Thomas Henry Kendall

“ The false strength of fever, that deadly deceiver,
⁠Gives foot to each famishing beast;
And over lands rotten, by rain-winds forgotten,
⁠The mirage gleams out in the east.
Ah! the waters are hidden from riders and ridden
⁠In a stream where the cattle track dips;
And Death on their faces is scoring fierce traces,
⁠And the drouth is a fire on their lips.
It is far to the station, and gaunt Desolation
⁠Is a spectre that glooms in the way;
Like a red smoke the air is, like a hell-light its glare is,
⁠And as flame are the feet of the day. ”

“ 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! ”

“ And tripped and thirsted, like these men of ours;
For, verily, I say that not so deep
Their bones are that the scattered drift and dust
Of gusty days will never leave them bare.
O dear, dead, bleaching bones! I know of those
Who have the wild, strong will to go and sit
Outside all things with you, and keep the ways
Aloof from bats, and snakes, and trampling feet
That smite your peace and theirs—who have the heart,
Without the lusty limbs, to face the fire
And moonless midnights, and to be, indeed,
For very sorrow, like a moaning wind
In wintry forests with perpetual rain. ”

“ None will ever sit where she did — none will ever fill her place.
With the passing of our Mary, like a sunset out of sight,
Passed away our pure first passion — all its life and all its light!
All that made the world a dreamland — all the glory and the glow
Of the fine, fresh, morning feeling vanished twenty years ago.
Girl, whose strange, unearthly beauty haunts us ever in our sleep,
Many griefs have worn our hearts out — we are now too tired to weep!
Time has tried us, years have changed us; but the sweetness shed by you
Falls upon our spirits daily, like divine, immortal dew. ”

“ Sing, mountain-wind, and take thine ancient tone,
The grand, austere, imperial utterance.
Which drives my soul before it back to days
In one dark hour of which, when Storm rode high
Past broken hills, and when the polar gale
Roared round the Otway with the bitter breath
That speaks for ever of the White South Land
Alone with God and Silence in the cold,
I heard the touching tale of Basil Moss,
A story shining with a woman's love!
And who that knows that love can ever doubt
How dear, divine, sublime a thing it is ”

“ Australia broadens like a tropic moon.
Her white, pure lustre beams across the zones;
The nations greet her from their awful thrones.
From hence the morning beauty of her name
Will shine afar, like an exceeding flame.
Her place will be with mighty lords, whose sway
Controls the thunder and the marching day.
Her crown will shine beside the crowns of kings
Who shape the seasons, rule the course of things,
The fame of her across the years to be
Will spread like light on a surpassing sea;
And graced with glory, girt with power august,
Her life will last till all things turn to dust. ”

“ For that fainting gleam of glory sad with flickering, sickly smiles?
In these woodlands I was restless! I had seen a light depart,
And an ache for something vanished filled and chilled my longing heart,
And I linked my thoughts together—"All seemed still and dull to-day,
But a painful symbol groweth from the shine that pales away!
This may not be idle dreaming; if the spirit roams," I said,
"This is surely one, a wanderer from the ages which have fled!
Who can look beyond the darkness; who can see so he may tell
Where the sunsets all have gone to; where the souls that leave us dwell? ”

“ The wallaroos grope through the tufts of the grass,
⁠And turn to their coverts for fear;
But he sits in the ashes and lets them pass
⁠Where the boomerangs sleep with the spear—
⁠With the nullah, the sling and the spear.
Uloola, behold him! The thunder that breaks
⁠On the tops of the rocks with the rain,
And the wind which drives up with the salt of the lakes,
⁠Have made him a hunter again—
⁠A hunter and fisher again. ”

“ Ah! the saddest thought in leaving baby in this bush alone
Is that we have not been able on her grave to place a stone:
We have been too poor to do it; but, my darling, never mind—
God is in the gracious heavens, and His sun and rain are kind:
They will dress the spot with beauty, they will make the grasses grow:
Many winds will lull our birdie, many songs will come and go. ”

“ The noble tale which lifts the human race
Has made a morning of her sacred face.
Now in the emerald home of flower and wing
Clear summer streams their sweet hosannas sing;
The winds are full of anthems, and a lute
Speaks in the listening hills when night is mute
And through dim tracks where talks the royal tree
There floats a grand hymn from the mighty sea;
And where the grey, grave, pondering mountains stand
High music lives—the place is holy land! ”

“ Had laid itself on Circe's brass-clad son,
He pricked the hunter with a lust that turned
All thoughts to travel and the seas remote;
But chiefly now he stirred Telegonus
To longings for his father's exiled face,
And dreams of rest and honey-hearted love
And quiet death with much of funeral flame
Far in the mountains of a favoured land
Beyond the wars and wailings of the waves. ”

“ Struggles the light that is love to the flowers.
And, softer than slumber, and sweeter than singing,
The notes of the bell-birds are running and ringing.
The silver-voiced bell-birds, the darlings of day-time,
They sing in September their songs of the May-time.
When shadows wax strong and the thunder-bolts hurtle,
They hide with their fear in the leaves of the myrtle ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Shine on waves that no man knows of, out of sound and out of sight.
Yet the slopes and lawns of lustre, yet the dells of sparkling streams,
Dip to tranquil shores of jasper, where the watching angel beams.
But, behold, our eyes are human, and our way is paved with pain,
We can never find Hy-Brasil, never see its hills again;
Never look on bays of crystal, never bend the reverent knee
In the sight of Eden floating — floating on the sapphire sea!
This work is in the public domain in Australia because it was created in Australia and the term of copyright has expired. ”

