English

No church-bell rings them from the Track,
No pulpit lights their blindness —
'Tis hardship, drought and homelessness
That teach those Bushmen kindness:
The mateship born of barren lands,
Of toil and thirst and danger —
The camp-fare for the stranger set,
The first place to the stranger.

They do the best they can to-day —
Take no thought of the morrow;
Their way is not the old-world way —
They live to lend and borrow.
When shearing's done and cheques gone wrong,
They call it " time to slither " —

So you rode from the range where your brothers select,
Through the ghostly, grey Bush in the dawn—
You rode slowly at first, lest her heart should suspect
That you were so glad to be gone;
You had scarcely the courage to glance back at her
By the homestead receding from view,
And you breathed with relief as you rounded the spur,
For the world was a wide world to you.
Grey eyes that grow sadder than sunset or rain,
Fond heart that is ever more true,
Firm faith that grows firmer for watching in vain—

O the wild black swans fly westward still,
While the sun goes down in glory —
And away o'er lonely plain and hill
Still runs the same old story:
The sheoaks sigh it all day long —
It is safe in the Big Scrub's keeping —
'Tis the butcher-birds' and the bell-birds' song
In the gum where — Unknown — lies sleeping —
(It is heard in the chat of the soldier-birds
O'er the grave where — Unknown — lies sleeping.)

Ah! the Bushmen knew not his name or land,
Or the shame that had sent him here —

— O I dreamt I shore in a shearin' shed, and it was a dream of joy,
For every one of the rouseabouts was a girl dressed up as a boy —
Dressed up like a page in a pantomime, and the prettiest ever seen —
They had flaxen hair, they had coal-black hair — and every shade between. —

— There was short, plump girls, there was tall, slim girls, and the handsomest ever seen —
They was four-foot-five, they was six-foot high, and every size between. —

— The shed was cooled by electric fans that was over every shoot;

While all men's hearts with new-born hope were fed,
Hope in the morning, sweet faith in the sun,
Hope that dark tyrannous ages all were dead,
That reigns of kings and reigns of priests were done;

While all men's eyes beheld the morning light
Red in the skies, but blood-red over France, —
While all men dreamed that now the starless night
Had quailed before the high sun's fiery glance;

While all men dreamed that now on Europe's plains
Untinged with blood might wave the untrodden rye, —

When at the last the great King's heart grew weary,
When pleasure's wild impassioned reign was done,
When laughter of bright lips rang dull and dreary,
When sadness veiled the stars and veiled the sun,

Then with grim Death the great King thus debated:
— The end is drawing near, lift up thine eyes, —
Said Death; — through all these long years I have waited,
But now my patient keen spear claims its prize. —

— But, Death, the world is mine, its every season —
I am the lord of winter and of spring;

I strive in verse to render forth the song
Of life, to life's strange message I give heed:
But where my Art is faulty, yours is strong,
And where I fail, you triumph and succeed.

For you in music render forth the psalm
Of life, aye all its passion, all its power;
Music can reproduce June's heavenliest calm
When no breath stirs the frailest cliff-side flower.

And music too can thunder like the seas:
The world's emotion music can express:
The saint's thoughts praying on his bended knees,

The world, the world, God's lovely world
Is fading out of sight!
The great cloud-ships with sails unfurled,
Great sails of snowiest white

The skies of blue, the forests green,
That I have loved, God knows:
The crimson deep triumphant sheen
Of summer's stateliest rose.

The purple violet's modest hue;
The lily's silver crown:
My sea's wild waves of magic blue;
The light on field and down.

To see these things no more, no more,—
O agony supreme!
To feel that life is o'er, is o'er;

I.

We cannot estimate the worth of things
That once seemed small. The value of a rose
With red-lipped beauty and with fragrant wings,
One spirit, the spirit that watched it fading, knows

II.

We cannot tell what rapture we may miss
Who lightly lose what once was nobly won
God's heart was given in some dead woman's kiss.
One tiny shipwrecked star may wreck the sun

III.

Where liberall Arts, and Sciences divine
Inrich the heart, who in their knowledge shine,
Lives mildnes there; for the mild liberall arts
Lend, nay ingraft it on the gentle hearts,
In whom a residence they hap to gaine:
And your innobled heart, where Muses raine,
Much of their mildnes doubtles doth retaine.

Many affirme, that Anagrams declare
A hidden nature of the mans whose they're:
If true in you, then you affect to be
Nam'd in their Roules who loved poetric;
Amongst great Pollio, Gallus, Varus , e'rst