Chapter 4

_Basses and Chorus_

Father, All-Bountiful, humbly we bend to Thee; Heads are uncovered in sight of Thy face. Here, in the flow of the psalms that ascend to Thee, Teach us to live for the light of Thy grace. Here, in the pause of the anthems of praise to Thee, Master and Maker--pre-eminent Friend-- Teach us to look to Thee--give all our days to Thee, Now and for evermore, world without end!

Hymn of Praise

[_Closing of Sydney International Exhibition._]

Encompassed by the psalm of hill and stream, By hymns august with their majestic theme, Here in the evening of exalted days To Thee, our Friend, we bow with breath of praise.

The great, sublime hosannas of the sea Ascend on wings of mighty winds to Thee, And mingled with their stately words are tones Of human love, O Lord of all the zones!

Ah! at the close of many splendid hours, While falls Thy gracious light in radiant showers, We seek Thy face, we praise Thee, bless Thee, sing This song of reverence, Master, Maker, King!

To Thee, from whom all shining blessings flow, All gifts of lustre, all the joys we know, To Thee, O Father, in this lordly space, The great world turns with worship in its face.

For that glad season which will pass to-day With light and music like a psalm away, The gathered nations with a grand accord, In sight of Thy high heaven, thank Thee, Lord!

All praise is Thine--all love that we can give Is also Thine, in whose large grace we live, In whom we find the _One_ long-suffering Friend, Whose immemorial mercy has no end.

Basil Moss

Sing, mountain-wind, thy strong, superior song-- Thy haughty alpine anthem, over tracts Whose passes and whose swift, rock-straitened streams Catch mighty life and voice from thee, and make A lordly harmony on sea-chafed heights. Sing, mountain-wind, and take thine ancient tone, The grand, austere, imperial utterance. Which drives my soul before it back to days In one dark hour of which, when Storm rode high Past broken hills, and when the polar gale Roared round the Otway with the bitter breath That speaks for ever of the White South Land Alone with God and Silence in the cold, I heard the touching tale of Basil Moss,

A story shining with a woman's love! And who that knows that love can ever doubt How dear, divine, sublime a thing it is; For while the tale of Basil Moss was one Not blackened with those stark, satanic sins Which call for superhuman sacrifice, Still, from the records of the world's sad life, This great, sweet, gladdening fact at length we've learned, There's not a depth to which a man can fall, No slough of crime in which such one can lie Stoned with the scorn and curses of his kind, But that some tender woman can be found To love and shield him still.

What was the fate Of Basil Moss who, thirty years ago, A brave, high-minded, but impetuous youth, Left happy homesteads in the sweetest isle That wears the sober light of Northern suns? What happened him, the man who crossed far, fierce Sea-circles of the hoarse Atlantic--who, Without a friend to help him in the world, Commenced his battle in this fair young land, A Levite in the Temple Beautiful Of Art, who struggled hard, but found that here Both Bard and Painter learn, by bitter ways, That they are aliens in the working world, And that all Heaven's templed clouds at morn And sunset do not weigh one loaf of bread!

_This_ was his tale. For years he kept himself Erect, and looked his troubles in the face And grappled them; and, being helped at last By one who found she loved him, who became The patient sharer of his lot austere, He beat them bravely back; but like the heads Of Lerna's fabled hydra, they returned From day to day in numbers multiplied; And so it came to pass that Basil Moss (Who was, though brave, no mental Hercules, Who hid beneath a calmness forced, the keen Heart-breaking sensibility--which is The awful, wild, specific curse that clings Forever to the Poet's twofold life) Gave way at last; but not before the hand Of sickness fell upon him--not before The drooping form and sad averted eyes Of hectic Hope, that figure far and faint, Had given all his later thoughts a tongue-- "It is too late--too late!"

There is no need To tell the elders of the English world What followed this. From step to step, the man-- Now fairly gripped by fierce Intemperance-- Descended in the social scale; and though He struggled hard at times to break away, And take the old free, dauntless stand again, He came to be as helpless as a child, And Darkness settled on the face of things, And Hope fell dead, and Will was paralysed.

Yet sometimes, in the gloomy breaks between Each fit of madness issuing from his sin, He used to wander through familiar woods With God's glad breezes blowing in his face, And try to feel as he was wont to feel In other years; but never could he find Again his old enthusiastic sense Of Beauty; never could he exorcize The evil spell which seemed to shackle down The fine, keen, subtle faculty that used To see into the heart of loveliness; And therefore Basil learned to shun the haunts Where Nature holds her chiefest courts, because They forced upon him in the saddest light The fact of what he was, and once had been.

