Victor James William Patrick Daley

“ For all my dreams are dead and gone.
The world is very old and wan.
* * * * *
The world is young, the world is strong,
But I in dreams have wandered long.
God lives. What can Death do to me
The sun is shining on the sea. ”

“ The waters make a music low:
The river reeds
Are trembling to the tunes of long ago —
Dead days and deeds
Become alive again, as on
I float, and float,
Through shadows of the golden summers gone
And springs remote.
Above my head the trees bloom out
In white and red
Great blossoms, that make glad the air about;
And old suns shed
Their rays athwart them. Ah, the light
Is bright and fair! ”

“ I have been dreaming all a summer day:
Shall I go dreaming so until Life's light
Fades in Death's dusk, and all my days are spent?
Ah, what am I the dreamer but a dream !
The day is fading and the dusk is cold. ”

“ The land of Once upon a Time.
unknown sweet, so sweetly known,
I know not what your came may be —
Madonna is your name for me
Nor where your lines in life are thrown;
But soul sees soul — what is the rest? ”

“ Like spectres in the sun,
Stand shivering nigh Avonaise,
Where all is dead and gone.
The sere leaves make a music vain,
With melancholy chords;
Like cries from some old battle-plain,
Like clash of phantom swords. ”

“ My voice faints down the wooded ways
And dies along the darkling flood.
The past is past; I cry in vain,
For when did Death an answer deign
To Love's heart-broken questionings?
The dead are deaf; dust chokes their ears ”

“ Is life a reckless carnival?
And are they lost, our golden years?
Ah, no; ah, no; for, long ago,
Ere time could sear, or care could fret,
There was a youth called Romeo,
There was a maid named Juliet.
The players of the past are gone;
The races rise; the races pass ”

“ Goes flitting all about the place,
Master and mistress both in one;
But though she sings, or though she sighs,
He sees her not—he sees instead
A gray-haired Shade with gentle eyes —
The good old wife, long dead, long dead. ”

“ So all delights and days expire:
Down in the dim, sad West the sun
Is dying like a dying fire.
The fiercest lances of his light
Are spent; I watch him droop and die,
Like a great king who falls in fight ”

“ Our love in Lethe ere less
Grow its flame with thee or me.
When Time with his evil eye
The beautiful Love has slain,
There is nought to gain or keep
Thereafter, and all is vain.
Should we wait to see Love die? ”

“ But oh! my heart was sore to think
Of friends I left behind.
We rode o'er hills that seemed to sweep
Skyward like swelling waves;
The living stirred not in their sleep,
The dead slept in their graves. ”

“ Of brave Explorers dead,
Who perished — while the burning arch
Of blue laughed overhead;
The Solitary Man who stares
At the mirage so fair,
While Death steals on him unawares
And grasps him by the hair ”

“ With voice of golden guile
She lures men from the ends of earth
To make her smile.
The student of wild human ways
In wild new lands; the sage
With new great thoughts; the bard whose lays
Bring youth to age ”

“ Gold lights begin to glow,
Revealing the bright soul within
As dawn the sun below.
So, hand in hand, we watch the sun
Burn down the Western deeps,
Dreaming a charmed dream, as one
Who in enchantment sleeps ”

“ Can I drown these cares of mine.
But some day, for good and sure,
I shall bury them secure,
Where the soil is rich and brown,
With a stone to keep them down,
And to let their end be known,
Have my name carved on the stone ”

“ The Woman at the Washtub
Has lost the charm of youth;
Her hair is rough and homely,
Her figure is uncouth;
Her temper is like thunder,
With no one she agrees –
The children of the alley
They cling around her knees. ”

“ Speak, speak, speak, O Soul-white rose for me,
Say, say to her my heart in silence grieves.
Lonely and sad it grieves amidst the careless throng . . .
Ah, green are the waving trees in the woods of Dandenong! ”

“ George’s Circus, Westminster-bridge, and back to the palace. The poorer classes on the south side of the water will thus have an opportunity of seeing their Sovereign and witnessing the day’s spectacle. ”