At Euroma
Charles Harpur was buried at Euroma, N.S.W., but this poem refers to the grave of a stranger whose name is unknown.
They built his mound of the rough, red ground,
By the dip of a desert dell,
Where all things sweet are killed by the heat,
And scattered o’er flat and fell.
In a burning zone they left him alone,
Past the uttermost western plain;
And the nightfall dim heard his funeral hymn
In the voices of wind and rain.
The songs austere of the forests drear,
And the echoes of clift and cave,
When the dark is keen where the storm hath been,
Fleet over the far-away grave.
And through the days when the torrid rays
Strike down on a coppery gloom,
Some spirit grieves in the perished leaves
Whose theme is that desolate tomb.
No human foot, or paw of brute,
Halts now where the stranger sleeps;
But cloud and star his fellows are,
And the rain that sobs and weeps.
The dingo yells by the far iron fells,
The plover is loud in the range,
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.
Illa Creek
A strong sea-wind flies up and sings
Across the blown-wet border,
Whose stormy echo runs and rings
Like bells in wild disorder.
Fierce breath hath vexed the foreland’s face,
It glistens, glooms, and glistens;
But deep within this quiet place
Sweet Illa lies and listens.
Sweet Illa of the shining sands,
She sleeps in shady hollows
Where August flits with flowerful hands,
And silver Summer follows.
Far up the naked hills is heard
A noise of many waters;
But green-haired Illa lies unstirred
Amongst her star-like daughters.
The tempest pent in moaning ways
Awakes the shepherd yonder,
But Illa dreams, unknown to days
Whose wings are wind and thunder.
Here fairy hands and floral feet
Are brought by bright October;
Here, stained with grapes and smit with heat,
Comes Autumn, sweet and sober.
Here lovers rest, what time the red
And yellow colours mingle,
And daylight droops with dying head
Beyond the western dingle.
And here, from month to month, the time
Is kissed by Peace and Pleasure,
While Nature sings her woodland rhyme
And hoards her woodland treasure.
Ah, Illa Creek! ere Evening spreads
Her wings o’er towns unshaded,
How oft we seek thy mossy beds
To lave our foreheads faded!
For, let me whisper, then we find
The strength that lives, nor falters,
In wood and water, waste and wind,
And hidden mountain altars.
Moss On A Wall
Dim dreams it hath of singing ways,
Of far-off woodland water-heads,
And shining ends of April days
Amongst the yellow runnel beds.
Stoop closer to the ruined wall,
Whereon the wilful wilding sleeps,
As if its home were waterfall
By dripping clefts and shadowy steeps!
A little waif, whose beauty takes
A touching tone because it dwells
So far away from mountain lakes,
And lily leaves, and lightening fells.
Deep hidden in delicious floss
It nestles, sister, from the heat:
A gracious growth of tender moss
Whose nights are soft, whose days are sweet.
Swift gleams across its petals run,
With winds that hum a pleasant tune:
Serene surprises of the sun,
And whispers from the lips of Noon.
The evening-coloured apple-trees
Are faint with July’s frosty breath;
But lo! this stranger getteth ease,
And shines amidst the strays of Death!
And at the turning of the year,
When August wanders in the cold,
The raiment of the nursling here
Is rich with green and glad with gold.
Oh, friend of mine, to one whose eyes
Are vexed because of alien things,
For ever in the wall moss lies
The peace of hills and hidden springs.
From faithless lips and fickle lights
The tired pilgrim sets his face,
And thinketh here of sounds and sights
In many a lovely forest-place.
And when by sudden fits and starts
The sunset on the moss doth burn,
He often dreams, and lo, the marts
And streets are changed to dells of fern!
For, let me say, the wilding placed
By hands unseen amongst these stones,
Restores a Past by Time effaced,
Lost loves and long-forgotten tones!
As sometimes songs and scenes of old
Come faintly unto you and me,
When winds are wailing in the cold,
And rains are sobbing on the sea.
Campaspe
Turn from the ways of this Woman! Campaspe we call her by name —
She is fairer than flowers of the fire — she is brighter than brightness of flame.
As a song that strikes swift to the heart with the beat of the blood of the South,
And a light and a leap and a smart, is the play of her perilous mouth.
Her eyes are as splendours that break in the rain at the set of the sun,
But turn from the steps of Campaspe — a Woman to look at and shun!
Dost thou know of the cunning of Beauty? Take heed to thyself and beware
Of the trap in the droop in the raiment — the snare in the folds of the hair!
She is fulgent in flashes of pearl, the breeze with her breathing is sweet,
But fly from the face of the girl — there is death in the fall of her feet!
Is she maiden or marvel of marble? Oh, rather a tigress at wait
To pounce on thy soul for her pastime — a leopard for love or for hate.
Woman of shadow and furnace! She biteth her lips to restrain
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.
Go out from the courts of her loving, nor tempt the fierce dance of desire
Where thy life would be shrivelled like stubble in the stress and the fervour of fire!
I know of one, gentle as moonlight — she is sad as the shine of the moon,
But touching the ways of her eyes are: she comes to my soul like a tune —
Like a tune that is filled with faint voices of the loved and the lost and the lone,
Doth this stranger abide with my silence: like a tune with a tremulous tone.
The leopard, we call her, Campaspe! I pluck at a rose and I stir
To think of this sweet-hearted maiden — what name is too tender for her?
On A Cattle Track
Where the strength of dry thunder splits hill-rocks asunder,
And the shouts of the desert-wind break,
By the gullies of deepness and ridges of steepness,
Lo, the cattle track twists like a snake!
Like a sea of dead embers, burnt white by Decembers,
A plain to the left of it lies;
And six fleeting horses dash down the creek courses
With the terror of thirst in their eyes.
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.
The wastes are like metal that forges unsettle
When the heat of the furnace is white;
And the cool breeze that bloweth when an English sun goeth,
Is unknown to the wild Desert Night.
A cry of distress there! a horseman the less there!
The mock-waters shine like a moon!
It is “Speed, and speed faster from this hole of disaster!
“And hurrah for yon God-sent lagoon!”
Doth a devil deceive them? Ah, now let us leave them —
We are burdened in life with the sad;
Our portion is trouble, our joy is a bubble,
And the gladdest is never too glad.
From the pale tracts of peril, past mountain heads sterile,
To a sweet river shadowed with reeds
Where Summer steps lightly, and Winter beams brightly,
The hoof-rutted cattle-track leads.
There soft is the moonlight, and tender the noon-light;
There fiery things falter and fall;
And there may be seen, now, the gold and the green, now,
And the wings of a peace over all.
Hush, bittern and plover! Go, wind, to thy cover
Away by the snow-smitten Pole!
The rotten leaf falleth, the forest rain calleth;
And what is the end of the whole?
Some men are successful after seasons distressful
[Now, masters, the drift of my tale]
But the brink of salvation is a lair of damnation
For others who struggle, yet fail.