Charles Harpur

“ Are seen,—or upward or beyond it cast,
Like crude-winged, mad limb'd monsters squandering in the blast!
The darkness thickens. With despairing cry,
From shattered boughs the rain-drenched parrots fly! ”

“ My work on earth is nearly done,
Yet still I feel thou'rt mine.
My treasur'd child, my beautiful,
With front of guileless mein
And eyes like stars— (my heart is full,
From wrongs I've felt and seen.) ”

“ It stretches, changeful as a lover's dream —
Into great spaces mapped by light and shade
In constant interchange — either 'neath clouds
The billows darken, or they shimmer bright
In sunny scopes of measureless expanse. ”

“ Our travellers kindled for their first night's camp
The brisk and crackling fire, which also looked
A wilder creature than 'twas elsewhere wont,
Because of the surrounding savageness.
And soon in cannikins the tea was made,
Fragrant and strong; long fresh-sliced rashers then
Impaled on whittled skewers, were deftly broiled
On the live embers, and when done, transferred
To quadrants from an ample damper cut,
Their only trenchers — soon to be dispatched
With all the savoury morsels they sustained,
By the keen tooth of healthful appetite. ”

“ And shrank, and struggled, like a dragon doubt
Glooming some lonely spirit that doth still
Resist the Truth with obstinate shifts and shows,
Though shining out of heaven, and from defect
Winning a triumph that might else not be. ”

“ Within a glade that sloped into the bank
Of that wild mountain Creek — midway within,
In partial record of a terrible hour
Of human agony and loss extreme,
Four grassy mounds stretched lengthwise side by side,
Startled the wanderer; — four long grassy mounds
Bestrewn with leaves, and withered spraylets, stript
By the loud wintry wing gales that roamed
Those solitudes, from the old trees which there
Moaned the same leafy dirges that had caught
The heed of dying Ages: these were all;
And thence the place was long by travellers called
The Creek of the Four Graves. ”

“ And as he fled, the forest beasts as well,
In general terror, through the brakes a-head
Crashed scattering, or with maddening speed athwart
His course came frequent. On — still on he flies —
Flies for dear life! ”