So fared the drunkard for five awful years-- The last of which, while lighting singing dells, With many a flame of flowers, found Basil Moss Cooped with his wife in one small wretched room; And there, one night, the man, when ill and weak-- A sufferer from his latest bout of sin-- Moaned, stricken sorely with a fourfold sense Of all the degradation he had brought Upon himself, and on his patient wife; And while he wrestled with his strong remorse He looked upon a sweet but pallid face, And cried, "My God! is this the trusting girl I swore to love, to shield, to cherish so But ten years back? O, what a liar I am!" She, shivering in a thin and faded dress Beside a handful of pale, smouldering fire, On hearing Basil's words, moved on her chair, And turning to him blue, beseeching eyes, And pinched, pathetic features, faintly said-- "O, Basil, love! now that you seem to feel And understand how much I've suffered since You first gave way--now that you comprehend The bitter heart-wear, darling, that has brought The swift, sad silver to this hair of mine Which should have come with Age--which came with Pain, Do make one more attempt to free yourself From what is slowly killing both of us; And if you do the thing I ask of you, If you but try this _once_, we may indeed-- We may be happy yet."

Then Basil Moss, Remembering in his marvellous agony How often he had found her in the dead Of icy nights with uncomplaining eyes, A watcher in a cheerless room for him; And thinking, too, that often, while he threw His scanty earnings over reeking bars, The darling that he really loved through all Was left without enough to eat--then Moss, I say, sprang to his feet with sinews set And knotted brows, and throat that gasped for air, And cried aloud--"My poor, poor girl, _I will_."

And so he did; and fought this time the fight Out to the bitter end; and with the help Of prayers and unremitting tenderness He gained the victory at last; but not-- No, not before the agony and sweat Of fierce Gethsemanes had come to him; And not before the awful nightly trials, When, set in mental furnaces of flame, With eyes that ached and wooed in vain for sleep, He had to fight the devil holding out The cup of Lethe to his fevered lips. But still he conquered; and the end was this, That though he often had to face the eyes Of that bleak Virtue which is not of Christ (Because the gracious Lord of Love was one with Him Who blessed the dying thief upon the cross), He held his way with no unfaltering steps, And gathered hope and light, and never missed To do a thing for the sake of good. And every day that glided through the world Saw some fine instance of his bright reform, And some assurance he would never fall Into the pits and traps of hell again. And thus it came to pass that Basil's name Grew sweet with men; and, when he died, his end Was calm--was evening-like, and beautiful.

Here ends the tale of Basil Moss. To wives Who suffer as the Painter's darling did, I dedicate these lines; and hope they'll bear In mind those efforts of her lovely life, Which saved her husband's soul; and proved that while A man who sins can entertain remorse, He is not wholly lost. If such as they But follow her, they may be sure of this, That Love, that sweet authentic messenger From God, can never fail while there is left Within the fallen one a single pulse Of what the angels call humanity.

Hunted Down

Two years had the tiger, whose shape was that of a sinister man, Been out since the night of escape--two years under horror and ban. In a time full of thunder and rain, when hurricanes hackled the tree, He slipt through the sludge of a drain, and swam a fierce fork of the sea. Through the roar of the storm, and the ring and the wild savage whistle of hail, Did this naked, whipt, desperate thing break loose from the guards of the gaol. And breasting the foam of the bay, and facing the fangs of the bight, With a great cruel cry on his way, he dashed through the darkness of night.

But foiled was the terror of fin, and baffled the strength of the tide, For a devil supported his chin and a fiend kept a watch at his side. And hands of iniquity drest the hellish hyena, and gave Him food in the hills of the west--in cells of indefinite cave. Then, strengthened and weaponed, this peer of the brute, on the track of its prey, Sprang out, and shed sorrow and fear through the beautiful fields of the day. And pillage and murder, and worse, swept peace from the face of the land-- The black, bitter work of this curse with the blood on his infamous hand.

But wolf of the hills at the end--chased back to the depths of his lair-- Had horror for neighbour and friend--he supped in the dark with despair. A whisper of leaf or a breath of the wind in the watch of the night Was ever as message of death to this devil bent double with fright. For now were the hunters abroad; and the fiend like an adder at bay, Cast out of the sight of the Lord, in the folds of his fastnesses lay. Yea, skulking in pits of the slime--in venomous dens of eclipse-- He cowered and bided his time, with the white malice set on his lips.

Two years had his shadow been cast in forest, on highway, and run; But Nemesis tracked him at last, and swept him from under the sun. Foul felons in chains were ashamed to speak of the bloodthirsty thing Who lived, like a panther inflamed, the life that no singer can sing-- Who butchered one night in the wild three women, a lad, and a maid, And cut the sweet throat of a child--its mother's pure blood on his blade! But over the plains and away by the range and the forested lake, Rode hard, for a week and a day, the terrible tracker, Dick Blake.

