Chapter 11

You must face the general foe -- A phantom pale and grim. If you flinch at his glare, he'll grow And gather your strength to him; But your power will rise if you laugh in his eyes and away in a mist he'll swim.

To your freeborn soul be true -- Fling parchment in the fire; Men's laws are null for you, For a word of Love is higher, And can you do aught, when He rules your thought, but follow your own desire?

You will dread no pinching dearth In the home where you love to lie, For your floor will be good brown earth And your roof the open sky. There'll be room for all at your festival when the heart-red wine runs high.

. . . . .

Joy to you, joy and strife And a golden East before, And the sound of the sea of life In your ears when you reach the shore, And a hope that still with as good a will you may fight as you fought of yore.

Arthur H. Adams.

Bayswater, W.

About me leagues of houses lie, Above me, grim and straight and high, They climb; the terraces lean up Like long grey reefs against the sky.

Packed tier on tier the people dwell; Each narrow, hollow wall is full; And in that hive of honeycomb, Remote and high, I have one cell.

And when I turn into my street I hear in murmurous retreat A tide of noises flowing out -- The city ebbing from my feet!

And lo! two long straight walls between, There dwells a little park serene, Where blackened trees and railings hem A little handkerchief of green!

Yet I can see across the roof The sun, the stars and . . . God! For proof -- Between the twisting chimney-pots A pointing finger, old, aloof!

The traffic that the city rends Within my quiet haven ends In a deep murmur, or across My pool a gentle ripple sends.

A chime upon the silence drab Paints music; hooting motors stab The pleasant peace; and, far and faint, The jangling lyric of the cab!

And when I wander, proud and free, Through my domain, unceasingly The endless pageant of the shops Marches along the street with me.

About me ever blossoming Like rich parterres the hoardings fling An opulence of hue, and make Within my garden endless Spring.

The droning tram-cars spitting light: And like great bees in drunken flight Burly and laden deep with bloom, The 'busses lumbering home at night!

Sometimes an afternoon will fling New meaning on each sombre thing, And low upon the level roofs The sultry sun lies smouldering.

Sometimes the fog -- that faery girl -- Her veil of wonder will unfurl, And crescent gaunt and looming flat Are sudden mysteries of pearl!

New miracles the wet streets show; On stems of flame the gas-lamps glow. I walk upon the wave and see Another London drowned below!

And when night comes strange jewels strew The winding streets I wander through: Like pearls upon a woman's throat The street-lamps' swerving avenue!

In every face that passes mine Unfathomed epics I divine: Each figure on the pavement is A vial of untasted wine!

Through lands enchanted wandering, To all a splendour seems to cling. Lo! from a window-beacon high Hope still the Night is questioning!

And so, ere sleep, I lie and mark Romance's stealthy footsteps. Hark! The rhythm of the horse's hoof Bears some new drama through the dark!

So in this tall and narrow street I lie as in Death's lone retreat And hear, loud in the pulse of Life, Eternity upon me beat!

Bond Street

Its glittering emptiness it brings -- This little lane of useless things. Here peering envy arm in arm With ennui takes her saunterings.

Here fretful boredom, to appease The nagging of her long disease, Comes day by day to dabble in This foamy sea of fripperies.

The languid women driven through Their wearied lives, and in their view, Patient about the bakers' shops, The languid children, two and two!

The champing horses standing still, Whose veins with life's impatience thrill; And -- dead beside the carriage door -- The footman, masked and immobile!

And bloated pugs -- those epicures Of darkened boudoirs . . . and of sewers -- Lolling high on their cushioned thrones Blink feebly on their dainty wooers!

And in the blossoming window-shows Each month another summer glows; They pay the price of human souls To rear one rich and sickly rose.

And a suave carven god of jade, By some enthralled old Asian made, With that thin scorn still on his lips, Waits, in a window-front displayed:

The hurrying, streaming crowds he sees. With the same smile he watches these As from his temple-dusk he saw The passing of the centuries!

Ethel Turner.

A Trembling Star

"There is my little trembling star," she said. I looked; once more The tender sea had put the sun to bed, And heaven's floor Was grey.

And nowhere yet in all that young night sky Was any star, But one that hung above the sea. Not high, Nor very far Away.

"I watch it every night," she said, and crept Within my arm. "Soft little star, I wish the angels kept It safe from harm Alway.

"I know it is afraid," she said; her eyes Held a sweet tear. "They send it all alone into the skies, No big stars near, To stay.

"They push it out before the sweet, kind moon Lights up the sea. They laugh because it fears the dark. `Soon, soon, You'll braver be,' They say.

"One night I climbed far up that high white tree Beside the beach, And tried to stretch my hand across the sea And tried to reach The grey.

"For something made me feel my heart would break Unless that night I in my hand my trembling star could take And kiss its fright Away.

