“ And the gay young voice as in hours of yore.
It still seems strange to be here alone,
With the rising sob of the wind without;
The sound takes a deep, insisting tone,
Where the trees are swinging their arms about.
Its moaning reaches the sheltered room,
And thrills my heart with a sense of pain;
I walk to the window, and pierce the gloom,
With a yearning look that is all in vain.
You are out in a night of depths that hold
No promise of dawning for you and me,
And only a ghost from the life of old
Has come from the world of memory!
You are out evermore! God wills it so! ”

“ There, hour by hour, the lazy tide creeps in
Upon the sands I shall not pace again —
Save in a dream, — and, hour by hour, the tide
Creeps lazily out, and I behold it not,
Nor the young moon slow sinking to her rest
Behind the hills; nor yet the dead white trees
Glimmering in the starlight: they are ghosts
Of what has been, and shall be never more.
No, never more!
Nor shall I hear again
The wind that rises at the dead of night
Suddenly, and sweeps inward from the sea,
Rustling the tussock, nor the wekas' wail
Echoing at evening from the tawny hills. ”

“ These vessels of verse, O Great Goddess, are filled with invisible tears,
With the sobs and sweat of my spirit and her desolate brooding for years;
See, I lay them — not on thine altar, for they are unpolished and plain,
Not rounded enough by the potter, too much burnt in the furnace of pain;
But here in the dust, in the shadow, with a sudden wild leap of the heart
I kneel to tenderly kiss them, then in silence arise to depart.
I linger awhile at the portal with the light of the crimsoning sun
On my wreathless brow bearing the badges of battles I've fought in not won. ”

“ And fight for Right or a Grand Mistake as men never fought before;
When the peaks are scarred and the sea-walls crack
till the furthest hills vibrate,
And the world for a while goes rolling back in a storm of love and hate.
. . . . .
There are boys to-day in the city slum and the home of wealth and pride
Who'll have one home when the storm is come, and fight for it side by side,
Who'll hold the cliffs 'gainst the armoured hells that batter a coastal town,
Or grimly die in a hail of shells when the walls come crashing down. ”

“ His heart, who sees it by sun or moon.
Its beauty burns like a ceaseless fire,
And tower looks over the top of tower;
For all mute things it would seem, aspire
To catch a glimpse of the lotus-flower.
Men meet its beauty with furrowed face,
And straight the furrows are smoothed away;
They buy and sell in the market-place,
And languor leadens their blood all day.
At night they look on the flower, and lo!
The City passes with all its cares:
They dream no more in its azure glow,
Of gold and silver and stocks and shares. ”

“ Tho' Earth were full of whirlwind and of storm.
Mary Gilmore.
A Little Ghost
The moonlight flutters from the sky
To meet her at the door,
A little ghost, whose steps have passed
Across the creaking floor.
And rustling vines that lightly tap
Against the window-pane,
Throw shadows on the white-washed walls
To blot them out again.
The moonlight leads her as she goes
Across a narrow plain,
By all the old, familiar ways
That know her steps again.
And through the scrub it leads her on
And brings her to the creek,
But by the broken dam she stops
And seems as she would speak. ”

“ For light and love and memory lie leaf by leaf with these!
And if I bought all Sydney Town I could not hope to buy
The wealth you bring of everything that goes with open sky!
My money for your daffodils: why do you thank me so?
If I have paid a reckless price, take up my gift and go,
And from the golden garden beds where gold the sunbeams shine
Bring in more flowers to light the hours for lover-hearts like mine!
A Queen of Yore
Slowly she hobbles past the town, grown old at heart and gray;
With misty eyes she stumbles down along the well-known way ”

“ And others are exiles all their days, midst black or white or brown,
Who yearn for the clashing of crowded ways, and the lights of London town.
But always I would wish to be where the seasons gently fall
On the Further Isle of the Outer Sea, the last little isle of all,
A fair green land of hill and plain, of rivers and water-springs,
Where the sun still follows after the rain, and ever the hours have wings,
With its bosomed valleys where men may find retreat from
the rough world's way . . .
Where the sea-wind kisses the mountain-wind between the dark and the day. ”

“ Ever by field or flood —
For not far back in my father's line
Was a dash of the Gipsy blood.
Flax and tussock and fern,
Gum and mulga and sand,
Reef and palm — but my fancies turn
Ever away from land;
Strange wild cities in ancient state,
Range and river and tree,
Snow and ice. But my star of fate
Is ever across the sea.
A god-like ride on a thundering sea,
When all but the stars are blind —
A desperate race from Eternity
With a gale-and-a-half behind. ”

“ As the wind sweeps by, and the hut doors close,
And the bats dip down in the shaft or quiver
In the ghostly light, round the grey horse goes;
And he feels the strain on his untouched shoulder,
Hears again the voice that was dear to him,
Sees the form he knew — and his heart grows bolder
As he works his shift by the broken whim.
He hears in the sluices the water rushing
As the buckets drain and the doors fall back;
When the early dawn in the east is blushing,
He is limping still round the old, old track. ”

“ Fill, fill with the rising tide of night;
While the sunset with gold-dust bridges
The black-ravined ridges,
Whose mighty muscles curve in its light.
In our weary climb, while night dyes deep,
Down the broken and stony steep,
How our jaded bodies are shaken
By each step in half-blindness taken —
One's thoughts lie heaped like brutes asleep.
Open the door of the dismal hut,
Silence and darkness lone were shut
In it, as a tidal pool, until returning
Night drowns the land, — no ember's burning, —
One is too weary the food to cut. ”

