGEND OF TA WHAKL THE LEGEND OF TAWHAKI. Then Amohia, tapping Ranolf's arm, Said, " Listen, Pakeha!" and with lifted hand, Rounding — enchantress-wise When double soul she throws into a charm- - The solemn archness of her great Mack eyes Deep lighted like a well, An ancient legend she began to tell Of one God hero of the land, Of which our faithful lay presents Precisely the main incidents, Adorning freely everywhere The better its intents to reach, The language so condensed and bare, Those clotted rudiments of speech, " Once a race, the Pona-turi, in the oozy depth of ocean, Fierce, uncouth, in gloomy glory, lived where light is none, nor motion, More than anything created, Light, their bane, their death, they hated ; So for night they ever waited ere ashore they seal- like clambered ; To then* house Manawa-tane — their great mansion, lofty- chambered, Whence, if e'er a windy moon had caught them, you would see them hiei Homeward, sable shapes beneath the crisping silver floating, flying, Swift as scattered clouds, on high their snowy courses gaily plying. " Young Tawhaki, well he knew them— did Liny not his father mangle ? THE LEGEND OF TAW II AK I. 43 Hang his fleshless bones, a scarecrow, ghastly from their roof to dangle ? Keep his mother too, a slave, each day to give them timely warning Ere dark sky from earth uplifting left the first gold gap of morning ? " Vengeance with his mother then he plotted. So by day-light hiding In their house-roof thatch he couched, his slimy foes' arrival biding. Darkness comes ; they land in swarms ; their spacious house they crowd and cumber ; Ilevel through the midnight reckless ; drop at last in weary slumber. Like the distant ocean's roaring, sinks and swells the mighty snoiing. — Out then steals Tawhaki, chuckling ; long ere day be- gins to brighten, Stops up every chink in doorway, window, that could let the light in. And the snoring goes on roaring ; cr if any sleeper yawning Turned him restless, thinking ' Surely it must now be near the dawning,' Growling, ' Slave, is daylight breaking ? are you watch- ing ? are you waiting ': ' Still the mother answered blandly, ' Fear not, I will give you warning — Sleep, sleep, my Pona-turi, there are yet no streaks of morning.' " So the snoring goes on roaring. Now above the mountains dewy, High the splendour — God careers it— great Te Ka, the Tama Nui. j I THE LEGEND OF TA WHAKI. Sudden cries Tawhaki's mother, ' Open doors and windows quickly ; Every stop-gap tear out, clear out ! On them pour the sunbeams thickly ! ' Through the darksome mansion — through and through those sons of darkness streaming, Flash the spear-flights of the Day-God— deadly-silent — golden-gleaming ! Down they go, the Pona-turi ! vain their struggles, yells and fury ! Like dead heaps of fishes, stranded by the storm's spray, gaping, staring — Stiffened so, astonished, helpless, lay they in the sun- beams glaring ; Fast as shrink upon the shelly beach, those tide-left discs of jelly ; Fast as leathery fungus balls, in yellow dust clouds fuming liy 01T, So they shrink, they fade, they wither, so those imps of darkness die off." " Now, of heavenly birth to cheer him, beauteous From those blue dominions, Hapae came, divine, a damsel, floating down on steady pinions ; Came, a moving moonbeam, nightly lit with love his chamber brightly, Till that spring-time of her bosom flushed out in a baby blossom. Infant, it had infant failings. Once the dirt-delighted bantling, Scornfully Tawhaki jeered at. Straightway all the mother mantling In her heart, her treasure Hapae caught up; to her plumy vesture THE LEGEND OF TA IVHAKL 45 Pressed it, nestling ; then upspringing with reproach- ful look and gesture, Sailed off to her skyey mansion, vanished in the blue expansion, Like an Albatross that slides into the sunset, — whitely fading With its fixed rare-winking vans, away into the crim- son shading. Only, ere she parted, while the lagging west wind she invited — Flapping her broad wings, a tip-toe on the mannikin alighted (Red — its arms on knees akimbo — squat— the gabel apex crowning) One advice she waved Tawhaki, more with grief than anger frowning ; ' If you ever feel the child and mother, to your heart grow dearer, Ever wish to follow and to find us, unkindly sneerer, And would climb by tree-dropt trailers, to the sky a little nearer, O remember, leave the loose ones, only take and trust to surely Such as hung from loftiest tree-tops, root themselves in earth securely ! ; * ' Many a moon he mourned — Tawhaki. Then he started to discover Where they grew, those happy creepers, that could help a hapless lover. Many a moon he roamed — Tawhaki. And his heart was sore and weary When he found -himself despondent in a forest grand and dreary 46 THE LEGEND OF TA WHAKI. (Ah, that wildering wild wood — who can tell how dense it was and tangled), Where in wanton woody ringlets many a rope of trailers dangled. Rapt, absorbed in her pursuit, a blind old crone those creepers tended ; Caught at, groped and felt for any that within her reach descended. He, an ancestress discerning, ere for council he implored her, Touched her eyes, a charm repeating, and to sight at once restored her. Then they found a creeper rooted, finely for his pur- pose suited. Up he went exultingly, bold-hearted, joyous-eyed, firm- footed. At the tree-top, see ! a tiny spider- thread upshooting shiny, Wavering, viewless half, yet ever held aloft by mere endeavour. With a beating heart, Tawhaki, muttering many an incantation — Wild with hope so high it takes the very hue of desperation, Clasps the clue so evanescent; then with yearnings deep, incessant, Seeing in the vault above him only Hapae's eyes that love him, Up and up, for ever upwards mounts he dauntless, nothing scares him, Up through azure bright abysses still that thread in triumph bears him. Suddenly a sunny grove is round him — cheery people working THE LEGEND OF TAWITAKL 47 At a great canoe, appear. All day he keeps the t lurking, Till when balmy shadow veil3 them, and serenest sleep assails them, Stripping off his youthful glory, out he steals, an old man hoary ; Strikes a few swift strokes, and magic-like the work is ended . Graceful with its lofty stern, with open-circled fret- work splendid, Lo ! the great canoe completed ! To his copse he then retreated. On another hollowed trunk next night the wonder- work repeated — Those Celestials marvelled greatly ; yet rejecting in their pleasure Such a worker were a treasure as a slave beyond all measure, Watched and clutched that old man wilful — so decrepit, yet so skilful, And to their great ruler bore him.— delight! who sits before him ? Tis his beautiful benign one, 'tis his downy-plumed divine one, Hapae ! will he now deride her, or the subtle Elf beside her ! Kindly greeted, with caresses he the child allures and presses To his heart, no more to sever. Then as he flings off for ever That disguise's dim defilement, Hapae smiles sweet reconcilement ; Swift the child they bathe, baptize it, lustral waters o'er it dashing ; And Tawhaki — breast and brow sublime insufferably 48 THE HAUNTED MOUNTAIN. Hid in lightnings, as he looks oat from the thunder- cloven portals Of the sky — stands forth confest — a God and one of the Immortals ! " THE HAUNTED MOUNTAIN. "SHALL we run into the cloudlet, love, so luminous and white, That is crouching up in sunshine there on yonder lofty height. We could step out of the splendour all at once into the mist, Such a sunny snowy bower where a maiden might be kissed ; From the woody lower terrace we could climb the russet steep, O'er that chasm gorged with tree-tops still in shadow — dewy-deep, Where another slip of vapour, see ! against the purple black, Set on iire by the sunbeam which has caught it there alone, Like a warrior-chief inciting his adherents to attack, Has upreared itself upright with one imperious arm out -thrown ! Up that slope so smooth and ruddy we could clamber to the crags, To the jutting rim of granite where the crouching cloudlet lags : In and out the bright suffusion up above there in the skies, THE HAUNTED MOUNTAIN. 49 I would follow my fleet darling by the flashing of her eyes', O'er that lofty level summit, as they vanish vapour- veiled, Or would glitter out rekindling and then glance away to seek, Like swift meteors seen a moment, for some other silver streak, Now bedimmed and now bedazzling, till each dodge and double failed, And I cau glit her — would clasp her ! such delicious vengeance wreak — On those eyes — the glad, the grand ones ! on that laughter-dimpled cheek, Till with merciless caresses the fine damask flushed and paled, And, half quenched in burning kisses, those bewitching lustres quailed 1 " "Nay, but Rano, my adored one — my heart and soul's delight ! Scarce with all your love to lead me — fold me round from all affright — Would I dare ascend that mountain ! Woody cleft and fissure brown Are so thick with evil spirits — it has such a dread renown ! Such a hideous lizard monster in its gloomy shade it screens, That as rugged as the rocks are, winds along the close ravines — E'en asleep lies with them sinuous like a worm in twisted shell — And has eaten up more people in old days than I can tell! D ro THE PINK TERRACES, N.Z. Would you go and wake that Taniwha ! 0, not at least to-day : Look how lovely calm the Lake is ! — 'twill be sweeter far to stray In the blue hot brilliant noontide to each secret shadowy bay, And afloat on liquid crystal pass the happy time away ! " Alfred Domett. THE PINK TERKACES, KZ. " How beautiful ! how wonderful I how strange ! '" Such words, less thought than mere emotion, well Might Ranolf with abated breath, in tone That wonder-stricken to a whisper fell, For Amo's looks of triumph now exchange : So fair a vision charmed our loiterers lone, As at the closing of a sultry day, In search of some good camping ground They paddled up Mahana's Lake, Where they a small canoe had found (Which Amo settled they might take), With little care half hid in sedge, Flax-fastened to the water's edge — Its owners clearly far away. From the low sky line of the hilly range Before them, sweeping down its dark -green face Into the lake that slumbered at its base, A mighty cataract — so it seemed — Over a hundred steps of marble streamed THE PINK TERRACES, N.Z. 51 And gushed, or fell in dripping overflow ; Flat steps, in flights half -circled — row o'er row, Irregularly mingling side by side ; They and the torrent-curtain wide, All rosy-hued, it seemed, with sunsets glow. l>ut what is this ! — no roar, no sound, Disturbs that torrent's hush profound I The wanderers near and nearer come, Still is the mighty cataract dumb ! A thousand fairy lights may shimmer With tender sheen, with glossy glimmer, O'er curve advanced and salient edge Of many a luminous water ledge ; A thousand slanting shadows pale May fling their thin transparent veil O'er deep recess and shallow dent In many a watery stair's descent ; Yet mellow bright, or mildly dim Both lights and shades — both dent and rim— Each wavy streak — each warm snow tress Stand rigid, mute, and motionless ! No faintest murmur— not a sound — Relieves that cataract's hush profound ; No tiniest bubble, not a flake Of floating foam is seen to break The smoothness where it meets the lake ; Along that shining surface move No ripples ; not the slightest swell Rolls o'er the mirror darkly green, Where, every feature limned so well — Pale, silent, and serene as death — The cataract's image hangs beneath The cataracts — but not more serene, More phantom-silent than is seen The white rose-hued reality above. 52 THE PINK TERRACES, N.Z. They paddle past, for on the right, Another cataract comes in sight, Another, broader, grander flight Of steps all stainless, snowy bright ! They land, their curious way they track, Near thickets made by contrast black ; And then that wonder seems to be A cataract carved in Farian stone, Or any purer substance known — Agate or milk -chalcedony. Its showering snow cascades appear Long ranges bright of stalactite, And sparry frets and fringes white, Thick-falling, plenteous, tier o'er tier ; Its crowding stairs in bold ascent, Piled up that silvery glimmering height Are layers, they know, accretions slow Of hard silicious sediment. For as they gain a rugged road, And cautious climb the solid rime, Each step becomes a terrace broad — Each terrace a wide basin brimmed With water, brilliant yet in hue The tenderest delicate harebell-blue Deepening to violet 1 Slowly climb The twain, and turn from time to time To mark the hundred paths in view — Crystalline azure, snowy rimmed — The marge of every beauteous pond, Cnrve after curve — each lower beyond THE PINK TERRACES, N.Z. 53 The higher — outsweeping white and wide, Like snowy lines of foam that glide O'er level sea-sands lightly skimmed By thin sheets of the glistening tide. They climb those milk-white Hats incrusted And netted o'er with wavy ropes Of wrinkled silica. At last — Each basin's heat increasing fast — The topmost step the pair surmount, And lo, the cause of all ! Around, Half-circling cliffs a crater bound ; Cliffs damp with dark green moss — their slopes All crimson stained with blots and streaks — White-mottled and vermilion — rusted. And in the midst, beneath a cloud That ever upward rolls and reeks And hides the sky with its dim shroud, Look where upshoots a fuming fount — Up through a blue and boiling pool Perennial — a great sapphire streaming, In that coralline crater gleaming. Upwelling ever, amethystal, Ebullient comes the bubbling crystal Still growing cooler and more cool As down the porcelain stairway slips The fluid flint, and slowly drips, And hangs each basin's curling lips With crusted fringe, each year increases, Thicker than shear-forgotten fleeces ; More close and regular than rows, Long rows of snowy trumpet-flowers Some day to hang in garden-bowers, When strangers shall "these wilds enclose. THE PINK TERRACES, N.Z. But see ! in all that lively spread Of blue and white and vermeil red, How, dark with growths of greenest gloss Just at the ledge of that first ledge, Calcareous string to cliff-formed bow (O'er which the hot pool trickles slow) A little rocky islet peeps Into the crater-caldron's deeps. Along the ledge they lightly cross, And from its midway islet gaze O'er all the scene, and every phase The current takes as down it strays. They note where'er, by step or stair, By brimming bath, on hollow reef, Or hoary plain, its magic rain Can reach a branch, a flower, a leaf. The branching spray, leaf, blossom gay Are blanched and stiffened into stone ! So round about lurks tracery strewn Of daintiest moulded porcelain ware, Or coral wreaths and clusters rare, A white flint foliage rather say Such fairy work as frost alone Were equal to, could it o'erlay With tender crust of crystals fair, Fine spikes so delicatelv piled — Not wintry trees leaf-stripped and bare, But summer's vegetation rich and wild, CHRISTMAS GUESTS. 