"There only blew a strange wind chillily, And clouds were swept. The angels would not let my own star see That someone wept. I pray

"To Christ, who hears my little prayers each night, That He will seek Through all His skies for that sweet, frightened light, And stoop His cheek And say

"`My angels must not send so frail a thing To light the West. Lift up the little trembling star to cling About my breast Alway.'"

`Oh, if that Rainbow up there!'

Oh, if that rainbow up there, Spanning the sky past the hill, Slenderly, tenderly fair Shining with colours that thrill, Oh, if that rainbow up there, Just for a moment could reach Through the wet slope of the air Here where I stand on the beach!

Here where the waves wash the strand, Swing itself lovingly low, Let me catch fast with one hand, Climb its frail rigging and go. Climb its frail rigging and go? Where is its haven of rest? Out in the gleam and the glow Of the blood-red waves of the West?

Or where the isles of the dawn Lie on an amethyst sea, Does it drift, pale and forlorn, Ghost of the glory I see? Is there, ah, is there a land Such as the Icelanders say, Or past the West's ruddy strand Or on the edge of the day,

Some undiscovered clime Seen through a cloud's sudden rift, Where all the rainbows of Time Slowly and silently drift? Some happy port of a sea Never a world's sail has made, Where till the earth shadows flee Never a rainbow may fade.

Oh, if that rainbow up there, Just for a moment would reach, Through the wet slope of the air Here where I stand on the beach. Here where the waves wash the strand Swing itself lovingly low, Let me catch fast with one hand, Climb its frail rigging and go!

Johannes Carl Andersen.

Soft, Low and Sweet

Soft, low and sweet, the blackbird wakes the day, And clearer pipes, as rosier grows the gray Of the wide sky, far, far into whose deep The rath lark soars, and scatters down the steep His runnel song, that skyey roundelay.

Earth with a sigh awakes; and tremors play, Coy in her leafy trees, and falt'ring creep Across the daisy lawn and whisper, "Well-a-day," Soft, low and sweet.

From violet-banks the scent-clouds float away And spread around their fragrance, as of sleep: From ev'ry mossy nook the blossoms peep; From ev'ry blossom comes one little ray That makes the world-wealth one with Spring, alway Soft, low and sweet.

Maui Victor

Unhewn in quarry lay the Parian stone, Ere hands, god-guided, of Praxiteles Might shape the Cnidian Venus. Long ungrown The ivory was which, chiselled, robbed of ease Pygmalion, sculptor-lover. Now are these, The stone and ivory, immortal made. The golden apples of Hesperides Shall never, scattered, in blown dust be laid, Till Time, the dragon-guard, has lived his last decade.

The Cnidian Venus, Galatea's shape, A wondering world beheld, as we behold, -- Here, in blest isles beyond the stormy Cape, Where man the new land dowers with the old, Are neither marble shapes nor fruits of gold, Nor white-limbed maidens, queened enchantress-wise; Here, Nature's beauties no vast ruins enfold, No glamour fills her such as 'wildering lies Where Mediterranean waters laugh to Grecian skies.

Acropolis with figure group and frieze, Parthenon, Temple, concepts born divine, Where in these Isles are wonders great as these? Unquarried lies the stone in teeming mine, Bare is the land of sanctuary and shrine; But though frail hands no god-like record set Great Nature's powers are lavish, and combine In mountain dome, ice-glancing minaret, Deep fiord, fiery fountain and lake with tree-wove carcanet.

And though the dusky race that to and fro, Like their own shades, pass by and leave no trace, No age-contemning works from quick brain throw, They still have left what Time shall not efface, -- The legends of an isolated race. Not vainly Maui strove; no, not in vain He dared the old Mother of Death and her embrace: That mankind might go free, he suffered pain -- And death he boldly dared, eternal life to gain.

Not death but dormancy the old womb has known, New love shall quicken it, new life attain: These legends old in ivory and stone Shall live their recreated life again, -- Shall wake, like Galatea, to joy and pain. Legends and myths and wonders; what are these But glittering mines that long unworked have lain? A Homer shall unlock with magic keys Treasure for some antipodean Praxiteles!

Dora Wilcox.

In London

When I look out on London's teeming streets, On grim grey houses, and on leaden skies, My courage fails me, and my heart grows sick, And I remember that fair heritage Barter'd by me for what your London gives. This is not Nature's city: I am kin To whatsoever is of free and wild, And here I pine between these narrow walls, And London's smoke hides all the stars from me, Light from mine eyes, and Heaven from my heart.