Dick Blake had the scent of a hound, the eye of a lynx, and could track Where never a sign on the ground or the rock could be seen by the black. A rascal at large, when he heard that Blake was out hard at his heels, Felt just as the wilderness bird, in the snare fettered hopelessly, feels. And, hence, when the wolf with the brand of Cain written thrice on his face, Knew terrible Dick was at hand, he slunk like a snake to his place-- To the depths of his kennel he crept, far back in the passages dim; But Blake and his mates never slept; they hunted and listened for him.

The mountains were many, but he who had captured big Terrigal Bill, The slayer of Hawkins and Lee, found tracks by a conical hill. There were three in the party--no more: Dick Blake and his brother, and one Who came from a far-away shore, called here by the blood of his son. Two nights and two days did they wait on the trail of the curst of all men; But on the third morning a fate led Dick to the door of the den; And a thunder ran up from the south and smote all the woods into sound; And Blake, with an oath on his mouth, called out for the fiend underground.

But the answer was blue, bitter lead, and the brother of Dick, with a cry, Fell back, and the storm overhead set night like a seal on the sky; And the strength of the hurricane tore asunder hill-turrets uphurled; And a rushing of rain and a roar made wan the green widths of the world. The flame, and the roll, and the ring, and the hiss of the thunder and hail Set fear on the face of the Spring laid bare to the arrow of gale. But here in the flash and the din, in the cry of the mountain and wave, Dick Blake, through the shadow, dashed in and strangled the wolf in his cave.

Wamberal

Just a shell, to which the seaweed glittering yet with greenness clings, Like the song that once I loved so, softly of the old time sings-- Softly of the old time speaketh--bringing ever back to me Sights of far-off lordly forelands--glimpses of the sounding sea! Now the cliffs are all before me--now, indeed, do I behold Shining growths on wild wet hillheads, quiet pools of green and gold. And, across the gleaming beaches, lo! the mighty flow and fall Of the great ingathering waters thundering under Wamberal!

Back there are the pondering mountains; there the dim, dumb ranges loom-- Ghostly shapes in dead grey vapour--half-seen peaks august with gloom. There the voice of troubled torrents, hidden in unfathomed deeps, Known to moss and faint green sunlight, wanders down the oozy steeps. There the lake of many runnels nestles in a windless wild Far amongst thick-folded forests, like a radiant human child. And beyond surf-smitten uplands--high above the highest spur-- Lo! the clouds like tents of tempest on the crags of Kincumber!

Wamberal, the home of echoes! Hard against a streaming strand, Sits the hill of blind black caverns, at the limits of the land. Here the haughty water marches--here the flights of straitened sea Make a noise like that of trumpets, breaking wide across the lea! But behold, in yonder crescent that a ring of island locks Are the gold and emerald cisterns shining moonlike in the rocks! Clear, bright cisterns, zoned by mosses, where the faint wet blossoms dwell With the leaf of many colours--down beside the starry shell.

Friend of mine beyond the mountains, here and here the perished days Come like sad reproachful phantoms, in the deep grey evening haze-- Come like ghosts, and sit beside me when the noise of day is still, And the rain is on the window, and the wind is on the hill. Then they linger, but they speak not, while my memory roams and roams Over scenes by death made sacred--other lands and other homes! Places sanctified by sorrow--sweetened by the face of yore-- Face that you and I may look on (friend and brother) nevermore!

Seasons come with tender solace--time lacks neither light nor rest; But the old thoughts were such _dear_ ones, and the old days seem the best. And to those who've loved and suffered, every pulse of wind or rain-- Every song with sadness in it, brings the peopled Past again. Therefore, just this shell yet dripping, with this weed of green and grey, Sets me thinking--sets me dreaming of the places far away; Dreaming of the golden rockpools--of the foreland and the fall; And the home behind the mountains looming over Wamberal.

_In Memoriam_--Alice Fane Gunn Stenhouse

-- * Daughter of Nicol Drysdale Stenhouse. --

The grand, authentic songs that roll Across grey widths of wild-faced sea, The lordly anthems of the Pole, Are loud upon the lea.

Yea, deep and full the South Wind sings The mighty symphonies that make A thunder at the mountain springs-- A whiteness on the lake.

And where the hermit hornet hums, When Summer fires his wings with gold, The hollow voice of August comes, Across the rain and cold.

Now on the misty mountain tops, Where gleams the crag and glares the fell, Wild Winter, like one hunted, stops And shouts a fierce farewell.

