Part 6

The moss that, like a tender grief, About an English ruin clings-- What time the wan autumnal leaf Faints, after many wanderings On windy wings--

That gracious growth, whose quiet green Is as a love in days austere, Was never seen--hath never been-- On slab or roof, deserted here For many a year.

Nor comes the bird whose speech is song-- Whose songs are silvery syllables That unto glimmering woods belong, And deep, meandering mountain dells By yellow wells.

But rather here the wild-dog halts, And lifts the paw, and looks, and howls; And here, in ruined forest vaults, Abide dim, dark, death-featured owls, Like monks in cowls.

Across this hut the nettle runs, And livid adders make their lair In corners dank from lack of suns, And out of foetid furrows stare The growths that scare.

Here Summer's grasp of fire is laid On bark and slabs that rot, and breed Squat ugly things of deadly shade, The scorpion, and the spiteful seed Of centipede.

Unhallowed thunders, harsh and dry, And flaming noontides, mute with heat, Beneath the breathless, brazen sky, Upon these rifted rafters beat With torrid feet.

And night by night the fitful gale Doth carry past the bittern's boom, The dingo's yell, the plover's wail, While lumbering shadows start, and loom, And hiss through gloom.

No sign of grace--no hope of green, Cool-blossomed seasons marks the spot; But chained to iron doom, I ween, 'Tis left, like skeleton, to rot Where ruth is not.

For on this hut hath murder writ, With bloody fingers, hellish things; And God will never visit it With flower or leaf of sweet-faced Springs, Or gentle wings.

September in Australia

Grey Winter hath gone, like a wearisome guest, And, behold, for repayment, September comes in with the wind of the West And the Spring in her raiment! The ways of the frost have been filled of the flowers, While the forest discovers Wild wings, with the halo of hyaline hours, And the music of lovers.

September, the maid with the swift, silver feet! She glides, and she graces The valleys of coolness, the slopes of the heat, With her blossomy traces; Sweet month, with a mouth that is made of a rose, She lightens and lingers In spots where the harp of the evening glows, Attuned by her fingers.

The stream from its home in the hollow hill slips In a darling old fashion; And the day goeth down with a song on its lips, Whose key-note is passion. Far out in the fierce, bitter front of the sea I stand, and remember Dead things that were brothers and sisters of thee, Resplendent September!

The West, when it blows at the fall of the noon And beats on the beaches, Is filled with a tender and tremulous tune That touches and teaches; The stories of Youth, of the burden of Time, And the death of Devotion, Come back with the wind, and are themes of the rhyme In the waves of the ocean.

We, having a secret to others unknown, In the cool mountain-mosses, May whisper together, September, alone Of our loves and our losses! One word for her beauty, and one for the grace She gave to the hours; And then we may kiss her, and suffer her face To sleep with the flowers.

High places that knew of the gold and the white On the forehead of Morning Now darken and quake, and the steps of the Night Are heavy with warning. Her voice in the distance is lofty and loud Through the echoing gorges; She hath hidden her eyes in a mantle of cloud, And her feet in the surges.

On the tops of the hills, on the turreted cones-- Chief temples of thunder-- The gale, like a ghost, in the middle watch moans, Gliding over and under. The sea, flying white through the rack and the rain, Leapeth wild at the forelands; And the plover, whose cry is like passion with pain, Complains in the moorlands.

Oh, season of changes--of shadow and shine-- September the splendid! My song hath no music to mingle with thine, And its burden is ended; But thou, being born of the winds and the sun, By mountain, by river, Mayst lighten and listen, and loiter and run, With thy voices for ever!

Ghost Glen

"Shut your ears, stranger, or turn from Ghost Glen now, For the paths are grown over, untrodden by men now; Shut your ears, stranger," saith the grey mother, crooning Her sorcery runic, when sets the half-moon in.

To-night the north-easter goes travelling slowly, But it never stoops down to that hollow unholy; To-night it rolls loud on the ridges red-litten, But it cannot abide in that forest, sin-smitten.