For in an island of those Southern seas That lie behind me, guarded by the Cross That looks all night from out our splendid skies, I know a valley opening to the East. 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. In that deserted garden that I lov'd Day after day, my flowers drop unseen; And as your Summer slips away in tears, Spring wakes our lovely Lady of the Bush, The Kowhai, and she hastes to wrap herself All in a mantle wrought of living gold; Then come the birds, who are her worshippers, To hover round her; tuis swift of wing, And bell-birds flashing sudden in the sun, Carolling: Ah! what English nightingale, Heard in the stillness of a summer eve, From out the shadow of historic elms, Sings sweeter than our Bell-bird of the Bush? And Spring is here: now the Veronica, Our Koromiko, whitens on the cliff, The honey-sweet Manuka buds, and bursts In bloom, and the divine Convolvulus, Most fair and frail of all our forest flowers, Stars every covert, running riotous. O quiet valley, opening to the East, How far from this thy peacefulness am I! Ah me, how far! and far this stream of Life From thy clear creek fast falling to the sea!

Yet let me not lament that these things are In that lov'd country I shall see no more; All that has been is mine inviolate, Lock'd in the secret book of memory. And though I change, my valley knows no change. And when I look on London's teeming streets, On grim grey houses, and on leaden skies, When speech seems but the babble of a crowd, And music fails me, and my lamp of life Burns low, and Art, my mistress, turns from me, -- Then do I pass beyond the Gate of Dreams Into my kingdom, walking unconstrained By ways familiar under Southern skies; Nor unaccompanied; the dear dumb things I lov'd once, have their immortality. There too is all fulfilment of desire: In this the valley of my Paradise I find again lost ideals, dreams too fair For lasting; there I meet once more mine own Whom Death has stolen, or Life estranged from me, -- And thither, with the coming of the dark, Thou comest, and the night is full of stars.

Ernest Currie.

Laudabunt Alii

There are some that long for a limpid lake by a blue Italian shore, Or a palm-grove out where the rollers break and the coral beaches roar; There are some for the land of the Japanee, and the tea-girls' twinkling feet; And some for the isles of the summer sea, afloat in the dancing heat; 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.

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 Pass, over the fields of wheat, And brings a breath of tussock grass 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 grass 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 pass as we used to pass Knee-deep in the seeding tussock, and the long lush English-grass. 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 spaces 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 clusters 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 shores 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 surpassing 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 title 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. Shillinglaw.

Kendall, "Prefatory Sonnets": The phrase -- "tormented and awry with passion" -- 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.

Domett, "A Maori Girl's Song": "A very free paraphrase of a song in Sir George Grey's collection. `Ropa' is a declaration of love by pinching the fingers." -- Author's Note.

Stephens, "Day" & "Night": Stanzas from "Convict Once" [pp. 336-7, 297-9 respectively of "Poetical Works" (1902)].

Foott, "Where the Pelican Builds": "The unexplored parts of Australia are sometimes spoken of by the bushmen of Western Queensland as the home of the Pelican, a bird whose nesting-place, so far as the writer knows, is seldom, if ever, found." -- Author's Note.

Foott, "New Country": `Gidya' -- a Queensland and N.S.W. aboriginal word for a tree of the acacia species (A. homalophylla).

`Clay-Pan' -- a shallow depression of the ground on Australian plains, whose thin clayey surface retains water for a considerable time.

Wilson, "Fairyland": `Parson Bird' -- The Tui, or New Zealand mocking bird. The male has tufts of curled white feathers under the neck, like a clergyman's bands.

Farrell, "Australia to England": First printed, under the title of "Ave Imperatrix", in `The Daily Telegraph' (Sydney), on June 22, 1897, the day of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee.

F. Adams, "Gordon's Grave": Adam Lindsay Gordon is buried in Brighton (Victoria) Cemetery. Above the grave is erected a shattered column crowned with a laurel wreath.

Evans, "A Pastoral": `Apple-tree' -- an indigenous Australian tree, so called from a supposed resemblance to the English apple-tree, but bearing no edible fruit.

O'Hara, "Flinders": `Flinders' -- Matthew Flinders first came to Australia with Bass and Hunter in 1795, and made several heroic voyages around Australian coasts.

Jephcott, "A Ballad of the last King of Thule": `Mannan' -- the ancient bardic name of the Isle of Man.

`Eire' -- the ancient name of Ireland.

`The Isle of Apple-trees' -- "Emhain Ablach", the Isle of Arran. This was the land of faery to the Northern and Western Gaels.

Mackay, "The Burial of Sir John Mackenzie": `Sir John Mackenzie' -- Born 1838; for many years Minister for Lands in New Zealand. Died 1891.

Holy Hill -- Puketapu, a hill sacred to the Maoris on the Otago coast.

Lawson, "Andy's gone with Cattle": `Riders' -- timber used to hold down the bark roofs of primitive bush houses.

Lawson, "Out Back": `Mulga' -- an aboriginal name given to various trees of the acacia family (A. aneura).

Lawson, "The Star of Australasia": `Jackeroo' -- a "new chum", or person recently arrived in Australia, who goes to work on a station to gain experience.

`Push' -- a gang of larrikins, or city roughs.

Lawson, "Middleton's Rouseabout": `Rouseabout' -- a man who does general work on a station.