55 CHRISTMAS GUESTS. " The loneliest night of all the lonely year ! " The sick man murmured with a weary moan ; "And I shall spend, without a creature near, Another dreary Christmas-tide alone ! " A wooden shanty, common, rough, and bare, Rude shelter offered to a sufFring man ; Its door flung open to the warm night air, Courting, in vain, a breeze his cheek to fan. A man well on in years ; deep-lined and grey His brow, and those scant locks which o'er it hung One who had lost, he had been heard to say, All that he lived for while he still was young. A world- worn wand'rer on the face of earth, Whom Death and Sorrow, in an evil time, Had driven from the country of his birth To lonely labour in an Austral clime. Where, toiling without heart, to keep alive A life he did not cherish, he had failed, As hopeless toilers fail 'mid those who strive ; For sorry life alone his gains availed. Half-dressed, and flung upon his restless bed, He, burning-eyed, gazed out upon the night — Gazed from the glowing darkness overhead To where the distant township's lamps shone bright. 56 CHRISTMAS GUESTS. "Full many kindly souls," he muttered low, "Feasting and laughing on this Christmas Eve, Did they my dire extremity but know • Would gladly seek my su firings to relieve. " And who am I, to wrap me in my pride, Scorning to ask what would be freely given ? Yet, no ! I cannot beg ! " he feebly cried, " Help, to be help for me, must come from Heav'n ! " E'en as he spoke, high in the vast dark blue, A meteor, loosened from its viewless ties, Across the star-flow'red fields of ether flew, Like some grand, fired-winged bird of paradise. Its trailing lustre shed a transient gleam Upon two figures at the open door, Whose faces brightened with a tender beam The lonely hut that was so dim before. A woman and a child ! Was he distraught, That neither fear nor wonder held him bound To welcome beings who, his reason taught, Had slept for twenty years in English ground? Why should he fear them. Were they not his own — The wife, the child — with whom his heart had died? What wonder if, when he was sick and lone, They left their Heaven for service at his side 1 Hand clasped in hand, they crossed his threshold now, Smiling upon their loved one as they came ; They spoke no word, but kissed his pain-dewed brow, And coolness fell upon his fevered frame. CHRISTMAS GUESTS. 57 How 'twas he knew not — but within a space That seemed no longer than a moment's flight— A happy change had come upon the place, And all around him streamed a soft, clear light. The child was hanging garlands ev'rywhere, Familiar wreaths of holly's glossy green, Of laurel and of bay ; while here and there Gleamed marv'llous unknown blooms of snowy sheen. The mother spread the table for a feast, As though resuming old sweet household care ; And he, in whom all sense of pain had ceas'd, Was gently led this wondrous meal to share. What was his fare, that Eve of Christmas morn ? He cannot tell us, and he only could ; But, if 'twere not a dream of weakness born, He, for the first time, tasted angels' food ! Then, smiling still, they held his feeble hands, And sweetly raised that old, old hymn of praise, That echoes on through widest-sundered lands, In Christian hearts all earthly Christmas days, " Come, all ye faithful ! " Were they calling him? Bidding him seek a heavenly Bethlehem ? He smiled in answer as his eyes grew dim, And strove to rise that he might follow them. "Joyful and triumphant ! " Ah ! such harmonies Thrilled through the humble hut, as human ear, Unhelp'd by angel-teachers from the skies, Has never heard, may never hope to hear. 58 FROM MIDAS. Grandly it rose and swelled, that Christmas song ! Surely all choirs of Heaven joined the strain— That mighty stream of praise that bore along Upon its flood a being freed from pain ! "When his next neighbours, on the Christmas Day, Some friendly impulse to his shanty led, Calm, placid, still, upon his bed he lay, A smile was on his face and he was dead ! Lindsay Duncan (Mrs T. C. Cloud). PROM MIDAS. Then are there Gods indeed? Or was it a fantastic creed Dreamed of our doting fathers long ago, — Which peopled the blue space With an immortal race, Who mixed their thoughts with things below And recked of human weal and human woe ? Was it a poet's dream That power and will supreme Possess the thrones above? That infinite wisdom, strength, and love Fulfil themselves in days and years And motions of the spheres ? That from the central core To the uttermost outward rim Of this round sea without a shore, Which men with senses weak and dim Pretentiously explore, And through disastrous ages puzzle o'er, FROM MIDAS. 59 This multiform mysterious shell And curtain of material seeming Which nature, like a conscious maiden innocently teeming With many a thought she loathes yet longs to tell, Before her secret wonders coyly holds, And save to those who love her well Or win her by transcendent dreaming, Or painful study of her laws, Never iinfolds, Or loosely lifts, or amorously withdraws — That through creation's cosmic course, Through first effect and final cause, Through fashioning Will and plastic Force, Through molecules made warm With harmony of growth and form, When pulse of mystic motion first The shell of Chaos burst, Through germs of birth and breath, Through life and death, One universal soul Informs and fills the whole — That still through water, earth, and air God lives and flows, and Heaven is everywhere ? If such a Heaven there be, If earth and air and sea, If all around, beneath us, and above, Thrill with the eternal prdse of Love ; If universal life, With Godhead, and with Gods be rife, Why mock they man's persistent prayer, Why groan and fret we thus for ever and in vain, Why find our woes no echo there, And our tremendous pain Awaken but indifference and disdain ? 6o FROM MIDAS. The race of beasts I reckon blest : Their dream of life, though passing brief, The labour and alternate rest Is yet their own for joy or grief ; Their own, and naught beyond, they know ; They revel in the right possessed ; They taste the pleasures undepressed By shadows of impending woe ; No spirit shocks their tranquil moods molest, Nor phantom fears infest, Nor spectral memories haunt their happy hours Amid the ephemeral flowers That on their pathway grow ; No black foreboding rears its serpent crest ; Unconscious to their goal they go. What ills they suffer in their meek estate, Exhaust the rage of fate. The torture swift or slow, The burden and the blow, The heat, the cold, the hunger, and the thirst— These ills are in their suffering all, And suffered, then have done their worst. But whether great or small, They bring no rankling sore, They leave no sting behind, They cast no shade before. Man, man alone, whose conscious mind The eternal doubt devours, With all his boasted knowledge blind, The creature of contrarious powers, Ever from his birth oppressed By the accumulating hours, With the inherited unrest, Like a baleful shadow cast From the dimness of the past, FROM MIDAS. 61 Which above the future towers, Breathing on the life to come Presages of poison-bloom, And for ages yet unfurled Fatally foredooms the world, And through each succeeding morrow Piles up sorrow upon sorrow. We dig, we delve, we crush, we tear, We ransack ocean, earth, and air — All forms of ill, all shapes of suffering brave, To build fresh heaps for those who have Already in excess, yet dare Still more to covet, more to crave, Wherewith to swell the unearned superfluous share, Who have not borne what we must bear, Nor owned their wealth by toil, and misery and despair. For them, not for ourselves we toil. Like forked tires that desolate the plain, Their tyrant tongues lick up spoil We gather with our sweat and labour's bloody pain. For them we strive, for them we pine, For them from forest, held, and mine, We wring the golden grain. For them, with life and strength accursed, Through heat and cold, through drought and rain, Through hunger and through thirst, We perish piecemeal to sustain Their lives which out of ours like parasites are nursed. To give them strength we drain And empty heart and brain ; We bleed to give them blood From every quivering vein ; Our very liesh unnatural food, 62 THE WIND IN THE SHE- OAK TREE. A horrid hunger draws To their insatiate jaws. And this, even this, we seem to give, Whereby the old saying is made good, However little understood, The many perish that the few may thrive, And thus from age to age the labourer's lot, While all around him changes, changes not ; And griefs that were the burden of old chimes, The pangs our fathers felt, the wrongs they bore, Like an eternal sore, Eat fostering to the heart of otir familiar times. William Foester. THE WIND AND THE SHE-OAK TEEE 0, would that I could translate Each untranslateable tone Of the wind in the she-oak's leaves, As it maketh its plaintive moan. Nor only moan doth it make ; It knowcth the subtlest speech To waft the attuned soul afar 'Yond mortal things and their reach. And, oh mournful and dark-hued tree, With thy myriad pendant leaves, That like slender reeds make the strings For those airs that the wind-soul weaves. THE WIND IN THE SHE-OAK TREE. 63 Thou fittest of instruments art For the pathos that lies in the strain ! For knowest thou not all that mystery dark Whose haunts are the bush and the plain ? And wind stealing over the grass, With a sound like soft rustling of sheaves, Brought ye not sighs, from the dying lips Of some traveller lost, to these leaves. For see, as your fingers touch, Tho' e'er so lightly the strings, There ariseth the look of the burning day, And the sound of the whirr of wings. The steep range stands in the blaze Of the noon ; and the dry creek-bed Is panting and white 'neath the pitiless sky ; The birds are awatch for the dead. And this dying note is the hush Of the night's swift fall — of the awe Of the man's spent soul as he sinks to the grass, Whence he knows he shall rise no more. And this other sound like a sob, Fell perchance on the ear of the night, While the speechless stars looked down On the solemn and woeful sight. Wild longings and memories fond, And anon most passionate pain, The calm of despair and the sense of the dark, All mingle and speak in the strain. 64 BENEATH THE WATTLE BOUGHS. For the loving, a world away, Who watch for the wanderer's face, Thro' the mystic thrill of the spirit bond Are troubled in soul in their place. For nature doth speak thro' the air, Thro' the flowers, the fields, and the sea, And Her wind is composer and player both In the leaves of the she-oak tree. Frances Tyrrell Gill. BENEATH THE WATTLE BOUGHS. The wattles were sweet with September's rain, He drank in their breath and the breath of the spring, " Our pulses are strong with the tide of life," I said, " and one year is so swift a thing 1 " The land all around was yellow with bloom ; The birds in the branches sang joyous and shrill ; The blue range rose 'gainst the blue of the sky ; Yet she sighed, " But death may be stronger still ! " Then I reached and gathered a blossomy bough, And divided its clustering sprays in twain, "Asa token for each " (1 closed one in her hand) " Till we come to the end of the year again ! " Then the years sped on, strung high with life ; And laughter and gold were the gifts they gave, Till I chanced one day on some pale dead ilowers, And spake, shaking and white, "One more gift I crave." "Nay," a shadow voice in the air replied, " 'Neath the blossoming wattles you'll find a grave ! " Frances Tyrrell Gilt,. LOVE'S LOYALTY. 65 LOVE'S LOYALTY. DAT. With the mapgie for the nightingale, The wattle for the beech, And for the woodland warbler's notes The wild bush-parrot's screech — With unknown range and gorge to scan, Unbounded land to roam, And for the changeful English seas, The long Australian foam ! For afternoons of dreaming fond, In old leaf-hidden lanes, Is the long sure stride of my swift-limbed horse Across the short-grassed plains. I drink the golden morning air, And, as the returned tide Of full life bounds along my veins, I crave for naught beside ! I hear the loud creek plunging down, The slope just freshed with flood — Its wild song keeps triumphant time With the rapture of my blood. "This sense of new un trammeled life, This sense," I cry, " of space, Hath cured me of the fever wrought By one enchanting face ! " £ 66 LOVE'S LOYALTY. NIGHT. Now evening falls upon the land, The magpie's parting strain Dies out along the ti-tree marge ; My tired horse crops the plain. Half dreamily the faint blue line, That marks the farthest range, Takes in the hill's familiar form That rose behind the grange. The English scents steal in the air ; A rush of liquid notes Fills all the leafy copse — poured forth Unnumbered feathered throats. Those lovely hazel eyes again ! With their old haunting look — That lithe light form — one dainty foot, Drawn backward from the brook ! The raging pain swirls thro' my soul ; In fierce resolve and dire, I shake me from the glamour free Beside the red camp fire. My comrade's laughter fills the hours, Night claims her toll of sleep, The large soft southern stars gaze on, The hush is close and deep. From dreams I wake to find my soul A captive to the past. Tho' all the seas are wide between, My freedom could not last ! WHILE THE BILL V BOILS. 