Dorothea Mackellar

“ Oft the colours are pitched so high
The deepest note is the cobalt sky;
We have to wait till the sunset comes
For shades that feel like the beat of drums
Or like organ notes in their rise and fall—
Purple and orange and cardinal,
Or the peacock-green that turns soft and slow
To peacock-blue as the great stars show....
Sugar-gum boles flushed to peach-blow pink ”

“ If you but face them bravely, lost in a barren land,
Never will they betray you, the sky and the sea and sand.
Blue burns the sky above me, red the sand at my feet,
Near and far on the sandhills shimmers the living heat;
Hill after hill I conquer, changing yet still the same,
Still flows the sand together and covers the way I came.
Stretched in a warm sand-hollow late in the afternoon
Watch I the wild duck flying back to the long lagoon;
Black on an amber sunset passes the last of the flight—
Over the Coorong sandhills quiver the pinions of night. ”

“ Her long strange eyes were narrowed to threads of shining green,
She touched the broken spear-point the wound's red lips between,
She touched it with her careless foot, and yet he did not stir,
Dull fool that lay with open eyes and would not look at her!
She turned away in anger and raised her arms on high,
Her straight white arms that questioned the pure pale sky,
The thousand slender tree-stems soon hid the way she went
As they who hold a secret and therewith are content.
The dead man smiled in silence ”

“ Into the soft mist the fishing-boats go,
As silent as moonlight, as silent as snow;
Just where the pale sea melts into the sky,
Silver-grey birds of the autumn, they fly
Slowly and smoothly and statelily past
Till their wide pinions are hidden at last.
From the high rock whence I watch on the hill
Down to the sea, all is muffled and still.
Never a leaflet stirs soft overhead,
Everything living is frozen or fled,
Fled through the mist to more wonderful things....
Am I the only soul left without wings? ”

“ Out of my slumber I woke in affright;
Why does the lark sing so deep in the night?
The day is gone, the morning is far,
Down on my pillow shines many a star;
And ever the song of the lark I hear ”

“ Your feet will bleed and your heart may break{87}
Long ere that stony height you gain—
Better the safe and pleasant plain!
For, reach the summit, nothing’s there
Save mocking sun and empty air
Or a tall cloud-tower in the heaven’s span—
Small comfort that to an earthly man!
Castle-of-Spain is builded high
Up above us, beyond the sky....
Easy we build you, hardly we gain,
Castle-of-Spain, Castle-of-Spain! ”

“ The lovely things that I have watched unthinking,
Unknowing, day by day,
That their soft dyes had steeped my soul in colour
That will not pass away:—
Great saffron sunset clouds, and larkspur mountains,
And fenceless miles of plain,
And hillsides golden-green in that unearthly
Clear shining after rain;
And nights of blue and pearl; and long smooth beaches,
Yellow as sunburnt wheat,
Edged with a line of foam that creams and hisses,
Enticing weary feet ”

“ My feet are grey with the roadside dust,
My hair is wet with the dew,
My heart is flagging with weariness
And faint with the want of you.
You are as young as the breaking buds,
You are as old as the sea ”

“ By grey-flowered rosemary;
It's worth a year of suffering
To walk the Ronda road in spring.
There grows a gallant army
Of blossoms great and small
Along the road to Ronda—
The broom is lord of all. ”

“ Marble-smooth and marble-pale the blue gums guard the clearing
Where the winter fern is gold among the silver grass,
And the shy bush creatures watching bright-eyed and unfearing
See the slender Oreads while we unheeding pass.{28}
Wreathed with starry clematis these tread the grassy spaces
When the moon sails up beyond the highest screening tree,
All the forest dances, and the furthest hidden places
Are astir with beauty—but we may not often see. ”

“ Yea, silently and swiftly, my Sorrow, you have grown
Till you are waxed so dreadful I dare not be alone—
Alone I dare not face you, lest I be slain outright—
I pray you, monster Sorrow, to sheathe your claws
to-night! ”

“ Steep-sloping to the sky,
I want to reach the summit
And watch the clouds race by;{36}—
The clouds that go so quickly
The whole hill seems to lean;—
I want to breathe in deeply
The cool air, thin and keen.
My heart turns to high places
All men have long adored—
The proud and lonely mountains,
The Altars of the Lord. ”

“ Dive in from the sunlight smiting like a falchion
Underneath the awnings to the sudden shade,
Saunter through the packed lane
Many-voiced, colourful,
Rippling with the currents of the south and eastern trade.
Here are Persian carpets, ivory, and peachbloom,
Tints to fill the heart of any child of man ”

