When his heart is growing bitter and his hair is growing grey,
And he hears the debt-collector knocking several times a day,
And the shrill voice of the Missus blame, reiterate, accuse —
Then the poet who was famous feels inclined to damn the Muse.

When he's trying to be cheerful, and the ancient joy is dead,
And where themes for laughter found him comes a brooding fit instead;
When he tries for hours to think of something good to write about,
Then the writer realizes that he's getting written out.

Spirit of high and mighty souls!
Thine is the darkly hovering cloud,
Deep in whose heart the thunder rolls,
With a murmuring echo long and loud;
Thine the gulf where the cataract pours
With a sudden rush its emerald tide;
Thine the height where the eagle soars,
And the winds in their stormy chariots ride:

Thine the unbounded world of waves,
Bursting aloft with fiery foam;
Thine the fearless bark, that braves
Danger and death on its ocean home;
Thine the mountains that gird the pole,
Wreathed like a starry crown of light,—

From the flowery isles of the southern sea,
Where the fulness of life for ever flows,
Where the waters are ever gliding free,
And the ripened fruit by its blossom glows:
From the region of light and wooing gales,
Where the plumed wanderer loves to roam,
And glad, as the fair wind fills his sails,
Bounds over the wave to his unseen home:

From the flowery isles of the southern sea,
Where life seems one long and glad repose,
And the savage beneath his sheltering tree
No fairer and happier being knows;

The light from the clouds is dazzling my eyes,
The cry of the wind has stilled my heart to silence
The shivering apes howl in the shrouding snow,
Down sink the frozen fishes, wrapped in ice.
Today a single pitcherful of wine
Is surely worth a thousand gold pieces and more.
Ungrateful that I am, I cannot thank you,
For I know only the way to the Bamboo Grove.

In honour by you are a Mounter well;
On by mountan: ingoodnes still excell,
High mounter , so that every man may see
Not honour clyming as in vertue thee.

Mount thus you do, O but remember tho,
On toylesom voyage you on by must go,
Run may you down a Hill, but up again

Doubtles will labour, paine, and sweat constrain.
Ad then more strength, on by , more by to mount ,
Vertue will you reward, and you may count,
None that shall see you but will say the truth;
That there proceedeth, an by mounting youth,

'Tis the song of many husbands, and you all must understand
That you cannot call me coward now that women rule the land;
I have written much for women, where I thought that they were right,
But the men who made bad matches claim a song from me to-night.

O the men who made bad matches are of every tribe and clime,
And, if Adam was the first man, then they date from Adam's time.
They shall live and they shall suffer, until married life is past,
And the last sad son of Adam stands alone — at peace at last.

A melancholy day in the second month of autumn,
A whirling wind moans, the storm-tossed clouds are high
Living in the mountains you feel the seasons changing,
Far from home the traveler sings a long ballad.
The empty peaks are thick with frozen ether,
The leafless forest hung with icy winds.
Soaking dew wets garden and forest.
Thick leaves take farewell of wind-blown boughs.
I touch these mushrooms, sorry they will fall so soon
I pull down a pine-branch, glad that it endures so long.
Feast my line in woods and wilds,

The nearer camp-fires lighted,
The distant beacons bright —
The horsemen on the skyline
Are closing in to-night!
My brothers, O my brothers!
Lie down and rest at last:
The Years of Reparation
Have rushed upon us fast.

O ride and ride, you riders,
Who rode ere I was born,
While blink-and-blink the star-dust
That blinks before the morn.
And glow and glow, you camp-fires,

NO BETTER RIGHT THAN I

I saw it in the days gone by,
When the dead girl lay at rest,
And the wattle and the native rose
We placed upon her breast.

I saw it in the long ago
(And I've seen strong men die),
And who, to wear the wattle,
Hath better right than I?

I've fought it through the world since then,
And seen the best and worst,
But always in the lands of men
I held Australia first.

I wrote for her, I fought for her,
And when at last I lie,

When summer shines in blythsome May,
Auld Reikie's bonny lasses,
They get a man at Whitsunday,
Or gaung to cauldrife places.
'Tis then landlords push for their rent,
(Them wha's got deep their debt in,)
Or else they maun tak' to the bent,
By a fly moon-light flittin,
E'er Whitsunday.

Our landlords come at Candlemass,
Saying, — will ye sit or flit,
— Ten thillings I your rent maun raise,
— Their wa's in rights to pit. —
To pay Kirk-dues takes cent per cent ,
For our briggs an' our water;