6 7 Oh love ! Love-loyal I remain ! For tho' some spirit bar Constrained thy soul, thy face for aye Lives on — my guiding star ! Frances Tyrrell Gill. WHILE THE BILLY BOILS. While the ruby coals in the dull grey dust Shine bright as the daylight dies ; When into our mouths our pipes are thrust, And we watch the moon arise ; While the leaves, that crackle and hiss and sigh. Feed the flames with their scented oils, In a calm content by the fire we lie, And watch while the billy boils. A desire for rest, a wash in the creek, And a seasoned bit of clay, With a chum who knowuth the time to speak, And who singeth a jovial lay, Though our pants are moles and apparently made With the aid of a tomahawk, Though we are not in fashion's garb arrayed, We can revel in tea and talk. Old Toucher, look up at those gum trees old — They're not lovely, but will be soon ; They are ugly enough in the sunlight bold, But look well by the silver moon. The light in which life is viewed on earth Makes it better or greatly worse ; And hardship is often but food for mirth, And trial a boon or curse. 68 WHILE THE BILLY BOILS. Just now the sun in its glory sank At the back of the slow creek's fringe, On a sapphire, ruby, and crimson bank — Even now there is left a tinge — Just a tinge to soften the sombre hue, 'Till the banners of night unfurl, 'Till the flowers shall be drenched with silver dew, And the moon mount the path of pearl. They can't bottle the sunset up, old boy, And cart it away to town — Yes, even their gold has some alloy — It won't buy the desert's crown. Though the rich lie soft, yet we sleep well On our bed of the fragrant leaves ; And we're better than those who in mansions dwel in this — that we fear no thieves. We have no turtle in grand tureens, But, with hunger to serve as sauce, We can relish the bacon and wholesome beans, The damper and salted horse. One thing we have which is always good — Which poverty can't destroy — Though our meals be made of the coarsest- food, Through hunger we still enjoy. Home look on our lives as wasted, true, And our views are the same as theirs — At present we've scarcely enough to do, They are worried with business cares. We have elegant leisure and time for thought- Had we something to think about — They have lots of wealth, and business fraught With a constant care and doubt. THE SICK STOCK-RIDER. 69 Not all the good things are reserved for one In this wonderful world of ours — We each have our share of the shade and sim — We must take the thorns with the tiow'rs ; To make the best of the hardest fate, Is a maxim that cannot be wrong ; So, Fred, as for tea we have not to wait — buppose you attempt a song ? KElGliLEY C GODCHILD. THE SICK STOCK-EIDER. Hold hard, Ned ! Lift me down once more, and lay me in the Bhade. Old man, you've had your work cut out to guide Both horses, and to hold me in the saddle when I swayed, All through the hot, slow, sleepy, silent ride. The dawn at " Moorabinda " was a mist rack dull and dense, The sun-rise was a sullen, sluggish lamp ; i was dozing in tho gateway at Arbuthnot's bound 'ry fence, I was dreaming on the Limestone cattle camp. We crossed the creek at Carricksford, and sharply through the haze, And suddenly the sun shot flaming forth ; To southward lay "Katawa," with the sand peaks all ablaze, And the flushed fields of Glen Lomond lay to north. Now westward winds the bridle-path that leads to Landisfarm, And yonder looms the double-headed Bluff ; yo THE SICK STOCK-RIDER. .From the far side of the first hill when the skies are clear and calm, You can see Sylvester's woolshed fair enough. Five miles we used to call it from our homestead to the place Where the big tree spans the roadway like an arch ; 'Twas here we ran the dingo down that gave us such a chase Eight years ago — or was it nine ? — last March. 'Twas merry in the glowing morn among the gleaming grass, To wander as we've wandered many a mile, And blow the cool tobacco cloud, and watch the white wreaths pass, Sitting loosely in the saddle all the while. 'Twas merry 'mid the blackwoods, when we spied the station roofs To wheel the wild scrub cattle at the yard, With a running fire of stock whips and a fiery run of hoofs ; Oh ! the hardest day was never then too hard 1 Aye ! we had a glorious gallop after " Starlight" and his gang, When they bolted from Sylvester's on the flat ; How the sun-dried reed-beds crackled, how the flint- strewn ranges rang, To the strokes of " Mountaineer" and "Acrobat," Hard behind them in the timber, harder still across the heath , - Close beside them through the tea- tree scrub we dash'd ; And the golden-tinted fern leaves, how they rustled underneath : And the honey-suckle osiers, how they crash 'd. THE SICK STOCK-RIDER. 71 We led the hunt throughout, Ned, on the chestnut and the grey, And the troopers were three hundred yards behind, While we emptied our six-shooters on the bush-rangers at bay, In the creek with stunted box-trees for a blind ! There you grappled with the leader, man to man, and horse to horse, And you roll'd together when the chestnut rear'd. He blazed away and missed you in that shallow water- course — A narrow shave— his powder singed your beard ! In these hours when life is ebbing, how those days when life was young Come back to us ; how clearly I recall Even the yarns Jack Hall invented, and the songs Jem Roper sung ; And where are now Jem Eoper and Jack Hall ? Aye I nearly all our comrades of the old colonial school, Our ancient boon companions, Ned, are gone ; Hard livers for the most part, somewhat reckless as a rule, It seems that you and I are left alone. There was Hughes, who got in trouble through that business with the cards, It matters little what became of him ; But a steer ripp'd up Macpherson in the Cooramenta yards, And Sullivan was drown'd at Sink-or-swim ; And Mostyn — poor Frank Mostyn — died at last, a fear- ful wreck, In the " horrors " at the Upper Wandinong, 72 THE SICK STOCK-RIDER. And Carisbrookc, the rider, at the Horsefall broke his neck Faith ! the wonder was he saved his neck so long ! Ah ! those days and nights we squandered at the Logans' in the glen — The Logans, man and wife, have long been dead. Elsie's tallest girl seems taller than your little Elsie then ; And Ethel is a woman grown and wed. I've had my share of pastime, and I've done my share of toil, And life is short— the longest life a span ; I care not now to tarry for the corn or for the oil, Or for wine that maketh glad the heart of man. For good undone, and gifts misspent, and resolutions vain, 'Tis somewhat late to trouble. This I know — I should live the same life over, if I had to live again ; And the chances are I go where most men go. The deep blue skies wax dusky, and the tall green trees grow dim, The sward beneath me seems to heave and fall ; And sickly, smoky shadows through the sleepy sun- light swim, And on the very sun's face weave their pall. Let me slumber in the hollow where the wattle blossoms wave, With never stone or rail to fence my bed ; Should the sturdy station children pull the bush- flowers on my grave, I may chance to hoar them romping overhead. Adam Lijsdsjsy Gokdo.n. AN EX I LBS FA RE WELL. 73 AN EXILE'S FAREWELL. Tije ocean heaves around us still With long and measured swell, The autumn gales our canvas fill, Our ship rides smooth and well. The broad Atlantic's bed of foam Still breaks against our prow ; I shed no tears at quitting home Nor will I shed them now. IT. Against the bulwarks on the poop i lean, and watch the sun Behind the red horizon stoop — His race is nearly run. Those waves will never quench lii,i light, O'er which they seem to close ; To-morrow he will rise as bright As he this morning rose. in. How brightly gleans the orb of day Across the trackless sea ! How lightly dance the waves that play Like dolphins in our lee. The restless waters seem to say, In smothered tones to me, How many thousand miles away My native land must be. 74 AN EXILES FAREWELL. IV. Speak, ocean ! is my home the same, Now all is new to me ? The tropic sky's resplendent flame, The vast expanse of sea ? Does all around her, yet unchanged, The well-known aspect wear ? Oh ! can the leagues that I have ranged, Have made no difference there ? v. How vivid Recollection's hand Recalls the scene once more ! I see the same tall poplars stand Beside the garden door ; I see the bird-cage hanging still, And where my sister set The flowers in the window-sill — Can they be living yet ? Let woman's nature cherish grief, I rarely heave a sigh, Before emotion takes relief In listless ajjathy. While from my pipe the vapours curl Towards the evening sky, And 'ncath my feet the billows whirl, In dull monotony ! VII. The sky still wears the crimson streak Of Sol's departing ray. Some briny drops are on my cheek, 'Tis but the salt sea spray ! THE CLOUD. 75 Then let our bark the ocean roam, Our keel the billows plough, I shed no tears at quitting home, Nor will I shed them now ! L. G. (Adam Lindsey Gordon.) Ship "Julia," Sept. 1853. ADAM LINDSEY GORDON. HENRY HALLORAN. K. II. HORNE. Vide Introduction. THE CLOUD. One summer morn, out of the sea-waves wild, A speck-like Cloud, the season's fated child, Came slowly floating up the boundless sky, And o'er the sun-parched hills all brown and dry. Onward she glided through the azure air, Borne by its motion without toil or care, When looking down in her ethereal joy, She marked earth's moilers at their hard employ ; "And oh ! " she said, " that by some act of graco 'Twere mine to succour yon fierce-toiling race, To give the hungry meat, the thirsty drink — The thought of good is very sweet to think." The day advanced, and the cloud greater grew, And greater likewise her desire to do 76 THE CLOUD. Some charity to men had more and more, As the long sultry summer day on wore, Greatened and warmed within her fleecy breast, Like a dove fledging in its downy nest. The heat waxed fiercer, until all the land Glared in the sun as 'twere a monstrous brand ; And the shrunk rivers, few and far between, Like molten metal lightened in the scene. Ill could Earth's sons endure their toilsome state, Though still they laboured, for their need was great, And many a long beseeching look they sped Towards that fair cloud, with many a sigh that said- 11 We famish for thy bounty ! For our sake O break thou ! in a showery blessing, break ! " " I feel, and fain would help you," said the cloud, And towards the earth her bounteous being bowed ; But then remem'bring a tradition she Had in her youth learned from her Dative sea, That when a cloud adventures from the skies Too near the altar of the hills, it dies, Awhile she wavered and was blown about Hither and thither by the winds of doubt ; But in the midst of heaven at length all still. She stood ; then suddenly, with a keen thrill Of light, she said within herself, " I Avill ! Yea, in the glad strength of devotion, I Will help you though in helping you I die." Filled with this thought's divinity, the cloud Grew world-like vast as earthward more sho bowed. Oh, never erewhile had she dreamed her state So great might be, beneficently great J THE CLOUD. 77 O'er the parched fields in her angelic love She spread her wide wings like a brooding dove : Till as her purpose deepened, drawing near, Divinely awful did her front appear, And men and beasts all trembled at the view, And the woods bowed, though well all creatures knew That near in her, to every kind the same, A great predestined benefactress came. And then wide-flashed throughout her full-grown form The glory of her will 1 the pain and storm Of life's dire dread of death whose mortal threat From Christ Himself drew agonising sweat, Flashed seething out of rents amid her heaps Of lowering gloom, and thence with arrowy leaps Hissed jagging downward, till a sheety glare Illumined all the illimitable air ; The thunder followed, a tremendous sound, Loud doubling and reverberating round ; Strong was her will, but stronger yet the power Of love that now dissolved her in a shower Dropping in blessings to enrich the earth With health and plenty at one blooming birth. Far as the rain extended o'er the land, A splendid bow the freshened landscape spanned, Like a celestial arc, hung in the air By angel artists, to illumine there The parting triumph of that spirit fair : The rainbow vanished, but the blessing craved Rested upon the land the cloud had saved. Chaiiles Harper. 