“ Ride, ride, and you'll travel far;
I tore my heart out and hid the scar.
Ride with a man at your bridle-rein—
My man never will come again.
Ride, ride, for the sun is strong:
but a lonely road can be long! ”

“ You may see the gleaming of a Naiad’s slippery shoulders,
And the water sliding cool and quiet over all.
Through the narrow gorges where the flying-foxes muster,
Hanging from the kurrajongs like monstrous magic grapes,
Something spreads a sudden fear that breaks each heavy cluster—
See the furry prick-eared faun that chuckles and escapes! ”

“ THE MOON AND THE MORNING
The moon is riding high, the stars are shining
But very palely, through the clear blue light;
The plain is empty, and the circling mountains
Rise cold and far through swathes of mist to-night. ”

“ With him that called her fair,
But love is just as sweet and fresh
When spring is in the air;
And though I must perforce be dumb
Who have no skill to sing,
I am as deep in love, in love,
As is the year in spring! ”

“ Mother Mary in the sky, grant me my desire!
Summer’s yellow on the land, throbbing warm and live,
Hear her million voices hum like a lucky hive;{57}
Blossom of the brier, blossom of the brier,
Mary in the summertime, give me my desire!
All the talking winds are stilled in the autumn pause,
Redder far than blood or fire blaze the hips and haws ”

“ So lest you should forget one word of all the words we said,
My heart, my only jewel, fired with living, pulsing red,
A trinket at your girdle hangs, and as a sign to me
The hungry, aching blank is, where my glad heart used to be. ”

“ And the purring and murmurous choir
Of the wire
That leads the chained lightning a slave through the street,
In the night-stillness comes like the throbbing of drums,
Like the distant, dread sound of innumerable feet. ”

“ You hear the sound of one in sorrow sobbing—
I sing thus since my mood is thus. Believe me,
Madame, no hopeless love of you shall grieve me.
If they have said that I look pale and worn,
Time is at fault, not any woman's scorn. ”

“ Yea, feel but too strongly, it flies
From the tumult its beauty wakes
Deep in our hearts' stronghold;
We can but stand and gaze,
With all our souls' life in our eyes,
As we spin out this day of days
Thin to a thread of gold. ”

“ Fish brush by her weed-hung side;
Never wave can shake her, she
Has gone through them far too deep,
And her crew may rest asleep
In the places where they died.
There each man unheeding lies
As he was the night she sank ”

“ With greedy licking around the trees:
The hot breath sears our eyes
From cores already grown furnace-hot;
The logs are well alight;
We fling more wood where the flameless heart
Is throbbing red and white. ”

“ To-day, when the cranes in their grey and pink
Fish solemnly in the weeds,
To-day, when the cattle come down to drink
And push through the whispering reeds,
I stand there and watch them, in Culgai too,
And they do not heed or fear;
There is not one lark in the radiant blue
Whose carol I do not hear. ”

“ The horses tread soft and deep;
Clover and young green grass—
Hark to the grazing sheep,
Cropping steady and slow—
A peaceful, satisfied sound;
Thick on the paths we go
Gold flowers are starring the ground. ”

“ White on the sea.
Now to the waves you swoop,
Snatch at your prey—
Smoothly you pause and stoop,
And are away,
While the sea's rage is spent
Leaping at you,
Who make high merriment
Up in the blue. ”

“ Still it followed after,
Whispering deeds that we had shared
With a fierce low laughter.
"Here you stabbed him and he fell
With his sword a-clatter—
Life for life—you paid your debt—
That was no great matter." ”

“ How the small waves lisp and soothe!
Those grave woods will not betray,
All the shore is ours to-day,
There's no soul for many a mile
And the curved waves call and smile,
Coax and whisper and beguile . . . ”

“ I should have climbed the wall
Or ever the Woman found the fruit,
Crimson and ripe to fall.
For though the garden be Paradise,
Gardens are little worth
To one who thirsts for the wilderness
Lonely in all the earth. ”

“ An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land—
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand—
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly. ”

“ There are reed-grown islands
The eye scarce sees,
Grey ooze guarding grimly
Their mysteries.
Strange Things may survive there,
What, who can tell?
Monsters old—the lake-slime
Can guard them well. ”

“ We thank Thee, O Lord God!
May'st 'Thou who mad'st all things to be alive,
Thou who hast given the Senses Five,
Thou who hast portioned the Nights and Days,
Thou who hast given us lips for praise,
Be thanked, Lord God! ”