For over the pitfall the moon-dew is thawing, And, with never a body, two shadows stand sawing-- The wraiths of two sawyers (_step under and under_), Who did a foul murder and were blackened with thunder!

Whenever the storm-wind comes driven and driving, Through the blood-spattered timber you may see the saw striving-- You may see the saw heaving, and falling, and heaving, Whenever the sea-creek is chafing and grieving!

And across a burnt body, as black as an adder, Sits the sprite of a sheep-dog (was ever sight sadder?) For, as the dry thunder splits louder and faster, This sprite of a sheep-dog howls for his master.

"Oh, count your beads deftly," saith the grey mother, crooning Her sorcery runic, when sets the half-moon in. And well may she mutter, for the dark, hollow laughter You will hear in the sawpits and the bloody logs after.

Ay, count your beads deftly, and keep your ways wary, For the sake of the Saviour and sweet Mother Mary. Pray for your peace in these perilous places, And pray for the laying of horrible faces.

One starts, with a forehead wrinkled and livid, Aghast at the lightnings sudden and vivid; One telleth, with curses, the gold that they drew there (Ah! cross your breast humbly) from him whom they slew there:

The stranger, who came from the loved, the romantic Island that sleeps on the moaning Atlantic, Leaving behind him a patient home, yearning For the steps in the distance--never returning;

Who was left in the forest, shrunken and starkly, Burnt by his slayers (so men have said, darkly), With the half-crazy sheep-dog, who cowered beside there, And yelled at the silence, and marvelled, and died there.

Yea, cross your breast humbly and hold your breath tightly, Or fly for your life from those shadows unsightly, From the set staring features (cold, and so young, too), And the death on the lips that a mother hath clung to.

I tell you--that bushman is braver than most men Who even in daylight doth go through the Ghost Glen, Although in that hollow, unholy and lonely, He sees the dank sawpits and bloody logs only.

Daphne

Daphne! Ladon's daughter, Daphne! Set thyself in silver light, Take thy thoughts of fairest texture, weave them into words of white-- Weave the rhyme of rose-lipped Daphne, nymph of wooded stream and shade, Flying love of bright Apollo,--fleeting type of faultless maid! She, when followed from the forelands by the lord of lyre and lute, Sped towards far-singing waters, past deep gardens flushed with fruit; Took the path against Peneus, panted by its yellow banks; Turned, and looked, and flew the faster through grey-tufted thicket ranks; Flashed amongst high flowered sedges: leaped across the brook, and ran Down to where the fourfold shadows of a nether glade began; There she dropped, like falling Hesper, heavy hair of radiant head Hiding all the young abundance of her beauty's white and red.

Came the yellow-tressed Far-darter--came the god whose feet are fire, On his lips the name of Daphne, in his eyes a great desire; Fond, full lips of lord and lover, sad because of suit denied; Clear, grey eyes made keen by passion, panting, pained, unsatisfied. Here he turned, and there he halted, now he paused, and now he flew, Swifter than his sister's arrows, through soft dells of dreamy dew. Vext with gleams of Ladon's daughter, dashed along the son of Jove, Fast upon flower-trammelled Daphne fleeting on from grove to grove; Flights of seawind hard behind him, breaths of bleak and whistling straits; Drifts of driving cloud above him, like a troop of fierce-eyed Fates! So he reached the water-shallows; then he stayed his steps, and heard Daphne drop upon the grasses, fluttering like a wounded bird.

Was there help for Ladon's daughter? Saturn's son is high and just: Did he come between her beauty and the fierce Far-darter's lust? As she lay, the helpless maiden, caught and bound in fast eclipse, Did the lips of god drain pleasure from her sweet and swooning lips? Now that these and all Love's treasures blushed, before the spoiler, bare, Was the wrong that shall be nameless done, and seen, and suffered there? No! for Zeus is King and Father. Weary nymph and fiery god, Bend the knee alike before him--he is kind, and he is lord! Therefore sing how clear-browed Pallas--Pallas, friend of prayerful maid, Lifted dazzling Daphne lightly, bore her down the breathless glade, Did the thing that Zeus commanded: so it came to pass that he Who had chased a white-armed virgin, caught at her, and clasped a tree.