78 THE CREEK OF THE FOUR GRA VES. THE CREEK OE THE FOUR GRAVES. A settler in the olden times went forth With four of his most bold and trusted men Into the wilderness — went forth to seek New streams and wider pastures for his fast Increasing flocks and herds. O'er mountain routes, And over wild wolds clouded up with brush, And cut with marshes perilously deep, — So went they forth at dawn ; at eve the sun, That rose behind them as they journeyed out, Was firing with his nether rim a range Of unknown mountains, that like ramparts towered Full in their front ; and his last glances fell Into the gloomy forest's eastern glades In golden gleams, like to the angel's sword, And flashed upon the windings of a creek That noiseless ran betwixt the pioneers And those new Apennines — ran, shaded o'er With boughs of the wild willow, hanging mixed From either bank, or duskily befringed With upward tapering feathery swamp-oake, The sylvan eyelash always of remote Australian waters, whether gleaming still In lake or pool, or bickering along Between the marges of some eager stream. Before them, thus extended, wilder grew The scene each moment and more beautiful ; For when the sun was all but sunk below Those barrier mountains, in the breeze that o'er Their rough enormous backs decp-llceced with wood Came whispering down, the wide up-slanting sea Of fanning leaves in the descending rays Danced dazzlingly, tingling as if the trees THE CREEK OF THE FOUR GRA VES. 79 Thrilled to the roots for very happiness. But when the sun had wholly disappeared Behind those mountains — 0, what words, what hue3, Might paint the wild magnificence of view That opened westward ! Out extending, lo ! The heights rose crowding, with their summits all Dissolving as it seemed, and partly lost In the exceeding radiancy aloft ; And thus transfigured, for awhile they stood Like a great company of archaeons, crowned With burning diadems, and tented o'er With canopies of purple and of gold. Here halting wearied now the sun was set, Our travellers kindled for their first night's camp A brisk and crackling fire, which seemed to them A wilder creature than 'twas elsewhere wont, Because of the surrounding savageness. And as they supped, birds of new shape and plume And wild strange voice came by ; and up the steep Between the climbing forest growths they saw, Perched on the bare abutments of the hills, Where haply yet some lingering gleam fell through, The wallaroo look forth. Eastward at last The glow was wasted into formless gloom, Night's front ; then westward the high massing woods Steeped in a swart but mellow Indian hue, A deep dusk loveliness, lay ridged and heaped, Only the more distinctly for their shade, Against the twilight heaven — a cloudless depth, Yet luminous with sunset's fading glow ; And thus awhile in the lit dusk they seemed To hang like mighty pictures of themselves In the still chambers of some vaster world. At last, the business of the supper done, 8o THE CREEK OF THE FOUR GRA VES. The echoes of the solitary place Came as in sylvan wonder wide about To hear and imitate the voices strange, Within the pleasant purlieus of the fire Lifted in glee, but to be hushed ere long, As with the darkness of the night there came O'er the adventurers, each and all, some sense Of danger lurking in its forest lairs. But, nerved by habit, they all gathered round About the well-built fire, whose nimble tongues Sent up continually a strenuous roar Of fierce delight, and from their fuming pipes Drawing rude comfort, round the pleasant light With grave discourse they planned the next day's deeds. Wearied at length, their couches they prepared Of rushes, and the long green tresses pulled From the bent boughs of the wild willows near ; Then the four men stretched out their tired limbs Under the dark arms of the forest trees That mixed aloft, high in the starry air, In arcs and leafy domes whose crossing curves, Blended with denser intergrowth of sprays, Were seen in mass traced out against the clear Wide gaze of heaven ; and trustful of the watch Kept near them by their master, soon they slept, Forgetful of the perilous wilderness That lay around them like a spectral world ; And all things slept ; the circling forest trees, Their foremost boles carved from a crow ded mass, Less visible by the watch-fire's bladed gleams That ran far out in the umbrageous dark Beyond the broad red ring of constant light ; And even the shaded mountains darkly seen, Their blufT brows looming bhi h I itirlesfl air, THE CREEK OF THE FOUR GRAVES. 81 Looked in their stillness solemnly asleep ; Yea, thence surveyed — the universe might have seemed Coiled in vast rest ; only that one dark cloud, Diffused and shapen like a spider huge, Crept as with crawling legs along the sky, And that the stars in their bright orders, still Cluster by cluster glowingly revealed, As this slow cloud moved on, high over all, Peaceful and wakeful, watched the world below. Part II. Meanwhile the cloudless eastern heaven had grown More luminous, and now the moon arose Above the hill, when lo ! that giant cone Erewhile so dark, seemed inwardly aglow With her instilled irradiance, while the trees That fringed its outline, their huge statures dwarfed By distance into brambles, and yet all Clearly defined against her ample orb, Out of its very disc appeared to swell In shadowy relief, as they had been All sculptured from its surface as she rose. Then her full light in silvery sequence still Cascading forth from ridgy slope to slope, Chased mass by mass the broken darkness down Into the dense-brushed valleys, where it crouched, And shrank, and struggled, like a dragon-doubt Glooming a lonely spirit. His leno watch The master kept, and wakeful looked abroad On all the solemn beauty of the world ; And by some sweet and subtle tie that joins The loved and cherished, absent from our side, 82 THE CREEK OF THE FOUR GRA VES. With all that is serene and beautiful In nature, thoughts of home began to steal Into his musings — when, on a sudden, hark ! A bough cracks loudly in a neighbouring brake 1 Against the shade-side of a bending gum. "With a strange horror gathering to his heart, As if his blood were charged with insect life And writhed along in clots, he stilled himself And listened heedfully, till his held breath Became a pang. Nought heard he : silence there Had recomposed her ruffled wings, and now Deep brooded in the darkness ; so that he Again mused on, quiet and reassured. But there again — crack upon crack ! Awake ! O heaven ! have hell's worst iiends burst howling up Into the death-doomed world ? Or whence, if nob .From diabolic rage could surge a yell So horrible as that which now affrights The shuddering dark ! Beings as fell are near ! Yea, beings in their dread inherited hate Awful, vengeful as hell's worst fiends, are come In vengeance ! For behold from the long grass And nearer brakes arise the bounding forms Of painted savages, full in the light Thrown outward by the fire, that roused and lapped The rounding darkness with its ruddy tongues More fiercely than before, as though even it Had felt) the sudden shock the air received From those terrific cries. On then they came And rushed upon the sleepers, three of whom But started, and then weltered prone beneath Mi" first fell blow dealt down on each by three < >l the most Btalwart of their pitiless foes ; THE CREEK OF THE FOUR GRA VES. 83 But one again, and yet again, rose up, Rose to his knees, under the crushing strokes Of huge clubbed nulla-nullas, till his own Warm blood was blinding him. For he was one Who had with misery nearly all his days Lived lonely, and who therefore in his soul Did hunger after hope, and thirst for what Hope still had promised him, some taste at least Of human good however long deferred ; And now he could not, even in dying, loose His hold on life's poor chances still to come, Could not but so dispute the terrible fact Of death, e'en in death's presence. Strange it is, Yet oft 'tis seen, that fortune's pampered child Consents to death's untimely power with less Reluctance, less despair, than does the wretch Who hath been ever blown about the world, The straw-like sport of fate's most bitter blasts ; So though the shadows of untimely death, Inevitably under every stroke But thickened more and more, against them still The poor wretch struggled, nor would cease until One last great blow, dealt down upon his head As if in mercy, gave him to the dust, With all his many woes and frustrate hopes. The master, chilled with horror, saw it all ; From instinct more than conscious thought he raised His death-charged tube, and at that murderous crew Firing, saw one fall ox-like to the earth, Then turned and fled. Fast fled he, but as fast His deadly foes went thronging on his track. Fast! for in full pursuit behind him yelled Men whose wild speech no word for mercy hath ! And as lie tied the forest beasts as well 84 THE CREEK OF THE FOUR GRA VES. In general terror through the brakes ahead Crashed scattering, or with maddening speed athwart His course cauae frequent. On, still on, he flies ; Flies for dear life, and still behind him hears, Nearer and nearer, the light rapid dig Of many feet, nearer and nearer still. Tart III. So went the chase. Now at a sudden turn Before him lay the steep-banked mountain creek j Still on he kept perforce, and from a rock That beaked the bank, a promontory bare, Plunging right forth and shooting feet-first down, Sunk to his middle in the Hashing stream, In which the imaged stars seemed all at once To burst like rockets into one wide blaze. Then wading through the ruffled waters, forth He sprang, and seized a snake-like root that from The opponent bank protruded, clenching there His cold hand like a clamp of steel ; and thence He swung his dripping form aloft, the blind And breathless haste of one who flies for lif% Urging him on ; up the dark ledge he climbed, When in his face — verily our God Hath those in His peculiar care, for whom The daily prayers of spotless womanhood And helpless infancy are offered up ! — There in its face a cavity he felt, The upper earth of which in one rude mass Was held fast bound by the enwoven roots Of two old trees, and which, beneath the mound, Over the dark aud clammy cave below, Twisted like knotted snakes. 'Neath these he crept, Just as the dark forms of his hunters thronged THE CREEK OF THE FOUR GRA VES. S5 The steep bold rock whence he before had plunged. Duskily visible beneath the moon They paused a space, to mark what bent his course Might take beyond the stream. But now no form Amongst the moveless fringe of fern was seen To shoot up from its outline, 'mid the bole3 And mixing shadows of the taller trees, All standing now in the keen radiance there So ghostly still as in a solemn trance ; But nothing in the silent prospect stirred ; Therefore they augured that their prey was yet Within the nearer distance, and they all Plunged forward till the fretted current boiled Amongst their crowding forms from bank to bank ; And searching thus the stream across, and then Along the ledges, combing down each clump Of long flagged swamp grass where it flourished high, The whole dark line passed slowly, man by man, Athwart the cave ! Keen was their search but vain ; There grouped in dark knots standing in the stream That glimmered past them moaning as it went, They marvelled ; passing strange to them it seemed ; Some old mysterious fable of their race, That brooded o'er the valley and the creek, "Returned upon their minds, and fear-struck all And silent, they withdrew. And when the sound Of their retreating steps had died away, As back they hurried to despoil the dead Jn the stormed camp, then rose the fugitive, Renewed his flight, nor rested from it, till He gained the shelter of his longed-for home. And in that glade, far in the doomful wild, 86 A STORM ON THE MOUNTAINS. In sorrowing record of an awful hour Of human agony and loss extreme, Untimely spousals with a desert death, Four grassy mounds are there beside the creek, Bestrewn with sprays and leaves from the old trees Which moan the ancient dirges that have caught The heed of dying ages, and for long The traveller passing then in safety there Would call the place — The Creek of the Four Graves. Charles Harper. A STORM ON THE MOUNTAINS. A lonely boy, far venturing from home Out on the half- wild herd's faint tracks I roam ; 'Mid rock-browed mountains, which with stony frown Glare into haggard chasms deep adown ; A rude and craggy world, the prospect lies Bounded in circuit by the bending skies. Now at some clear pool scooped out by the shocks Of rain-floods plunging from the upper rocks Whose liquid disc in its undimpled rest Glows like a mighty gem brooching the mountain's breast, I drink and muse, or mark the wide-spread herd, Or list the tinkling of the dingle-bird ; And now towards some wild-hanging shade I stray, To shun the bright oppression of the day ; For round each crag, and o'er each bosky swell, The fierce refracted heat flares visible, Lambcntly restless, like the dazzling hem Of some else viewless veil held trembling over them. A STORM ON THE MOUNTAINS. 87 Why congregate the swallows in the air, And northward them in rapid flight repair ? With sudden swelling din, remote but harsh, Why roar the bull-frogs in the tea-tree marsh ? Why cease the locusts to throng up in flight And clap their gay wings in the fervent light ? Why climb they, bodingly demure, instead The tallest spear-grass to the bending head ? Instinctively, along the sultry sky, I turn a listless, yet inquiring, eye ; And mark that now with a slow gradual pace A solemn trance creams northward o'er its face ; Yon clouds that late were labouring past the sun, Reached by its sure arrest, one after one, Come to a heavy halt ; the airs that played About the rugged mountains all are laid : While drawing nearer far-off heights appear, As in a dream's wild prospect, strangely near ! Till into wood resolves their robe of blue, And the grey crags rise bluffly on the view. Such are the signs and tokens that presage A summer hurricane's forthcoming rage. At length the south sends out her cloudy heaps, And up the glens at noontide dimness creeps ; The birds, late warbling in the hanging green Of steep-set brakes, seek now some safer screen ; The herd, in doubt, no longer wanders wide, But fast ongathering throngs yon mountain's side. Whose echoes, surging to its tramp, might seem The mutter'd troubles of some Titan's dream. Fast the dim legions of the muttering storm Throng denser, or protruding columns form ; 88 A STORM ON THE MOUNTAINS. While splashing forward from their cloudy lair, Convolving flames, like scouting dragons, glare : Low thunders follow, labouring up the sky, And as fore-running blasts go blaring by, At once the forest, with a mighty stir, Bows, as in homage to the thunderer ! Hark ! from the dingoes' blood-polluted dens, In the gloom-hidden chasms of the glens, Long fitful howls wail up ; and in the blast Strange hissing whispers seem to huddle past ; As if the dread stir had aroused from sleep, Weird spirits, cloistered in yon cavy steep, (On which, in the grim past, some Cain's olfence Hath haply outraged heaven !) who rising thence Wrapped in the boding vapours, laughed again To wanton in the wild- willed hurricane. See in the storm's front, sailing dark and dread, A wide-winged eagle like a black flag spread ! The clouds aloft flash doom ! short stops his flight ! He seems to shrivel in the blasting light ! The air is shattered with a crashing sound, And he falls, stonelike, lifeless, to the ground. Now, like a shadow at great nature's heart, The turmoil grows. No wonder, with a start, Marks where right overhead the storm careers, Girt with black horrors and wide-flaming fears ! Arriving thunders, mustering on his path, Swell more and more the roarings of his wrath, As out in widening circles they extend, And then— at once — in utter silence end. Portentous silence ! Time keeps breathing past, Yet it continues ! May this marvel last V A STORM ON THE MOUNTAINS. 