“ To A. L. Gordon
In night-long days, in aeons where all Time's nights are one; where life and death sing paeans as of Greeks and Galileans, never begun or done;
where fate, the slow swooping condor, comes glooming all the sky — as you have pondered I ponder, as you have wandered I wander, as you have died, shall I die?
Love and Death
Death? is it death you give? So be it! O Death, thou hast been long my friend, and now thy pale cool cheek shall have my kiss, while the faint breath expires on thy still lips, O lovely Death! ”

“ The corn-stalks sigh for the sickle,
'Neath the load of their golden grain;
I sigh for a mate more fickle —
Thou comest not back again.
The warm sun riseth and setteth,
The night bringeth moistening dew,
But the soul that longeth forgetteth
The warmth and the moisture too.
In the hot sun rising and setting
There is naught save feverish pain;
There are tears in the night-dews wetting —
Thou comest not back again.
Thy voice in my ear still mingles
With the voices of whisp'ring trees,
Thy kiss on my cheek still tingles
At each kiss of the summer breeze. ”

“ Empty is the little cradle — absent is the little face.
Other children may be given; but this rose beyond recall,
But this garland of your girlhood, will be dearest of them all.
None will ever, Araluen, nestle where you used to be,
In my heart of hearts, you darling, when the world was new to me;
We were young when you were with us, life and love were happy things
To your father and your mother ere the angels gave you wings.
You that sit and sob beside me — you, upon whose golden head
Many rains of many sorrows have from day to day been shed ”

“ Dustily over the highway pipes the loud nor'-wester at morn,
Wind and the rising sun, and waving tussock and corn;
It brings to me days gone by when first in my ears it rang,
The wind is the voice of my home, and I think of the songs it sang
When, fresh from the desk and ledger, I crossed the long leagues of sea —
"The old worn world is gone and the new bright world is free." ”

“ The dark of the bush on the sidings, the snow-crested mountains that loom
Golden and grey in the sunlight, far up in the cloud-fringed blue,
Are the threads with old memory weaving and the line of my life
running through;
And the wind of the morning calling has ever a song for me
Of hope for the land of the dawning in the golden years to be. ”

“ Hovered low the sister cloud in wild, warm wonder.
"O my love, Dunedin town, the only, the abiding!
Who can look undazzled up where the Norn is riding, —
Watch the sword of destiny from the scabbard gliding!
"Dark and rich and ringing true — word and look for ever;
Taking to her woman heart all forlorn endeavour;
Heaven's sea about her feet, not the bounded river!"
"Sister of the mountain mist, and never to be holden
With the weary sophistries that dimmer eyes embolden, —
O the dark Dunedin town, shot with green and golden!" ”

“ You then might see what Clancy saw
And know what Clancy knew.
By the Grey Gulf-Water
Far to the Northward there lies a land,
A wonderful land that the winds blow over,
And none may fathom nor understand
The charm it holds for the restless rover;
A great grey chaos — a land half made,
Where endless space is and no life stirreth;
And the soul of a man will recoil afraid
From the sphinx-like visage that Nature weareth.
But old Dame Nature, though scornful, craves
Her dole of death and her share of slaughter ”

“ He tramped for years till the swag he bore seemed part of himself to him.
As a bullock drags in the sandy ruts, he followed the dreary track,
With never a thought but to reach the huts when the sun went down Out Back.
It chanced one day, when the north wind blew
in his face like a furnace-breath,
He left the track for a tank he knew — 'twas a short-cut to his death;
For the bed of the tank was hard and dry, and crossed with many a crack,
And, oh! it's a terrible thing to die of thirst in the scrub Out Back. ”

“ How can I think of myself when infinitude o'er me is glowing,
Glowing with tokens of love from the land where my sorrows shall cease?
Oh, summer-night of the South! Oh, sweet languor of zephyrs love-sighing!
Oh, mighty circuit of shadowy solitude, holy and still!
Music scarce audible, echo-less harmony joyously dying,
Dying in faint suspirations o'er meadow, and forest, and hill!
I must go forth and be part of it, part of the night and its gladness.
But a few steps, and I pause on the marge of the shining lagoon. ”

“ From Samoa came over:
Came over, Sina, at the setting moon!
The moon shines round and bright;
She, with her dark-eyed maidens at her side,
Watches the rising tide.
While balmy breathes the starry southern night,
While languid heaves the lazy southern tide;
The rising tide, O Sina, and the setting moon!
The night is past, is past and gone,
The moon sinks to the West,
The sea-heart beats opprest,
And Sina's passionate breast
Heaves like the sea, when the pale moon has gone,
Heaves like the passionate sea, Sina, left by the moon alone! ”

“ Grey are the plains where the emus pass
Silent and slow, with their staid demeanour;
Over the dead men's graves the grass
Maybe is waving a trifle greener.
Down in the world where men toil and spin
Dame Nature smiles as man's hand has taught her;
Only the dead men her smiles can win
In the great lone land by the Grey Gulf-water.
For the strength of man is an insect's strength
In the face of that mighty plain and river,
And the life of a man is a moment's length
To the life of the stream that will run for ever. ”

“ And every gum's a comrade old and every oak's a friend;
But gone the smiling faces that welcomed her of yore —
They crowd her tented places and hold her hand no more.
And she, the friend they once could trust to serve their eager wish,
Shall show no more the golden dust that hides in many a dish;
And through the dismal mullock-heaps she threads her mournful way
Where here and there some gray-beard keeps his windlass-watch to-day;
Half-flood no more she looses her reins as once of old
To wash the busy sluices and whisper through the gold. ”

“ And the better part of a people's life in the storm comes uppermost.
The self-same spirit that drives the man to the depths of drink and crime
Will do the deeds in the heroes' van that live till the end of time.
The living death in the lonely bush, the greed of the selfish town,
And even the creed of the outlawed push is chivalry — upside down.
'Twill be while ever our blood is hot, while ever the world goes wrong,
The nations rise in a war, to rot in a peace that lasts too long. ”