The Warrigal

-- * The Dingo, or Wild Dog of Australia. --

The warrigal's lair is pent in bare, Black rocks at the gorge's mouth; It is set in ways where Summer strays With the sprites of flame and drouth; But when the heights are touched with lights Of hoar-frost, sleet, and shine, His bed is made of the dead grass-blade And the leaves of the windy pine.

Through forest boles the storm-wind rolls, Vext of the sea-driv'n rain; And, up in the clift, through many a rift, The voices of torrents complain. The sad marsh-fowl and the lonely owl Are heard in the fog-wreaths grey, When the warrigal wakes, and listens, and takes To the woods that shelter the prey.

In the gully-deeps the blind creek sleeps, And the silver, showery moon Glides over the hills, and floats, and fills, And dreams in the dark lagoon; While halting hard by the station yard, Aghast at the hut-flame nigh, The warrigal yells--and flats and fells Are loud with his dismal cry.

On the topmost peak of mountains bleak The south wind sobs, and strays Through moaning pine and turpentine, And the rippling runnel ways; And strong streams flow, and great mists go, Where the warrigal starts to hear The watch-dog's bark break sharp in the dark, And flees like a phantom of fear.

The swift rains beat, and the thunders fleet On the wings of the fiery gale, And down in the glen of pool and fen, The wild gums whistle and wail, As over the plains and past the chains Of waterholes glimmering deep, The warrigal flies from the shepherd's cries, And the clamour of dogs and sheep.

He roves through the lands of sultry sands, He hunts in the iron range, Untamed as surge of the far sea verge, And fierce and fickle and strange. The white man's track and the haunts of the black He shuns, and shudders to see; For his joy he tastes in lonely wastes Where his mates are torrent and tree.

Euroclydon

On the storm-cloven Cape The bitter waves roll, With the bergs of the Pole, And the darks and the damps of the Northern Sea: For the storm-cloven Cape Is an alien Shape With a fearful face; and it moans, and it stands Outside all lands Everlastingly!

When the fruits of the year Have been gathered in Spain, And the Indian rain Is rich on the evergreen lands of the Sun, There comes to this Cape To this alien Shape, As the waters beat in and the echoes troop forth, The Wind of the North, Euroclydon!

And the wilted thyme, And the patches past Of the nettles cast In the drift of the rift, and the broken rime, Are tumbled and blown To every zone With the famished glede, and the plovers thinned By this fourfold Wind-- This Wind sublime!

On the wrinkled hills, By starts and fits, The wild Moon sits; And the rindles fill and flash and fall In the way of her light, Through the straitened night, When the sea-heralds clamour, and elves of the war, In the torrents afar, Hold festival!

From ridge to ridge The polar fires On the naked spires, With a foreign splendour, flit and flow; And clough and cave And architrave Have a blood-coloured glamour on roof and on wall, Like a nether hall In the hells below!

The dead, dry lips Of the ledges, split By the thunder fit And the stress of the sprites of the forked flame, Anon break out, With a shriek and a shout, Like a hard, bitter laughter, cracked and thin, From a ghost with a sin Too dark for a name!

And all thro' the year, The fierce seas run From sun to sun, Across the face of a vacant world! And the Wind flies forth From the wild, white North, That shivers and harries the heart of things, And shapes with its wings A chaos uphurled!

Like one who sees A rebel light In the thick of the night, As he stumbles and staggers on summits afar-- Who looks to it still, Up hill and hill, With a steadfast hope (though the ways be deep, And rough, and steep), Like a steadfast star--

So I, that stand On the outermost peaks Of peril, with cheeks Blue with the salts of a frosty sea, Have learnt to wait, With an eye elate And a heart intent, for the fuller blaze Of the Beauty that rays Like a glimpse for me--

Of the Beauty that grows Whenever I hear The winds of Fear From the tops and the bases of barrenness call; And the duplicate lore Which I learn evermore, Is of Harmony filling and rounding the Storm, And the marvellous Form That governs all!