89 This wild weird silence in the midst of gloom So manifestly big with coming doom? Tingles the boding ear ; and up the glens Instinctive dread comes howling from the wild-dog's dens. Terrific vision ! Heaven's great ceiling splits, And a vast globe of withering fire emits, Which pouring down in one continuous stream, Spans the black concave like a burning beam, A moment ; — then from end to end it shakes With a quick motion — and in thunder breaks ! Peal rolled on peal ! while heralding the sound, As each concussion thrills the solid ground, Fierce glares coil, snake-like, round the rocky wens Of the red hills, or hiss into the glens, Or thick through heaven like flaming falchions swarm, Cleaving the teeming cisterns of the storm, From which rain -torrents, searching every gash, Split by the blast, come sheeting with a dash. On yon grey peak, from rock-encrusted roots, The mighty patriarch of the wood upshoots, In those proud-spreading tops' imperial height The mountain eagle loveth most to light ; Now dimly seen through tempestuous air, His form seems harrowed by a mad despair, As with his ponderous arms uplifted high, He wrestles with the storm and threshes at the sky ! A swift bolt hurtles through the lurid air, Another thundering crash ! the peak is bare ! Huge hurrying fragments all around are cast, The wild-winged, mad-limbed monsters of the blast. The darkness thickens ! With despairing cry From shattering boughs the rain-drenched parrots Hy ; 9o A STORM ON THE MOUNTAINS. Loose rocks roll rumbling from the mountains round, And half the forest strews the smoking ground ; To the bared crags the blasts now wilder moan, And the caves labour with a ghostlier groan. Wide raging torrents down the gorges flow Swift bearing with them to the vale below Those sylvan wrecks that littered late the path Of the loud hurricane's all-trampling wrath. The storm is past. Yet booming on afar Is heard the rattling of the thunder-car, And that low muffled moaning, as of grief, Which follows with a wood-sigh wide and brief. The clouds break up ; the sun's forth -bursting rays Clothe the wet landscape with a dazzling blaze ; The birds begin to sing a lively strain, And merry echoes ring it o'er again ; The clustered herd is spreading out to graze, Though lessening torrents still a hundred ways Flash downward, and from many a rocky ledge A mantling gust comes quick and shining o'er the edge. 'Tis evening ; and the torrent's furious flow Runs gentlier now into the lake below. O'er all the freshened scene no sound is heard, Save the short twitter of some busied bird, Or a faint rustle made amongst the trees By wasting fragments of a broken breeze. Along the wild and wreck-strewed paths I wind, Watching earth's happiness with a quiet mind, And see a beauty all unmarked till now, Flushing each flowery nook and sunny brow ; Wished peace returning like a bird of calm, Brings to the wounded world its blessed healing balm. AN. ABORIGINAL MOTHERS LAMENT. 91 On nerveless, tuneless lines how sadly Ringing rhymes may wasted be, While blank verse oft is mere prose madly Striving to be poetry : While prose that 's craggy as a mountain May Apollo's sun-robe don, Or hold the well-spring of a fountain Bright as that in Helicon. Charles Harper. AN ABORIGINAL MOTHER'S LAMENT. Still farther would I fly, my child, To make thee safer yet, From the unsparing white man, With his dread hand murder-wet ! I'll bear thee on as I have borne With stealthy steps wind-fleet, But the dark night shrouds the forest, And thorns are in my feet. O moan not ! I would give this braid — Thy father's gift to me — But for a single palmful Of water now for thee. All ! spring not to his name — no more To glad us may he come ! He is smouldering into ashes Beneath the blasted gum ! All charred and blasted by the fire The white man kindled there, And fed with our slaughtered kindred Till heaven-high went its glare ! 92 AN ABORIGINAL MOTHER'S LAMENT. moan not ! I would give this braid — Thy father's gift to me — For but a single palmful Of water now for thee. And but for thee, I would their fire Had eaten me as fast ! Hark ! Hark ! I hear his death-cry Yet lengthening up the blast ! But no — when his bound hands had signed The way that we should fly, On the roaring pyre flung bleeding— 1 saw thy father die 1 moan not ! I would give this braid— Thy father's gift to rac — For but a single palmful Of water now for thee. No more shall his loud tomahawk Be plied to win our cheer, Or the shining fish pools darken Beneath his shadowing spear ; The fading tracks of his fleet foot Shall guide not as before, And the mountain -spirits mimic His hunting call no more ! moan not ! I would give this braid — Thy father's gift to me — For but a single palmful Of water now for thee. ClIAKLES HAErEJL IDEAL BEAUTY. 93 IDEAL BEAUTY. Absolve me for a while, undo The links that bind me as your thrall, So I be more myself, more worthy you ; Let me forget you too in dreams, Your lang'rous waist and musical Soft ways, like cadences of streams Unbooked for, strange, but sweetly rhythmica 1 The morning freshness of the rose, The suave strong motion of the sea, The strenuous splendour and repose Of marble, and the lily's purity ; All these are types that symbolize The secret charm, the subtle grace, The music as of paradise That plays about your lissom limbs and face ; Let me forget all these and be Once more self-centred, circumspect, And of daedalian longings free, Let me a fuller, stronger life elect ; So may I on a windy shore See screaming seagulls flying near, And hear the hollow channels roar, Nor seek in every breeze your voice to hear ; Or where the glints of sunshine steal Through clust'ring clematis and fern, There let me roam alone and feel The simple joys of sense for which I yearn ; 94 THE HUT ON THE FLAT. The lights and shadows of the bush, The prattling music of the creek, The stir of insects and the hush Of solitude, — these are the joys I seek Oh idle words ! since Marsyas died, How many has Apollo slain? And ah ! how many too have tried To win you, or to shun you— but in vain. E. S. Hay. THE HUT ON THE FLAT. You've heard of Warradgery Run, he said, where old Morris Died a while back ; I was stockman there, years ago now. Morris had an old shepherd up there, God knows his name, I don't. There's many a man in these parts whose right name nobody knows. We called him old Jack ; he wasn't so old, but quiet and queer in his ways, And for a station hand uncommonly steady. You know If we work hard in the bush, when we get a chance of enjoyment, We take our pleasure like work, as much as we can at a spell ; Perhaps we'd do better to take our sport as I've heard some do with their wine, Drinking to taste and not to be drunk. Well, it's our way. THE HUT ON THE FLAT. 95 Jack had little to say, the same as most of the shepherds. Often I've thought when a man has no one to talk to, Nothing but sheep and his dogs around him day after day and for ever ; Silence becomes so familiar at last, that his voice is strange to himself. You may think he is shy, but his silence is ignorance and habit. All he learns is the news of the run in a yarn with a stockman or rider, And nought of the world "inside" he knows, save when he gets from a shearer Or some of the station hands a newspaper, months after date. He doesn't dislike a yarn, but he must do most of the listening, That is the way with the most, but Jack liked to keep to himself. If he noticed you coming his way, he would drive off the sheep if he could ; But if he must stay, he would merely answer your questions. " Going wild," they said on the run, and he was left to himself. His hut was out on Dingo Flat, three miles or more from the station — A lonely place ; between the hut and the station lived no one. A gunyah of slab the hut, bark-roofed ; the walls within lined with sacking. Only one room it had, and the fireplace took up a side. Opposite, raised on short posts and built in the slabs of the wall Was a bunk for his bed, planked up at the head and the foot. 96 THE HUT ON THE FLAT. From the top of the bunk to the wall a part of the hut had been ceiled, And in the loft thus made he kept his bridle and saddle. The floor was the earth flattened well by tramping and beating. Under the window, unglazed and closed with a strong- wooden shutter, Stood his table, uneven and rudely made of deal casing Supported on saplings short that sunk in the earth of the floor ; He had made it himself ; between table and fireplace a camps tool. Beside the window his cupboard was placed, a gin case nailed to the wall ; On it rested some pipes, and a bushman's various trifles, Scattered about the hut were his simple household utensils, And save himself and his dogs, in the place was never a living creature. This hut stood down at the end of the Flat ; behind it a pen for the sheep. A hundred yards from the door ran a little creek, and about it Here and there, grew a she-oak, tall and sombre of foliage. Black and green wattles and pines and gum trees covered a hillock With a thick scrub to the summit. This iu the front to the east. Behind the gunyah were flats with low bare hills alternated, Bare were both flats and hills save for here and there a huge gum. THE HUT ON THE FLAT. 97 Riding one day by Warraman Creek, amongst the scrub on the hillside And over the flats by the water, I saw Jack's sheep were astray. Neither Jack nor his dog responded when loudly I cooeyed, So I rode on to his hut. The door was closed ; not dismounting, I struck on the door with my stockwhip handle and listened — no answer. Again I struck, and a faint voice said, " For God's sake, come in." The door was locked, and I broke the hasp with repeated blows of a log, Entered, and saw in the twilight Jack lying still in his bunk So like a dead man that at first I scarcely believed he was living. Shrunken and ghastly pale was his face, unmoving among the blue blankets. He had not the strength to rise, but when he saw who it was entered A change came on his face as he found relief from some terror ; And when I stood at his side he stretched forth weakly yet eager His wasted hands to grasp mine, and strove, though they could not, to hold me, And sitting beside him he told me the tale I will tell you. It was long hearing for me ; though he seemed im- patient to tell it ; His strength would fail, and long he would lie un- willingly silent ; When he spoke 'twas with many a groan and pause between the words that he gasped. 98 THE HUT ON THE FLA T. Stay by me, Jim, for the time is not long to my death. A week have I lain, and the sickness threatened before that. As I grew feeble and worse, fearing my strength would utterly fail me, I turned the sheep loose ; better lost than starved in the yard. And never the face of one living I saw, but only a face that I wished not ; For whether I slept or whether I waked, or opened mine eyes were or closed, Ever a dreadful vision burned through my sense to my soul — Eyes with a terrible threat and reproach in their passionless sameness — Living eyes in a dead wan face that was gapped with a ruinous blow. And I thought it the judgment of God, the face of my victim should haunt me, And the eyes of him whom I slew should witness my doom without pity. Three years ago it is now, one wild night a man weak and ailing, Wandered up to the hut and asked shelter ! 