An Anthology of Australian Verse Part 35

The combers swing from the China Sea to the California Coast, The North Atlantic takes toll and fee of the best of the Old World's boast, And the waves run high with the tearing crash that the Cape-bound steamers fear -- But they're not so free as the waves that lash the rocks by Sumner pier, And wheresoever my body be, my heart remembers still The purple shadows upon the sea, low down from Sumner hill.

The warm winds blow through Kuringai; the cool winds from the South Drive little clouds across the sky by Sydney harbour-mouth; But Sydney Heads feel no such breeze as comes from nor'-west rain And takes the pines and the blue-gum trees by hill and gorge and plain, And whistles down from Porter's Pa.s.s, over the fields of wheat, And brings a breath of tussock gra.s.s into a Christchurch street.

Or the East wind dropping its sea-born rain, or the South wind wild and loud Comes up and over the waiting plain, with a banner of driving cloud; And if dark clouds bend to the teeming earth, and the hills are dimmed with rain, There is only to wait for a new day's birth and the hills stand out again.

For no less sure than the rising sun, and no less glad to see Is the lifting sky when the rain is done and the wet gra.s.s rustles free.

Some day we may drop the Farewell Light, and lose the winds of home -- But where shall we win to a land so bright, however far we roam?

We shall long for the fields of Maoriland, to pa.s.s as we used to pa.s.s Knee-deep in the seeding tussock, and the long lush English-gra.s.s.

And we may travel a weary way ere we come to a sight as grand As the lingering flush of the sun's last ray on the peaks of Maoriland.

George Charles Whitney.

Sunset

Behind the golden western hills The sun goes down, a founder'd bark, Only a mighty sadness fills The silence of the dark.

O twilight sad with wistful eyes, Restore in ruth again to me The shadow of the peace that lies Beyond the purple sea.

The sun of my great joy goes down, Against the paling heights afar, Gleams out like some glad angel's crown, A yellow evening star;

The glory from the western hills Falls fading, spark on spark, Only a mighty sadness fills The s.p.a.ces of the dark.

James Lister Cuthbertson. [reprise]

Ode to Apollo

"Tandem venias precamur Nube candentes humeros amictus Augur Apollo."

Lord of the golden lyre Fraught with the Dorian fire, Oh! fair-haired child of Leto, come again; And if no longer smile Delphi or Delos' isle, Come from the depth of thine Aetnean glen, Where in the black ravine Thunders the foaming green Of waters writhing far from mortals' ken; Come o'er the sparkling brine, And bring thy train divine -- The sweet-voiced and immortal violet-crowned Nine.

For here are richer meads, And here are goodlier steeds Than ever graced the glorious land of Greece; Here waves the yellow corn, Here is the olive born -- The gray-green gracious harbinger of peace; Here too hath taken root A tree with golden fruit, In purple cl.u.s.ters hangs the vine's increase, And all the earth doth wear The dry clear Attic air That lifts the soul to liberty, and frees the heart from care.

Or if thy wilder mood Incline to solitude, Eternal verdure girds the lonely hills, Through the green gloom of ferns Softly the sunset burns, Cold from the granite flow the mountain rills; And there are inner shrines Made by the slumberous pines, Where the rapt heart with contemplation fills, And from wave-stricken sh.o.r.es Deep wistful music pours And floods the tempest-shaken forest corridors.

Oh, give the gift of gold The human heart to hold With liquid glamour of the Lesbian line; With Pindar's lava glow, With Sophocles' calm flow, Or Aeschylean rapture airy fine; Or with thy music's close Thy last autumnal rose Theocritus of Sicily, divine; O Pythian Archer strong, Time cannot do thee wrong, With thee they live for ever, thy nightingales of song.

We too are island-born; Oh, leave us not in scorn -- A songless people never yet was great.

We, suppliants at thy feet, Await thy muses sweet Amid the laurels at thy temple gate, Crownless and voiceless yet, But on our brows is set The dim unwritten prophecy of fate, To mould from out of mud An empire with our blood, To wage eternal warfare with the fire and flood.

Lord of the minstrel choir, Oh, grant our hearts' desire, To sing of truth invincible in might, Of love surpa.s.sing death That fears no fiery breath, Of ancient inborn reverence for right, Of that sea-woven spell That from Trafalgar fell And keeps the star of duty in our sight: Oh, give the sacred fire, And our weak lips inspire With laurels of thy song and lightnings of thy lyre.

Notes on the Poems

Wentworth, "Australasia": `Warragamba' -- a tributary of the Nepean, the upper part of the Hawkesbury River, New South Wales.

Rowe, "Soul Ferry": "Founded on a note by Tzetzes upon Lycophron, quoted in Keightley's `Mythology of Greece and Rome'." -- Author's Note.

Parkes, "The Buried Chief": Sir James Martin, born 1820, Premier and subsequently Chief Justice of New South Wales, died 4th November, 1886.

Gordon, "A Dedication": The first six stanzas of The Dedication of "Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes" to the author of "Holmby House"

(Whyte Melville).

Gordon, "Thora's Song": First printed in `The Australasian'

under the t.i.tle of "Frustra".

Gordon, "The Sick Stock-rider": First appeared in `The Colonial Monthly'

without the final stanza here printed, which was preserved by Mr. J. J. s.h.i.+llinglaw.

Kendall, "Prefatory Sonnets": The phrase -- "tormented and awry with pa.s.sion" -- also appears in Walter Pater's essay on "Aesthetic Poetry", which, according to Mr. Ferris Greenslet's monograph on Pater, was written in 1868, but first published in `Appreciations', 1889.

"Leaves from Australian Forests", in which these sonnets were first printed, was published in Melbourne in 1869.

Kendall, "To a Mountain": Dedicatory verses of "Songs from the Mountains".

Kendall, "Araluen": The author's daughter, named after a town in the Shoalhaven District, New South Wales.

Kendall, "Hy-Brasil": Hy-Brasil, or Tir-Nan-Oge, is the fabled Island of the Blessed, the paradise of ancient Ireland.

Kendall, "Outre Mer": From a poem left unfinished at the author's death.

First printed in "Poems" (1886).

Clarke, "The Song of Tigilau": "Tigilau, the son of Tui Viti"; an attempt to paraphrase a legend of Samoa, is remarkable as evidence of direct intercourse between Samoa and Fiji, and as showing by the use of the term "Tui Viti" that a king once reigned over ALL Fiji. The singularly poetic and rhythmical original will be found in a paper contributed by Mr. Pritchard, F.A.S.I., etc., to the Anthropological Society of London." -- Author's Note.

Moloney, "Melbourne": First printed in `The Australasian'

over the signature "Australis".

Domett, "An Invitation": First printed in "Flotsam and Jetsam": reprinted, with alterations, as Proem to "Ranolf and Amohia", Second Edition, 1883.