Araluen

-- * A stream in the Braidwood district, New South Wales. --

River, myrtle rimmed, and set Deep amongst unfooted dells-- Daughter of grey hills of wet, Born by mossed and yellow wells;

Now that soft September lays Tender hands on thee and thine, Let me think of blue-eyed days, Star-like flowers and leaves of shine!

Cities soil the life with rust; Water banks are cool and sweet; River, tired of noise and dust, Here I come to rest my feet.

Now the month from shade to sun Fleets and sings supremest songs, Now the wilful wood-winds run Through the tangled cedar throngs.

Here are cushioned tufts and turns Where the sumptuous noontide lies: Here are seen by flags and ferns Summer's large, luxurious eyes.

On this spot wan Winter casts Eyes of ruth, and spares its green From his bitter sea-nursed blasts, Spears of rain and hailstones keen.

Rather here abideth Spring, Lady of a lovely land, Dear to leaf and fluttering wing, Deep in blooms--by breezes fanned.

Faithful friend beyond the main, Friend that time nor change makes cold; Now, like ghosts, return again Pallid, perished days of old.

Ah, the days!--the old, old theme, Never stale, but never new, Floating like a pleasant dream, Back to me and back to you.

Since we rested on these slopes Seasons fierce have beaten down Ardent loves and blossoming hopes-- Loves that lift and hopes that crown.

But, believe me, still mine eyes Often fill with light that springs From divinity, which lies Ever at the heart of things.

Solace do I sometimes find Where you used to hear with me Songs of stream and forest wind, Tones of wave and harp-like tree.

Araluen--home of dreams, Fairer for its flowerful glade Than the face of Persian streams Or the slopes of Syrian shade;

Why should I still love it so, Friend and brother far away? Ask the winds that come and go, What hath brought me here to-day.

Evermore of you I think, When the leaves begin to fall, Where our river breaks its brink, And a rest is over all.

Evermore in quiet lands, Friend of mine beyond the sea, Memory comes with cunning hands, Stays, and paints your face for me.

At Euroma

-- * Charles Harpur was buried at Euroma, N.S.W., but this poem refers to the grave of a stranger whose name is unknown. --

They built his mound of the rough, red ground, By the dip of a desert dell, Where all things sweet are killed by the heat, And scattered o'er flat and fell; In a burning zone they left him alone, Past the uttermost western plain, And the nightfall dim heard his funeral hymn In the voices of wind and rain.

The songs austere of the forests drear, And the echoes of clift and cave, When the dark is keen where the storm hath been, Fleet over the far-away grave. And through the days when the torrid rays Strike down on a coppery gloom, Some spirit grieves in the perished leaves, Whose theme is that desolate tomb.

No human foot or paw of brute Halts now where the stranger sleeps; But cloud and star his fellows are, And the rain that sobs and weeps. The dingo yells by the far iron fells, The plover is loud in the range, But they never come near to the slumberer here, Whose rest is a rest without change.

Ah! in his life, had he mother or wife, To wait for his step on the floor? Did beauty wax dim while watching for him Who passed through the threshold no more? Doth it trouble his head? He is one with the dead; He lies by the alien streams; And sweeter than sleep is death that is deep And unvexed by the lordship of dreams.

Illa Creek

A strong sea-wind flies up and sings Across the blown-wet border, Whose stormy echo runs and rings Like bells in wild disorder.

Fierce breath hath vexed the foreland's face, It glistens, glooms, and glistens; But deep within this quiet place Sweet Illa lies and listens.

Sweet Illa of the shining sands, She sleeps in shady hollows, Where August flits with flowerful hands, And silver Summer follows.

Far up the naked hills is heard A noise of many waters, But green-haired Illa lies unstirred Amongst her star-like daughters.

The tempest, pent in moaning ways, Awakes the shepherd yonder, But Illa dreams unknown to days Whose wings are wind and thunder.

Here fairy hands and floral feet Are brought by bright October; Here, stained with grapes and smit with heat, Comes Autumn, sweet and sober.