0, God! that he had not ! But this is hell — to do crime and gain not, yet never undo it. lie entered and lay that night in a bed I made on the hearthplace, was worse his mind, And in his madness he talked of his money, and bade me Open his swag to be sure it was there ; from that day I wished for his death, THE HUT ON THE FLAT 99 But I thought not yet of a crime, expecting he would not recover. When the delirium passed he lay so feeble and help- less, I thought some day to return and find he had died in his sleep ; Then I might hide his swag, and give them word at the station A sick man came to the hut and after a day or two died. But one day he rose by himself and thenceforth grew stronger. He knew it as well, and said that I would find he was grateful, " You will not lose by me," he declared, " I am not so poor as I look." Forgetting — how should he remember? when mad alike we gazed on his wealth. And daily I brooded about the chance of his money escaping. Though I tried not to show my desire he might have perceived it, For I was afraid he would leave some time and find his way to the station. Nightly I brought back the sheep, and while I penned them, our ration He cooked and laid our meal ; in silence we ate it. Then he would sit at one side of the fire, I at the other, nor speak, For I was never a talker, and he got tired of every thing soon. If he began to talk I'd say, "aye" or "no," and all the while I was thinking Of the notes in his swag I had seen when first he came to the hut. ioo THE HUT ON THE FLAT. When the fire burnt down he went to the bunk, while my bed I made on the hearth. One night, coming back, I got tired of it all ; shall I wait, I said to myself, Till he gets strong and goes off, and all his money goes with him ? You have a right to it, too ; but for you he had died on the flat. So the mischief had worked, while I knew not whither my thoughts were leading, And the deed I must do to possess his wealth then first arose in my mind ; For a moment I shrank, then my purpose was deadlier strengthened. When he turned in, I listened till I heard his steady, low breathing, Then rose, took the axe, gently felt in the dark for his face, Struck once, and he loudly groaned, shuddered, and then he lay still. Mad to conceal him, then with the axe I hewed a grave under the bunk, And wrapping his body, yet warm, in the bedclothes he lay in, Hurried it into the hole, threw the earth back, and placed the box over. I burnt the swag, and his money you'll find it all in the box. When he began, I thought him by sickness and loneli- ness maddened, And the story some dream of his fever ; but as he pro- ceeded Without a pause, save that which his illness commanded, In spite of myself I believed. When he ceased, he lay silent ; THE HUT ON THE FLAT. Almost I feared to stay there ; the murdered man lying beneath us, Above him his murderer dying at night in that hut on the flat, lie asked me for water at length, and I went for it clown to the creek ; Never did night seem more lovely to me, every star stood out from the blue, There was no wind, and the air was cool and fresh, and the scene most silent — Perfectly silent, but for the distant wailing of curlews. The very trees seemed asleep, and my steps broke harsh on the quiet. The water was calm as the air, and when I disturbed it, Danced in the ripples the shimmering stars as if de- lighted with motion. There was no moon, and the starlight showed no horizon ; And the world stretched out to the stars in that shadow all landscape of twilight. Back I turned to the hut. I gave the man drink and sat by his bedside, And waited there through the dreary hours knowing him past any help. Uneasily slept he a while with many a shudder and groan, Sometimes sobbing, then delirious waked, and towards the morning he died, All his face working and shrieking ; "I didn't do any- thing with it." Suddenly broke his shriek to a groan, and passed through his limbs a strong shudder, Then like a blow from a hand unseen the death change smote all his face. So he died, and at once I rode back to the station. [02 THE HUT ON THE FLAT. Morris was down in Melbourne, and I told the manager Benson. At daylight he sent off a man to round up the sheep, and later He and I rode down and fastened the hut till a magis- trate came. Then I went over to Wirra, and Jackson and his overseer Came the same day to Warradgery. The hut never saw such a muster, For the story had spread and every one wished to attend. Below the bunk the floor was dug up ; not four feet under the surface We found what had been a man, with rotting blue blankets about it. And when all proceedings were over no shepherd could be persuaded To live near the spot. A stranger soon heard of the story. A new hut was built farther on, and the old one abandoned left standing. So little by little the place went all to destruction, The shutter was torn away, and the door fell, hung by one hinge, The sacking got torn away down within, and the rain beat in through the cracks, Fallen wholly, one slab left a ruinous gap in the front, The roof was loosed by the wind, and the bark frayed out into ribbons. So looked the hut on that desolate flat the last time I saw it, Late in a stormy day in August; the sun was not sunken, THE HUT ON THE FLAT. 103 Yet was the landscape darkened by cloud; the creek was swollen by rains ; Over the flat a heavy wind blew and whistled among the she-oaks, Bringing now and again a shower of thick stinging sleet. While my mare stopped for a drink, I turned in my saddle and gazed Up to Jack's gunyah standing desolate there as I tell you. I have seen some places unholy in different parts of the country, But the God-forsakenest spot that ever mine eyes were set on Was the scene of Jack's crime, that stormy evening in August — Blasted as if the place shared in the curse on a pitiless murder. Soon after the coach came up, and we set off again on our journey ; Neither spoke to the other, each in a corner sat down silent ; We two the passengers only ; what my comrade was thinking I know not ; But the damp wind, blowing hard through the trees by the roadside, Was ever in my sad thoughts as the moaning wind in the she -oaks, And the driver's song, and the rhythmic fall of horse's feet on the highway, The ring of the wheels, and the clash of harness, and sound of the threatening whip, Made an accompaniment to "I didn't do anything with it," To the shriek of a deathful voice, " I didn't do any- thing with it." Thomas He^ky. io4 MY QUEEN OF DREAMS. MY QUEEN OF DREAMS. In the warm -flushed heart of the rose-red West, When the great sun quivered and died to-day You pulsed, star, by yon pine-clad crest, And throbbed till the bright eve ashened grey. Then I saw you swim By the shadowy rim Where the grey gum dips to the western plain, And you rayed delight As you winged your flight To the mystic spheres where your kinsmen reign ! O star, did you see her ? My queen of dreams ! Was it you that glimmered the night we strayed A month ago by these scented streams ? Half -checked by the litter the musk-buds made ? Did you sleep or wake ? — Ah, for love's sweet sake, (Though the world should fail, and the soft stars wane !) I shall dream delight Till our souls take flight To the mystic spheres where your kinsmen reign ! PniLIP J. HOLDSWOKTJI. STATION HUNTING. MM STATION HUNTING ON THE WARREGO. An Episode of Australian Frontier Life. (Just what the bushmen told, ivhile raging rains Whirled tempests round our hut at Stockyard Flat, — Just what he told that night — the self-same tale, Yet not the self-same words — / tell to-day. I change his rough to smooth, and simply touch His bare blunt speech icith certain chimes of verse.) Hedge round the fire (he said), and while yon blasts Blow out their gusty summons, friends, give heed ! I speak of griefs and perils felt and faced While station-hunting on the Warrego. Two seasons had been parched, sirs, and a third Flamed, droughtier than its fellows, till the grass, The green, lush grass, grew spoilt by baneful days And nights that came uncoupled with cool dews. And musing much on decimated flocks, And gaunt herds thinned by dearth of sustenance, Paul cried, one day, to Oscar : " Are we men ? Ay, men, I say, or marble ? Plagues and droughts Smite the sick land with horrors, — yet we stand Slave-like, and smile at buffets ! Comrade, rouse ! And, ere some wide-mouthed ruin swallow all, Let's seek, far west, some richer pasturing ground ! So — spurred by strong compulsive need — they went. Five days the comrades, journeying horse by horse, Passed herbless plains, and clay-Hats cracked with heat ; io6 ST A TION HUNTING. And crossed dry blackened beds, where twisting creeks And runnels once had brawled. But loath (stout hearts ! ) To leave that waste witli failure in their hands, They slacked no rein, till, checked by hostile ground, Their maimed steeds fell,— disabled utterly ! Now, mid those sterile tracts unhorsed, and vexed With leagues of drought and travail, toiled the friends, Till Oscar, though the brawnier-limbed, laid hands (Weak, feverish hands) on Paul, and groaned,— " Enough ! " Slow torpor numbs my strength, and arduous hours Seem changes rung on one perpetual pain. Were Heaven's pearled gates in sight, I can no more ! " " Nay, nay," said Paul, " take heart ! To-day, I slew A sulphur-coloured snake that doubtless slid Due west, toward water- shallows ! Courage, friend." Courage ? The phrase fell profitless as grief ; Lost, like a stream, sand-swallowed ; vain as tears That waste, in sleep, when sharp dreams dominate. Courage the man possessed, but supple thews And sinewy limbs, he lacked. And so, perforce, They camped beside some samphire- covered hills That reddened with the sunset. All that night Strong fever marshalled hosts of pains, and plagued The sick man's flesh ; and when next dawn rayed out God's liberal light, Paul strode where lines of scrub Buttressed with brushwood-yellow mounds of sand — And roughly reared a screen of boughs, to foil Noon's fiery edge, and shield his anguished friend. Six days Paul watched, slow days that lagged to nights, And loitered into morns ; and, on the seventh, ST A TION HUNTING. 1 07 When gathering glooms had sucked light's last faint flakes, And keen white stars crept, palpitatingly, Amid unfolding skies, the sick man moaned : — " Comrade ! On, on to safety 1 I am doomed, Doomed utterly ! Forsake me, Paul, and fly I " "May God forsake me, if I do 1 " said Paul ; " Though thirst and famine come, and sweeping storms Clamour and brawl, and shake the world's four walls, Paul shall not flinch or budge I Here lies my part, Whatever be the issue 1 " But again, Slowly the faint voice murmured: — "Death draws nigh ! Yea, — knells his certain summons, for my veins Burn, and grow sapless as the dead loose leaves That clog the forest aisles in bleak July ! Heed dying lips ! turn, Paul ! O turn and fly ! " "Nay, turn and sleep !" Paul answered, "twice accursed By Heaven and Earth are cowards. Sleep ! I say, May God forsake me if I faint and fly ! " Thus spoke a brave heart's friendship : yet, once more, With passionate persistence wailed the voice : — " 'Mid prosperous realms, and cities thronged with life, Where millions toil and grovel {soul and flesh Bond-slaves to Belial and the Hunger-God), While Fortune's favourites heap red gold like mire, — There too, again, 'mid plains that stretch and show Illimitable tracts, whose furnaced sands Gasp languidly, and mock the day ! — alas, These have I paced, a mateless, childless man ; A solitary soul. For me, no wife, (When dry December scorched or Augusts wept io8 STATION HUNTING. Their windy way through ranks of rain-black clouds) Cheered, like a seraph, life's vicissitudes : For me no babes, with glib bewitching speech, Lisped the sweet prate that charms the silent sire As bird-psalms charm the bard. Paul, O Paul, On me these heaven-gleams glint not, but on you I Close-barred from me, God's largess showers on yon ! Spare, spare the guiltless far ones : pause and fly l" Here first the stout heart faltered : for the thin Strained voice had struck one master chord of life, Man's vehement love of quiet household joys, His heart aches for the witching charms of home : But Paul, perplexed and tearful, cried, "Forbear, " Forbear, Heaven frowns when cravens faint and rly ! " Now darkness circled round them like a spell : And Oscar drowsed, while Paul yearned, moodily, To pierce the vast void stillness. Fitful winds, Like melancholy night-gasps, waxed, and then Waned noiselessly, and timorous brush birds wailed From out the mallee-scrub and salt-bush clumps That flanked the dun base of the sand-ridge near. At times, far dolefuller sounds vexed Paul, for lo, Sonorous curlews scudded past, with shrieks And dismal lamentations, wofuller Than those dread groans which daunt the woodman's heart, When strong north-easters sweep through swamp-oak groves. Forlornly shrilled these wasteland cries, while Paul Sat, hour by hour, and marvelled if God's Hand, Past the fierce limits of that wild lone land, Would guide them to a havened peace again. So passed the night, that long and desolate night ! — Throned mid its infinite retinues of stars, STA TION HUNTING. 109 It passed, and gradual day, with stealthy strides, Stalked slowly, broadly, on. Now drifts of cloud, Showed dawn's soft rose-prints deepening in the east, And melting mists made visible far hills. Huge battlemented crags were they, whose fronts And fractured summits, grappled by ruthless time, And scarred by rains and tempests, frowned on Paul, Like hell's grim cliffs, and rocks unscalable. Keen anguish pierced his soul, that brave strong soul, With toils sore spent, and vexing vigils wrung ; And, glancing where his friend supinely lay, Paul saw the languid eyes grow luminous With strange mysterious light, and soon the voice Spake hollowly : — (As when, mid cavernous chasms, Some lost foot- wanderer wails for succouring aid, Distinct at first, his shrill voice volleying flies, Till, checked where wide rifts gape, and huge rocks jut, It wanes and wastes, and echoes hopelessness ; Meanwhile, high up, (a-drowsing mid their flocks), Dull hinds catch hints of deep sepulchral cries That surge like death-sighs from a world of graves : So thin, so worn, so hollow, ached that voice : — ) "Midway 'twixt dusk and dawn," it wailed, " I heard The cry of crested pigeons, wheeling low, And thrice the air grew black with clanging wings, And hoarse with marsh -fowls clamours ; (Peace ! I know When famished spoonbills, shrieking, scent lagoons !) Moreover, at that hour, when conquered night Shrinks shuddering from the dawn, cold winds arose, And breathed soft benedictions, soothing me With sounds like babbling brooks ; and then my pangs io ST A TION HUNTING. Ceased, for I heard far torrents ! Paul, be urged I Strike south, and seek assistance for us both I " So moaned the dying Oscar. Paul took up These last weak words, and thus considered them " Cooped here, man's bones might bleach till Doom's dead trump Thundered confusion on all flesh that lives ! Christian, or Christless, what man treads these wastes ? Here no oases bloom : no springs outgush : Some curse mars all, and battles with mankind ! " So muttering, he unslung the water-flask, And drew with niggard hand their daily dole. {Ah God ! what fierce extremes encompass life. Note yon plump Sybarite, whose moons are feasts, Whose midnight dainty banquets ! Hedged with gold. He sucks abundance from earth 's shores and seas; He drains the wine of life from jeioelled cups, And fattens well for grave-worms! Different fares Yon child of pain that treads dry, furnaced tracts! A bove, stretch shies of fire : around him, plains, Bare, moistureless : beneath him, earth — his grave ! For him no rich looms play with curious skill ; No menials crook and cringe ; no tempting cates, No rare wines glisten ; at Fate's Sibyl hands He plucks desire, mistrust, hope, fear, and death ! Ah, God! what fierce extremes encompass life!) ST A TION HUNTING. 