“ From the priests of the city, the chiefs of the town
(The lords with the sword, and the sires with the gown) ,
To harry the Christians, and trample, and drown,
⁠And waste them like water.
He was ever a fighter, this son of the Jews—
⁠A fighter in earnest;
And the Lord took delight in the strength of his thews,
For He knew he was one of the few He could choose
To fight out His battles and carry His news
Of a marvellous truth through the dark and the dews,
⁠And the desert lands furnaced! ”

“ For while the tale of Basil Moss was one
Not blackened with those stark, satanic sins
Which call for superhuman sacrifice,
Still, from the records of the world's sad life,
This great, sweet, gladdening fact at length we've learned,
There's not a depth to which a man can fall,
No slough of crime in which such one ean lie
Stoned with the scorn and curses of his kind,
But that some tender woman can be found
To love and shield him still. ”

“ The high, strong sun stares at the white world's face;
Not like that haughty daughter of the year
Who moves, a splendour, in a splendid sphere;
But rather like a nymph of afternoon,
With cool, soft sunshine, comes Australian June.
She is the calm, sweet lady, from whose lips
No breath of living passion ever slips;
The wind that on her virgin forehead blows
Was born too late to speak of last year's rose ”

“ 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. ”

“ Stood in the place of health and power and praise;
Who, when I thought all light was out, became
A lamp of hope that put my fears to shame;
Who faced for love's sole sake the life austere
That waits upon the man of letters here ”

“ 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. ”

“ A hope as bright as heaven's zone.
⁠On this her natal day.
May all her life be like the light
⁠That softens down in spheres divine,
"As lovely as a Lapland night,"
⁠All grace and chastened shine! ”

“ Flash past us — unnoticed by Bill.
The elders of Science who measure the spheres
And weigh the vast bulk of the sun —
Who see the grand lights beyond aeons of years,
Are less than a bullock to ONE.
The singers that sweeten all Time with their song —
Pure voices that make us forget
Humanity's drama of marvellous wrong —
To Bill are as mysteries yet. ”

“ There are wails in the wind, there are sighs on the shores,
⁠And alas, for the fate of a storm-beaten man!
Oh, dark falls the night on the rain-rutted verge,
⁠So sad with the sound of the foam!
Oh, wild is the sweep and the swirl of the surge ”

“ But the gold of the grass, and the green of the vine,
⁠And the music of wind and of water,
And the torrent of song and superlative shine,
⁠Are close to our dear little daughter.
The months of the year are all gracious to her,
⁠A winter breath visits her never ”

“ There indeed was God's own garden, sailing down the sapphire sea —
Lawny dells and slopes of summer, dazzling stream and radiant tree!
Out against the hushed horizon — out beneath the reverent day,
Flamed the Wonder on the waters — flamed and flashed and passed away.
And the maiden who had seen it felt a hand within her own,
And an angel that we know not led her to the lands unknown. ”

“ The black, through the bend and "the straight,"
⁠Had the race of the year in his hands.
In a clamour of calls and acclaim,
⁠He landed the money—the horse
With the beautiful African name,
⁠That rang to the back of the course.
Hurrah for the Hercules race,
⁠And the terror that came from his stall,
With the bright, the intelligent face,
⁠To show the road home to them all! ”

“ With wealth and health and with a youth unspent,
To those sweet ones that stayed with want at home,
Say who shall blame him—though the years are long,
And life is hard, and waiting makes the heart grow old? ”

“ Yea, and while the land is dark with plover, gull, and gloomy glede,
Where the cold, swift songs of Winter fill the interlucent reed.
Yet, my harp—and oh, my fathers! never look for Sorrow's lay,
Making life a mighty darkness in the patient noon of day ”

“ Of fierce aggressive sea shoots up and makes,—
When storm sails high through drifts of driving sleet,
And in the days when limpid waters glass
December's sunny hair and forest face,—
A roaring down by immemorial caves,
A thunder in the everlasting hills. ”

“ Ere Winter comes, the woodman old,
⁠To lop the leaves in wind and rain.
O, greenest moss of mountain glen,
⁠The face of Rose is known to thee;
But we shall never share with men
⁠A knowledge dear to love and me! ”

“ And near her sweet gifts shine like star by star.
She is the true Demeter. Life of root
Glows under her in gardens flushed with fruit;
She fills the fields with strength and passion—makes
A fire of lustre on the lawn-ringed lakes;
Her beauty awes the great wild sea; the height
Of grey magnificence takes strange delight
And softens at her presence, at the dear
Sweet face whose memory beams through all the year. ”

“ Our psalm is the breeze in the lordly trees,
⁠And our dome is the broad blue sky.
⁠Oh! a brave, frank life, unsmitten by strife,
⁠We live wherever we roam,
⁠And our hearts are free as the great strong sea,
⁠In the shingle-splitter's home. ”

“ Whose music haunts me as the wind a tree.
⁠Lo, when a stranger in soft Syrian glooms
Shot through with sunset, treads the cedar dells,
And hears the breezy ring of elfin bells
⁠Far down by where the white-haired cataract booms,
He, faint with sweetness caught from forest smells,
⁠Bears thence, unwitting, plunder of perfumes. ”

“ A sea-voice moaning like a ghost;
⁠And fits of fiery weather!
The flying Syrinx turned and sped
⁠By dim, mysterious hollows,
Where night is black, and day is red,
⁠And frost the fire-wind follows. ”

“ The skirts of a stupendous grief
⁠Are trailing ever at my side.
I will not say who suffered there,
⁠'Tis best the name aloof to keep,
Because the world is very fair—
⁠Its light should sing the dark to sleep. ”

“ Here, in the flow of the psalms that ascend to Thee,
⁠Teach us to live for the light of Thy grace.
Here, in the pause of the anthems of praise to Thee,
⁠Master and Maker—pre-eminent Friend—
Teach us to look to Thee—give all our days to Thee,
⁠Now and for evermore, world without end! ”