To-day, O God, amidst our flowers
And fruits, we come to own again
The blessings of the summer hours,
The early and the latter rain.

Once more the liberal year laughs out
O'er richer stores than gems or gold;
Once more with harvest-song and shout
Is Nature's bloodless triumph told.

O favors every year made new,
O gifts with rain and sunshine sent!
The bounty overruns our due,
The fullness shames our discontent.

We shut our eyes, the flowers bloom on;
We murmur, but the corn-ears fill;

Amid the quietude and peace
Of this new Sabbath morn,
When Nature in her rich increase
Seems fresh in beauty born, —

With waiting hearts, O God, we kneel
In this thy house to-day;
We would the holy Presence feel,
That with us is alway.

Fresh flowers are on thine altar laid
As incense unto thee;
Our souls, in thine own image made,
Alike would offering be.

The songs of birds to thee ascend
Upon the fragrant air,
And with our prayer and praises blend:
Love reigneth everywhere!

Farewell! It is no sorrowful word.
It has never had a pang for me.
Sweet as the last song of a bird,
Soft as a wind-swell from the sea,
The word Farewell.

I part with you as oft before
I've parted with dear friends and sweet,
And now I shake (forevermore)
Your memory's gold-dust from my feet.
Farewell! farewell!

Soon I shall find a new sweet face,
And other eyes as pure and strong
As yours are now, and then a space
Of life that ripples into song,
And then farewell!

Farewell! farewell! Throw me a kiss!

D'ye mind the little five-corner —
The sweetest ever found —
The native cherry and geebung
That grew in stony ground?
The manna and the wattle gum
Where wattle shrubs take root:
You've heard of very many things;
Have you heard of Native Fruit?

Or native vegetables — the yams,
The sweet, and nutty too?
The way to live away from home
That all Bush children knew.
Cress, boggabri, sap of stringy bark,
And many a leaf and root.
A man who knows could live on these,
When lost — and Native Fruit.

There is a song some one must sing,
In tender tones and low,
With pink lips curled and quivering,
And eyes with dreams aglow.

There is some one must hear the tune,
And feel the thrilling words,
As flowers feel, in early June,
The wings of humming-birds.

And she who sings must never learn
What good her song has done,
Albeit the hearer slowly turn
Him drowsily, as one

Who feels through all his being thrown
The influence sweet and slight
Of strange, elusive perfume, blown
Off dewy groves by night!

On a downy feather of the dove, Earth, I lie:
The bird is flying down eternity.

Far out, and far under and over, the flocks of stars are flying as in the autumn winds ...
Whither are they winging? to what nests in what radiant South?
And what echoes of their songs come to me,
And who is the gentle master of the homing birds?

It always seems the same old story —
No matter what grand heights are won:
We die with our best work unwritten,
We die with our best work undone.

Unwritten books, unpainted pictures
In millions are, beneath the sun.
We die with our great thoughts unpublished,
We die with our best work undone.

Lord God, thou bidst the green things start
A new life every year, —
Out of their sunken selves they rise,
Erect and sweet and clear:
Behold the lily's pure white leaves
Unfolding by each mere!

Again the sap mounts in the fir
Through every swelling vein;
Again the clover stirs and thrills,
Responsive to the rain;
Again the tender grass makes green
The lone breast of the plain.

Waratah, my Mountain Queen,
Grandest flower ever seen;
Glorious in shade or sun
Where our rocky gullies run.
There is nothing, near or far,
Like our Mountain Waratah.

A great king once, so I have heard,
Went out to hunt a singing-bird
Whose voice should be so sweet and strong,
So fraught with all the tricks of song,
That they who heard it would confess
The king's fine taste and perfectness
Of judgment. And it came to pass
That where the wind poured through the grass,
Fringing a brooklet's sinuous way,
He saw a bird demure and gray,
Of awkward mien and sleepy eyed,
Bathing in the crystal tide.

" O bird! " the king said, looking down,
" A monarch I of high renown,