1 1 1 Now thirst, that deadly desert-foe, stalked near ; For, nestling in their flasks, alas, remained Scarce three days' water for the body's need : And Paul, though staid, and nowise fooled by dreams, Sat piecing Oscar's talk. He knew, right well, That dying eyes have strength to see and pierce Those dim, dark realms, which border Death, and knew That hands, just loosening from the world, may gain Their firmest, godliest, grasp of things Divine ; And thus, perturbed and vexed with hopes and fears, He mused, well-nigh to madness. Soon he cried, " Turn, or turn not, Destruction dogs my heels ! Slow Death confronts, and Famine follows me, Till, like some snared wild beast, bound limb and limb, I fall — ignobly trapped 1 Nay, better, I say, To face my fate with sinews braced and set And make a manlike end ! Ay, nobler far ! God help us : I must seek these water springs ! " With that, Paul's heart seemed some whit comforted ; For wise resolve both sanctifies and saves ; Nor do the clefts and caves of legioned hell Hold souls more surely damned than waveriug men Who, like light leaves 'mid windy buffetings, Whirl restlessly, corrupting day by day ! " Here, gathering up what strength lay still unspent In nerve and thew, Paul sought the patch of scrub, And, hewing down broad boughs of close-leaved box, Sped straightway back : — " Because," said he, " rough winds May rave and fret the self -same hour I go, And rains, perchance, may pelt persistently 1 12 STA TION HUNTING. That white wan face (ah, horrible rains !) and so To match these possibilities, my hand Must weatherfend the wurley ! " This he did. He bound the thick boughs close with bushman's skill, Till not a gap was left where raging showers Or gusts might riot. Over all he stretched Strong bands of cane-grass, plaited cunningly. By this high noon had passed, and eve's slant sun With weak and yellowing gleam just topped the west. Now stayed Paul's hand till dark ; — for restful night, In arid regions, makes cool journey ings, While day's bewildering heats baulk man and beast. He loitered, then, till dusk, and paced the camp, With faint but kindling hope, in search of stores For necessary travel. As he turned, The sick man thrilled convulsively, and lo, Half rose, stretched forward, clutched the flagon, poured Their scant supply in Paul's own travelling-flask, And swooning, reeled and fell. But Paul beheld ! That small sublime deceit Paul saw, unseen ; Tears sluiced his eyes, while, grasping Oscar's flask He ran the liquid back, and scarcely kept (To tread that trackless wilderness) as much As, at a gulp, might ridge the smooth, soft, throat Of some grey-breasted plover parched with thirst. Then, striding where the man lay, motionless, ST A TION HUNTING. 1 1 3 TTe sobbed : — " If God's grace guide me — my friend — In yon great range may huddle billabongs ; If not, — thy mightier need confutes mine own ! " Therewith he placed the flask by Oscar, — aye, — And kissed his white wan brows with that strained kiss, His bloodless brows with that strained passionate kiss, — Which strong men, in a lifetime moved, kiss once : And, shouldering back the fringe of leaves, again He gazed at Oscar ; then heart-agonized, Crossed the green threshold. Thus went Paul his way ! (0 Sovereign Love! sublime 'twixt man and maid,— But Christlike, more august, 'twixt man and man ! Power that rules broad realms, and clans, and creeds, And makes the world's heart jubilant ! Love, Majestic Love, — man's noblest attribute, — In poor or rich, how beautiful art thou ! In hind or king how comely ! Yea, from Him ( The sinless, slain, miraculous Nazarene) Whose red blood ransomed Man, to yon sad ivretch, Who, scorned and squalid, starved and desolate, Feels, yet, compassionate pangs, — most beautiful! pure, mystic Love, that thrives and spreads Like some strange tree, whose far roots wrap Man's soul; On whose vast boughs crowned Seraphs sit ; whose top Thrones the veiled splendours of Omnipotence ! — How wonderful art thou ! How wonderful ! ) Through night's long hours Paul trod that hopeless land, Nor neared the peaks till dawn. Grim hills were they Whose huge piled blocks seemed poised by giant hands In high perpetual menace of mankind ! Athwart their base rough gorges stretched, and past 1 14 ST A TION HUNTING. Precipitous steeps, one large dry gum-creek, paved With smooth round boulders, and worn gravel-stones. Its banks were loose and blistered. Noon's strong heats Had sucked the streams that once hummed hereabout True desert music. So Paul drooped, forlorn (Prone on a sandstone block) with head that bent As bends some battered bulrush, maimed by rains, And sapped by sudden storms. But what boots Grief When Life craves action ! Therefore Paul arose, And searched those stubborn sands with hot, keen eyes, For some small glimpse of help. At length he scanned A faint old sheep-trail, trending northwardly ; — And as a cave-lost man, mid murk and gloom, Grows wild with hope, and hails some distant gleam, So Paul exulted then ! With frenzied ej'cs, That often lost, but swif tlier found, the tracks And feet that faltered rarely, on he pressed, Till daylight waxed and waned, and dusk warned " Hold." With night came coupled Dread. For merciless thirst Nipt the worn wanderer, till he drained the flask, And hurled the shell afar. Then Sleep, — soft Sleep,— Kind, pitiful Sleep— crept drowsily, and wrapt The tough, racked body in dreamless rest. Next morn, Fierce rose the sun, and smote him, — smote him, sirs, — Till pains and th robbings roused him, whereupon Up gathering to his feet, he searched anew. ST A TION HUNTING. 1 1 5 By noon, the sandwaste altered, — for the ground Grew strewn with splintered, flint-like stones that took A dull and tawny hue i' the strong sun's glare. To plod long leagues of sand seemed hard ; but now, More terrible toils were Paul's, his wayworn feet Fared bitterly on sharp, unstable flints, And slipped, and stumbled, till by prints of blood, His limping way was land-marked. Still brave heart, His strong will urged him onward ; for he deemed The flints might form that grinding stony zone, Which oft in sterile regions, belts the plain ; (Sand flanked on either side). He therefore aimed To cross that strip with speed, and haply reach More promising plains beyond. But hope unhelpcd Soon famishes man's flesh, — and, when Fatigue Strangled the Trust that homed within his heart Like some supernal guardian, Paul's faint strength Waned with the westering sun, whose nether rim Low-poised and luminous, reddened on the verge Of sands far reaching westward. As it sank, Prone, on the plain, he swooned without a cry, And lay, outstretched, till dawn. Throughout that night, Cool dews came sallying on that rain-starved land, And drenched the thick rough tufts of bristly grass, Which, stemmed like cmills (and thence termed porcu- pine) Thrust hardily thin shoots amid the flints And sharp -edged stones. Soon fan-shaped spread the dawn : And kinglike, pranked with pomps of ushering clouds, 1 1 6 ST A TION HUNTING. The crimson cruel sun arose, and trailed Swift through that sterile plain red skirts of fire ! Hell's grip was on his heart again ! — Paul stirred — Cried muttered cries, and woke right wearily And seeing those coarse stalks diamonded with dew, Yea, webbed and wet with beaded filaments, He grovelled low, and scooped his black burnt mouth To suck the dwindling drops, whereat, in truth One small wood-swallow scarce could sip. Driven wild, And desperate in his life's suprcmest need, And now the sun Climbed to the topmost heaven, and steadfastly Shone with consuming strength, until the air Glowed like a thing incorporate with the flames That scorched and stung Paul's brain. I tell you, sirs, Through all earth's myriad tribes, God saw that day No mournfuller sight than him ! At length, alas, Both plain and sky seemed suddenly to swirl Andplunge down dreamless deeps where Famine, Thirst, And Anguish sank from sight, — far under worlds Where death and silence reigned Lords Paramount. Even that swoon passed ; for life was strong :— and then Trooped dead delights which perished days had known I For dreamscapes came and went of years when life Was like some scroll, fast-shut, of wizard-lore Mysterious and unknown, in dim vague dreams, Heroamed, once more, through haunts of innocentyouth. He saw Monaro's peaks whose kingly crests Bulk skyward from the vales to glance at God : — ST A TION HUNTING. 1 1 7 Hills robed in light, august, majestical, — And fruitful vales, whose breadths of delicate green Are dear to nibbling flocks, and herds that browse. In visioned vista, too, its broad rich plains And loamy meadows stretched, — and, chieflicst, one (By Love, that subtle sleuth-hound, tracked) wherein His father's homestead stood, like some fair Ark 'Mid seas of billowing grain. Beguiled he wept. Anon, with sleep and memory, strode his sire, — A gracious man, grave-browed with care and crowned With meditative age's concomitant, Experience ripely-garnered. By his side, Girt with serenest grace, the mother gazed Regardfully. Her eyes (two mournful moons Made glorious with the love-light shrined in them) Babbled tenderly from fond clear depths life's first Unfathomable boon, — maternal love : — That old perennial spell which still outcharms The spurious lesser loves that fret mankind. Again came mortal pang3. Home's golden dreams And pageants bulked once more to things of dread That nightmared Paul. Myriads of monstrous hands, Gaunt, claw-tipped, seemed to writhe out from fierce skies, And pluck him back to life and agony ; — At which, with terrible cries, the swooner woke. He lay upon the plain, with limbs diffused ; — Half- tombed by drifting sands. Onedown-stretchedhand Had delved a hollowed place some four spans deep, Athirst, perchance, to grasp beneath parched plains. 1 1 8 ST A TION HUNTING. Coolness, denied above. Or, haply else As though the soul's continual aches had warned The weak, faint frame, to scoop its grassless grave Past reach of kites and prowling warrigals. His bare right arm was flesh-torn to the bone, As if by wild beasts' teeth ; and, on the wounds Swarmed crawling crowds of small black ants, that cleansed The thick and oozing blood-clots. Aye, amid Delirious hours, self-lacerating teeth Had gnawed Paul's own shrunk limb ; and famished lips Had fastened on impoverished veins and drawn The oil that fuelled life's spasmodic flame. (Though wrought in madness, this was horrible !) And, weakening fast, Paul feebly cloaked his face And waited for the end 1 He felt that soon His white and graveless bones would front the sun In gleaming accusation of day's wrath : That soon his dust would whirl unsepulchred Nor requiemed, save by wails from those quick winds That sink and swell about the night's mid-heart: And, crushed by stress of suffering, he prayed The hand of death — of dumb relentless death — Might free his souL Even this the enemy neared : A ravenous presence — vague, intangible — That blindly sucked his life. Its clammy breath ( Like dews that reek and drip from charnel vaults) Froze anguish into stupor ; and sharp films Bleared his faint, heavy, eyelids as he gasped — " Mother, — farewell, — farewell, — wife, — children," — S TA TION HUNTING. 1 1 9 " Hold ! Quick — quick — my man ! just tilt that water flask ! Leftwards : now drench him ! — so ; he's coming too ! " And Paul strained up ; — beheld strong, bearded men, Heard helpful words, and swooned to nothingness ! Of Oscar, Friends, I kept my tale's straight march, And so spared speech of Oscar, yet when Paul Plucked, from a three months' fever, what remained Of pristine health and strength, — he told at large, Of desperate perils, faced where seldom rain Cheers the baked earth; — told, too, of wastelands strewn With keen-edged shards, and fragmentary flints, Till rude, rough, bush-hands wept compassionate tears. Ranging, he spoke of Oscar ; hunger clung Beneath the bough-piled gunyah. But, at this, The plain rough listeners shook half-doubtful heads And shrugged incredulous shoulder-shrugs and saying— "Wild fever's seeds yet linger in the man ! " Put forth no hand to help. Yet, sirs, they lie, Who say Paul closed with such cold counsellings ; I say they lie ! Through hazardous months of pain, Paul sought his comrade's deathplace night and day — But where these naked bones blanch, God, who knows Has kept from friend and kin. Sirs, I am Paul ! Abrupt, he ceased : — and grave thoughts chained us all Till Reed cried, "Boys ! bestir, the tempest's past." Whereat each slipped to saddle, and was gone. So ran that tale of risks and jeopardies Which menace man amid our inland wilds — i20 FROM THE CANTATA. And though Regret feigns hopefuller things and sighs " Twas well with Oscar's soul," I knoAV (alas) Earth's banefullest pains and plagues rain thick on men That waste amid untravellecl tracts, consumed By pestilent Thirst, and past-cure maladies. From which dire straits protect us, our Lord, Who perished crosswise on the tree accursed ! P. J. Holds worth. FROM THE CANTATA. A few short rolling years have fled Down time's abysmal track, Since o'er this pleasant land was spread The wild uncultured Black. Now far beyond fair Torrens' stream, 'Mid spires and gilded domes, like the sweet visions of a dream Bursts on the raptured sight the gleam Of myriad happy homes. The shades where earth's primeval cloak Hung round the native's lair, Have vanished 'neath the woodman's stroke, Bloomed 'neath the ploughman's share. Approving heaven our efforts crowned, Hope pointed to the goal ; In faith a trusty friend we found ; Prudence with soft endearment wound Contentment round the soul. John Howell. TAHITI. !2i TAHITI : THE LAND OF LOVE AND BEAUTY. THE ARRIVAL AND WELCOME. Yo-rana ! Yo-rana ! Our haven is reached, The perils of ocean are o'er ; Our anchor is cast, and our shallop is beached, We are treading that wonderful shore Where scenes of enchantment bewilder the eyes, From the emerald earth to the amethyst skies, From the mountains resplendent with deep purple dyes To the ocean of beauty and calm. 