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 ”

“ What does the bird-seller know of the heart of a bird?
"I have given grain for you to eat and water that you may bathe."
Shall not this bird be content? is there need to clip her wings?
No, for her cage is very strong, the golden bars are set close;
Yet the real bird has flown away, very far away over the rice-fields;
There is only the shadow-body in the cage.
What does the bird-seller care for the heart of a bird? ”

“ 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.
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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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? ”

“ SWALLOWS
What tells the swallows that a house is in the making,
Far away from any town, among the whispering leaves?
Saying, "Good news, a home! Fly there when spring is waking,
There'll be room for many nests beneath those shady eaves." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 . . . ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hear her million voices hum like a lucky hive;
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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ All in one lovely movement like a sapling in the breeze,
She gazed on him who would not play, with gathering surprise—
The man she did not understand, though she was very wise—
She drew her veil around her, her whiteness showing through,
And gazed; and still unceasingly there came the wood-dove's coo. ”

“ 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! ”

“ MONTORO'S SONG AGAINST COUNT ALVARO DE
LUNA, HIGH CONSTABLE OF CASTILE
(From the Spanish of E. Marquina)
"King, a flock is feeding
down the cliff unheeding
and upon the hill,
with your crook to shepherd it. . . ." ”