Here lovers rest, what time the red And yellow colours mingle, And daylight droops with dying head Beyond the western dingle.

And here, from month to month, the time Is kissed by peace and pleasure, While Nature sings her woodland rhyme And hoards her woodland treasure.

Ah, Illa Creek! ere evening spreads Her wings o'er towns unshaded, How oft we seek thy mossy beds To lave our foreheads faded!

For, let me whisper, then we find The strength that lives, nor falters, In wood and water, waste and wind, And hidden mountain altars.

Moss on a Wall

Dim dreams it hath of singing ways, Of far-off woodland water-heads, And shining ends of April days Amongst the yellow runnel-beds.

Stoop closer to the ruined wall, Whereon the wilful wilding sleeps, As if its home were waterfall By dripping clefts and shadowy steeps.

A little waif, whose beauty takes A touching tone because it dwells So far away from mountain lakes, And lily leaves, and lightening fells.

Deep hidden in delicious floss It nestles, sister, from the heat-- A gracious growth of tender moss Whose nights are soft, whose days are sweet.

Swift gleams across its petals run With winds that hum a pleasant tune, Serene surprises of the sun, And whispers from the lips of noon.

The evening-coloured apple-trees Are faint with July's frosty breath. But lo! this stranger getteth ease, And shines amidst the strays of Death.

And at the turning of the year, When August wanders in the cold, The raiment of the nursling here Is rich with green and glad with gold.

Oh, friend of mine, to one whose eyes Are vexed because of alien things, For ever in the wall moss lies The peace of hills and hidden springs.

From faithless lips and fickle lights The tired pilgrim sets his face, And thinketh here of sounds and sights In many a lovely forest-place.

And when by sudden fits and starts The sunset on the moss doth burn, He often dreams, and, lo! the marts And streets are changed to dells of fern.

For, let me say, the wilding placed By hands unseen amongst these stones, Restores a Past by Time effaced, Lost loves and long-forgotten tones!

As sometimes songs and scenes of old Come faintly unto you and me, When winds are wailing in the cold, And rains are sobbing on the sea.

Campaspe

Turn from the ways of this Woman! Campaspe we call her by name-- She is fairer than flowers of the fire-- she is brighter than brightness of flame. As a song that strikes swift to the heart with the beat of the blood of the South, And a light and a leap and a smart, is the play of her perilous mouth. Her eyes are as splendours that break in the rain at the set of the sun, But turn from the steps of Campaspe--a Woman to look at and shun!

Dost thou know of the cunning of Beauty? Take heed to thyself and beware Of the trap in the droop in the raiment--the snare in the folds of the hair! She is fulgent in flashes of pearl, the breeze with her breathing is sweet, But fly from the face of the girl--there is death in the fall of her feet! Is she maiden or marvel of marble? Oh, rather a tigress at wait To pounce on thy soul for her pastime--a leopard for love or for hate.

Woman of shadow and furnace! She biteth her lips to restrain Speech that springs out when she sleepeth, by the stirs and the starts of her pain. As music half-shapen of sorrow, with its wants and its infinite wail, Is the voice of Campaspe, the beauty at bay with her passion dead-pale. Go out from the courts of her loving, nor tempt the fierce dance of desire Where thy life would be shrivelled like stubble in the stress and the fervour of fire!

I know of one, gentle as moonlight--she is sad as the shine of the moon, But touching the ways of her eyes are: she comes to my soul like a tune-- Like a tune that is filled with faint voices of the loved and the lost and the lone, Doth this stranger abide with my silence: like a tune with a tremulous tone. The leopard, we call her, Campaspe! I pluck at a rose and I stir To think of this sweet-hearted maiden--what name is too tender for her?

On a Cattle Track

Where the strength of dry thunder splits hill-rocks asunder, And the shouts of the desert-wind break, By the gullies of deepness and ridges of steepness, Lo, the cattle track twists like a snake! Like a sea of dead embers, burnt white by Decembers, A plain to the left of it lies; And six fleeting horses dash down the creek courses With the terror of thirst in their eyes.