'Tis the Isle of Tahiti — the fairest on earth ; It is gay Papeete — the palace of Mirth ; It is where all the Loves and the Graces have birth — The land of the Coral and Palm ! Yo-rana ! We hail thee, thou Orient Queen, As thou sitt'st on thy coralline throne ; Adoring we gaze on thy beauties serene, And the charms that are wholly thine own. Is it city or garden that greeteth our sight ? The luscious banana hangs ruddy and bright : The bread-fruit and orange to feasting invite ; The zephyr seems loaded with balm ; The lime and the shaddock are lovely to see ; The sweet golden papao hangs on the tree ; Rare spices and flowers grow uncultured and free, In the land of the Coral and Palm. Yo-rana ! Ye hills so fantastic yet fair, That rear your bold fronts to the sky ; All hail, lovely harbour, beyond all compare, Where fleets might at anchorage lie ; 122 THE STORY OF ABEL T ASM AN. Where bright fishes dart from the deep coral cave To glance in the sunshine that cleaves the blue wave ; Where the lingering tides, as the pebbles they lave Murmur soft a perpetual psalm ; Where the boatman spreads gaily his white lateen sail, And his frail craft speeds lightly before the soft gale ; Yo-rana ! fair city and harbour ! All hail To the land of the Coral and Palm ! J. L. Kelly. HENRY KENDALL. (Vide Introduction. THE STORY OF ABEL T ASM AN. Bold and brave, and strong and stalwart, Captain of a ship was he ; And his heart was proudly thrilling With the dreams of chivalry. One fair maiden, sweet though stately, Lingered in his every dream, Touching all his hopes of glory With a brighter, nobler gleam. Daughter of a haughty father, Daughter of an ancient race, Yet her wilful heart surrendered, Conquered by his handsome face ; And she spent her days in looking Out across the southern seas, Picturing how his bark was carried Onward bv the favouring breeze. THE STORY OF ABEL T AS MAN. 123 Little wonder that she loved him Abel Tasman, brave and tall ; Though the wealthy planters sought her, He was dearer than them all. Dearer still because her father Said to him, with distant pride, " Darest thou, a simple captain, Seek my daughter for thy bride ? " But at length the gallant seaman Won himself an honoured name ; When again he met the maiden, At her feet he laid his fame : Said to her, " My country sends me, Trusted with a high command, With the Zeehan and the Heemskirk, To explore the southern strand." " I must claim it for my country, Plant her flag upon its shore ; But I hope to win you, darling, When the dangerous cruise is o'er." And her haughty sire relenting, Did not care to say him nay : Flushing high with love and valour, Sailed the gallant far away. And the captain, Abel Tasman, Sailing under southern skies, Mingled with his hopes of glory Thoughts of one with starlike eyes. Onward sailed he, where the crested White waves broke around his ship, With the lovelight in his true eyes, And the song upon his lip. 124 THE STORY OF ABEL TASMAN. Onward sailed he, ever onward, Faithful as the stars above ; Many a cape and headland pointing Tells the legend of his love : For he linked their names together, Speeding swiftly o'er the wave — Tusman's Isle and Cape Maria, Still they bear the names he gave. Toil and tempest soon were over, And he turned him home again, Seeking her who was his guiding Star across the trackless main. Strange it seems the eager captain Thus should hurry from his prize, When a thousand scenes of wonder Stood revealed before his eyes. But those eyes were always looking, Out toward the Java seas, Where the maid he loved was waiting — Dearer prize to him than these. But his mission was accomplished, And a new and added gem Sparkling with a wondrous lustre In the Dutch king's diadem. Little did the gallant seaman Think that in the days to be, England's hand should proudly wrest it From his land's supremacy. Frances Sesca Lew in. FROM STORY OF BALLADEADRO. 125 FROM THE STORY OF BALLADEADRO. Kolorkor (Hot Blood). Kolorkor rose, Mirbango's king — And thus address'd the listening ring : — " Sirs ! Warriors ! Children ! hearken well To all your king has come to telL Onr fathers spirits, ill at rest, Flit nightly o'er the mountain's breast ; Yon stream is troubled, and the flood 'Neath last night's moon seem'd curdling blood, Birds of ill omen croaked on high, The eagle swooning fled the sky. Oh, M'ould the oracles withheld, The meaning sought by seers of eld Strange portends dire of varied mien Presage such ill as ne'er hath been. Last night there crept athwart my frame A shuddering sense of woe and shame ; Something — oh, would it were forgot — 'Tis day, and yet it leaves me not. I sprang from out the evil dream, And saw— extended through the beam, The red moon cast upon the coals — Consuming slow their burning souls Two giant hands— one dark as night, The other, "stained with blood," was white ; Opposed as 'twere in equal strife, And nerved to struggle for the life. The dark hand hovered o'er my head, And all rny trembling fears lay dead, When sudden came within my clasp, The spear you now behold me grasp. 126 FROM STORY OF DALLADEADRO. I poised the reed ; but ere I hurled, The white hand vanished from the world ; And I, without the slumbering camp, Shook from my brow big drops of damp. Then, as morn's blossom burst the bud, I saw, oh horror ! — gouts of blood — Blood on my hands, and woman's hair, Blood fastened to my trusty spear." He sate, and seemed beside the fire Some victim of supernal ire ; But ghostly terror had not quenched His soul, nor yet his visage blenched. Wadabo. Wadaro rose, " of rugged face," Chief of the tall Darakong race ; And gathering on his arm his cloak, To King Kolorkor fiercely spoke : — "You marked, Kolorkor, ere was hurled The spear sent from the spirit world, The hand had vanished ; but the blood — 'Twas ours — 'twill surely swell the flood That yet must with its darkening stain Our greenest forest glades engrain. Pour, mingled tide, thy kindred flood, Darakong and Mirbango blood ! J oin the hot flow, red Tapook rill ! And drink, war demon, drink thy fill ! Haste, twin-born tribes ! — yon king, and I, Across the hills must quickly Ay ; And o'er our heads the darker hand Shall point the way to Tapook land. "We'll send the war-sign through their camp, And flat their turf witli dancing tramp. FROM STORY OF BALLADEADRO. 127 Speed thee, Ganook, with these swift spears - This* fire-brand weeping fiery tears ; And take this quandang's double plum, 'Twill speak alliance tho' 'tis dumb. Ganook (or the Swift Messenger). The Ganook danced o'er hill and plain, Ascending, toiled, "ran down like rain," Kor paused till at the Tapook's feet He laid the brand aglow with heat. So swept across yon purple plains, At night o'erspread with starry chains, Karakorok, the sacred crow, That first brought fire to realms below, And carried blazing in his bill The brand that lights our camp fires still. The Tapook's Reception of the Messenger. The lazy Tapook raised his head, Regarding, as he gazed the red, Whose warlike flash suffused each limb, That flamed like fiery Seraphim ; The tinge of war, the tinct of blood Figured the tide of ruby flood, And called as loud as symbol might, For helping hand in heady fight. Alas ! ere this the white man's dole, Had bought the slavish Tapook's soul, Who lost the dotted plains that spread From Wando's mouth to fountain-head — From those stern crags whence springs Matar To ocean's tumbling waves 128 FROM STORY OF BALLADE A DRO. Which, lost in distance, sun, and spray, Melt mist-like into heaven away ! The pale face brought his bartering bread, The Tapook gave him land instead ; Green hills, and hunting grounds, and vales, Lakes virgin yet from ships and sails, Were his for robing, raiment, food, And axe of steel that felled the wood. The faithful harbinger fell back, But king Kolorkor on the track Not far behind, with flaming brand, And polished lance in either hand, Came stalking tow'rds the royal Tapook. As erst the swift but mute Ganook : — " Tried ally (he began) of ours, 'Mid crash of clubs and spear-shafts showers — Our stout and brave would join thy bold, And mass their ranks on this green wold. See ! stout Wadaro's warriors near, Me and my brave Mirbangos hear, Be 't thine to lead thy stalwart clan — A thousand, numbered man for man. " To him the Tapook, turning, sighed, And with but half his soul replied, " What need of all these marshall'd ranks? Our nation owes the stranger thanks. Our food, our shelter, is prepared, His very blanket robes are shared With us ; and as for roots, instead He sows broad-cast among us bread. But tarry, brother king, awhile, And rest, for many a weary mile Hath plucked the sinews from thy heel, And stiffened all thy nerves of steel. " FROM STORY OF BALLADEADRO, 129 The Tarrying in tub Tapook's Land. Moons waned, and suns successive steered Their course toward west horizon weird, Yet no alliance made nor planned Against the white aggressive hand. No warriors fought— the sport and hunt, Made all their battle weapons blunt ; And each returning from the chase, With slower and spoil-burdened pace, Cast longing eyes on Tapook maids, That lay beneath the lengthening shades ; And many a brave transgressed the rule, Framed in their twin-blood-allied school, And, mating with the maid he chose, Sought her green roof to find repose. Kolorkor, one of these the first, A fiercely-burning passion nurst ; — Balladeadro fired his brain — Balladeadro with a chain Unconscious bound his bursting heart, And barred his wishes to depart. Kolorkor's Wooing. To her it seemed an easy thing — Herself the daughter of a king — To dally with Tangola's guest ; But when his suit with warmth he pressed, She turned her laughing face away, Heedless of all his love could say. Then would Kolorkor's anger rise, And flash like lightning from his eyes ; But, past the pang of wounded pride, 130 FROM STORY OF BALLADEADRO. He sate him silent by her side, Like some huge thunder-cloud expended, The calmer when the storm is ended. 'Twas thus for days and afternoons, For many waxing, waning moons, Half trusted hope his only wage, Neglect still spurred him on to rage, And so the monarch's wooing sped, With giddy brain and heart like lead. "Wadako's Counsel. One day it chanced, in pensive mood, He sought Wadaro in the Wood ; And finding him, his counsel sought, With heart, and brain, and soul distraught. " Kolorkor," thundered forth the king, " You make yourself a little thing ; And me, your friend, a thing still less ; In counsel grave on nothingness. Remember, who our tribes would rule, Can never mate him with a fool ! Are not our maidens fair as they ? And formed from quite as pure a clay ? Their eyes, their hair, their winning looks. Are more than match for these Tapooks. Besides our wise ancestral laws Bid all our manlier ones to pause, Ere stepping o'er the sacred bounds That mark our ancient hunting grounds ; And seek amid our virgins fair, The solace sent to sooth our care." To him Kolorkor thus replied, In phrase that reason's front defied :-^ FROM STORY OF BALLADFADRO. 131 " Wadaro, what I've said, I've said, The rest — be that upon my head." Time with his train rolled on, and all That paved the way towards his fall, His warrior ways were all forgot, His weapons now he heeded not. Laid by some reedy river's brink, Musing, he'd watch the bell-bird drink ; Thence rising, pace the pebbly marge, Till dying day had dropped his targe, And sinking with his latest blood He reddened all the trembling flood ; Till night drew near and closed his eye, And spread her mantle tenderly Across his darkening rayless face, And hid him in his resting-place, Whilst wind-waved reeds his requiem sighed, In wailing accents o'er the tide. Time's waters rolled towards the sea (Dim ocean of eternity), And hurried with the current all That presaged proud Kolorkor's fall ; Each pebble bandied by the stream, That caught betimes a golden gleam, Seem'd some event by prescience willed — Some ancient prophecy fulfilled. Straight through his breast a sadness crept, And as he mused Kolorkor wept ; He saw in every sinking targe, That lit the river's shimmering marge, The funeral of his hopes and fears — The grave of unrewarded years. 32 FROM STORY OF BALLADEADRO. Tangola's Refusal. At sunset sad, at dawning wild, His brain with failing plans he piled, Till, tired with unavailing care, He sought the father of the fair — Sought him, who sold his birth-right land, And sued him for his daughter's hand. He paused. — Tangola silence broke, And to the suitor thus he spoke : — " Seest thou above with silvery sheen, The evening star, pale Mirgabeen ? She looks with saddening eye towards earth, Which holds the secret of her birth. Couldst thou from heaven pluck out yon star, That shines upon us from afar, And lay her in her beauty's pride Between me and my own fire-side — I'd not yield up my daughter fair, With flashing eyes and raven hair. And know, proud king, that threats arc vain- Tho' spears should fall like summer rain, Deem not Balladeadro's sire Yet wanting all his ancient fire. Up, go thy way, hot-blooded chief, And seek at other hands relief. Go get some mild Mirbango mato To rear an heir to rule thy state ; As for Balladcadro rare, No stranger may that jewel wear ; A father's joy, a camp-fire's prido, To alien ne'er can be allied. " Murder of Tangola. Short time for parley now remained, The madden'd chief his feet regained, FROM STORY OF BALLADEADRO. 133 Fierce hate from both his eyeballs gleame