light

You ask me to be gay and glad
While lurid clouds of danger loom,
And vain and bad and gambling mad,
Australia races to her doom.
You bid me sing the light and fair,
The dance, the glance on pleasure's wings –
While you have wives who will not bear,
And beer to drown the fear of things.

A war with reason you would wage
To be amused for your short span,
Until your children's heritage
Is claimed for China by Japan.
The football match, the cricket score,

The green grass is growing,
The morning wind is in it,
'Tis a tune worth the knowing,
Though it change every minute.

'Tis a tune of the spring,
Every year plays it over,
To the robin on the wing,
To the pausing lover.

O'er ten thousand thousand acres
Goes light the nimble zephyr,
The flowers, tiny feet of shakers,
Worship him ever.

Hark to the winning sound!
They summon thee, dearest,
Saying; "We have drest for thee the ground,
Nor yet thou appearest.

Why dost thou shade thy lovely face? O why
Does that eclipsing hand of thine deny
The sunshine of the Sun's enlivening eye?
II
Without thy light what light remains in me?
Thou art my life; my way, my light's in thee;
I live, I move, and by thy beams I see.
III
Thou art my life-if thou but turn away
My life's a thousand deaths. Thou art my way-
Without.thee, Love, I travel not but stray.
IV
My light thou art-without thy glorious sight
My eyes are darken'd with eternal night.

Why dost thou shade thy lovely face? O why
Does that eclipsing hand of thine deny
The sunshine of the Sun's enlivening eye?

Without thy light what light remains in me?
Thou art my life; my way, my light's in thee;
I live, I move, and by thy beams I see.

Thou art my life-if thou but turn away
My life's a thousand deaths. Thou art my way-
Without.thee, Love, I travel not but stray.

My light thou art-without thy glorious sight
My eyes are darken'd with eternal night.

I saw thee once- once only- years ago:
I must not say how many- but not many.
It was a July midnight; and from out
A full-orbed moon, that, like thine own soul, soaring,
Sought a precipitate pathway up through heaven,
There fell a silvery-silken veil of light,
With quietude, and sultriness, and slumber,
Upon the upturned faces of a thousand
Roses that grew in an enchanted garden,
Where no wind dared to stir, unless on tiptoe-
Fell on the upturn'd faces of these roses

O RICH and splendid soul that overflowest
With light and fire caught from thy native skies!—
Whose latent storm is lurid in thine eyes
When with august and bended brows thou throwest

Thy Jove-like bolt upon the world below.
Woe, woe the wretch—that ever he was born!
Whom once the fierce sirocco of thy scorn
Encircles, deadly, withering,—Ah woe!

But thrice-blest She, whom with one golden word
Thou settest in the firmament of heaven,

What is the gift we have given thee, Sister?
What is the trust we have laid in thy hand?
Hearts of our bravest, our best, and our dearest,
Blood of our blood we have sown in thy land.

What for all time will the harvest be, Sister?
What will spring up from the seed that is sown?
Freedom and peace and goodwill among Nations,
Love that will bind us with love all our own.

Bright is the path that is opening before us,
Upward and onward it mounts through the night:
Sword shall not sever the bonds that unite us

Farrar, when o’er Goodwin’s page
Late I found thee poring,
From the hydrostatic Sage
Leaky Memory storing,
Or when groaning yesterday
Needlessly distracted
By some bright erratic ray,
Through a sphere refracted,—

Then the quick words, oft suppressed,
In my fauces fluttered;
Thoughts not yet in language drest
Pleasing to be uttered.
He that neatly gilds the pill
Hides the drug but vainly,
So, in chance-sown words, I will
Speak the matter plainly.

Far away, where darkness reigneth,
All my dreams of bliss are flown;
Yet with love my gaze remaineth
Fixed on one fair star alone.
But, alas! that star so bright
Sheds no lustre save by night.

If in slumbers ending never,
Gloomy death had sealed thine eyes,
Thou hadst lived in memory ever--
Thou hadst lived still in my sighs;
But, alas! in light thou livest--
To my love no answer givest!

Can the sweet hopes love once cherished

Cloris, I cannot say your eyes
Did my unwary heart surprise;
Nor will I swear it was your face,
Your shape, or any nameless grace:
For you are so entirely fair,
To love a part, injustice were;
No drowning man can know which drop
Of water his last breath did stop;
So when the stars in heaven appear,
And join to make the night look clear;
The light we no one's bounty call,
But the obliging gift of all.
He that does lips or hands adore,
Deserves them only, and no more;