Keen fitful gusts shoot past the shore And hiss by moor and moody mere-- The heralds bleak that come before The turning of the year.

A sobbing spirit wanders where By fits and starts the wild-fire shines; Like one who walks in deep despair, With Death amongst the pines.

And ah! the fine, majestic grief Which fills the heart of forests lone, And makes a lute of limb and leaf Is human in its tone.

Too human for the thought to slip-- How every song that sorrow sings Betrays the broad relationship Of all created things.

Man's mournful speech, the wail of tree, The words the winds and waters say, Make up that general elegy, Whose burden is decay.

To-night my soul looks back and sees, Across wind-broken wastes of wave, A widow on her bended knees Beside a new-made grave.

A sufferer with a touching face By love and grief made beautiful; Whose rapt religion lights the place Where death holds awful rule.

The fair, tired soul whose twofold grief For child and father lends a tone Of pathos to the pallid leaf That sighs above the stone.

The large beloved heart whereon She used to lean, lies still and cold, Where, like a seraph, shines the sun On flowerful green and gold.

I knew him well--the grand, the sweet, Pure nature past all human praise; The dear Gamaliel at whose feet I sat in other days.

He, glorified by god-like lore, First showed my soul Life's highest aim; When, like one winged, I breathed--before The years of sin and shame.

God called him Home. And, in the calm Beyond our best possessions priced, He passed, as floats a faultless psalm, To his fair Father, Christ.

But left as solace for the hours Of sorrow and the loss thereof; A sister of the birds and flowers, The daughter of his love.

She, like a stray sweet seraph, shed A healing spirit, that flamed and flowed As if about her bright young head A crown of saintship glowed.

Suppressing, with sublime self-slight, The awful face of that distress Which fell upon her youth like blight, She shone like happiness.

And, in the home so sanctified By death in its most noble guise, She kissed the lips of love, and dried The tears in sorrow's eyes.

And helped the widowed heart to lean, So broken up with human cares, On one who must be felt and seen By such pure souls as hers.

Moreover, having lived, and learned The taste of Life's most bitter spring, For all the sick this sister yearned-- The poor and suffering.

But though she had for every one The phrase of comfort and the smile, This shining daughter of the sun Was dying all the while.

Yet self-withdrawn--held out of reach Was grief; except when music blent Its deep, divine, prophetic speech With voice and instrument.

Then sometimes would escape a cry From that dark other life of hers-- The half of her humanity-- And sob through sound and verse.

At last there came the holy touch, With psalms from higher homes and hours; And she who loved the flowers so much Now sleeps amongst the flowers.

By hearse-like yews and grey-haired moss, Where wails the wind in starts and fits, Twice bowed and broken down with loss, The wife, the mother sits.

God help her soul! She cannot see, For very trouble, anything Beyond this wild Gethsemane Of swift, black suffering;

Except it be that faltering faith Which leads the lips of life to say: "There must be something past this death-- Lord, teach me how to pray!"

Ah, teach her, Lord! And shed through grief The clear full light, the undefiled, The blessing of the bright belief Which sanctified her child.

Let me, a son of sin and doubt, Whose feet are set in ways amiss-- Who cannot read Thy riddle out, Just plead, and ask Thee this;

Give her the eyes to see the things-- The Life and Love I cannot see; And lift her with the helping wings Thou hast denied to me.

Yea, shining from the highest blue On those that sing by Beulah's streams, Shake on her thirsty soul the dew Which brings immortal dreams.

So that her heart may find the great, Pure faith for which it looks so long; And learn the noble way to wait, To suffer, and be strong.

From the Forests

-- * Introductory verses for "The Sydney University Review", 1881. --

Where in a green, moist, myrtle dell The torrent voice rings strong And clear, above a star-bright well, I write this woodland song.

The melodies of many leaves Float in a fragrant zone; And here are flowers by deep-mossed eaves That day has never known.

I'll weave a garland out of these, The darlings of the birds, And send it over singing seas With certain sunny words--

With certain words alive with light Of welcome for a thing Of promise, born beneath the white, Soft afternoon of Spring.

The faithful few have waited long A life like this to see; And they will understand the song That flows to-day from me.

May every page within this book Be as a radiant hour; Or like a bank of mountain brook, All flower and leaf and flower.

May all the strength and all the grace Of Letters make it beam As beams a lawn whose lovely face Is as a glorious dream.

And may that strange divinity That men call Genius write Some deathless thing in days to be, To fill those days with light.

Here where the free, frank waters run, I pray this book may grow A sacred candour like the sun Above the morning snow.

May noble thoughts in faultless words-- In clean white diction--make It shine as shines the home of birds And moss and leaf and lake.

This fair fresh life with joy I hail, And this belief express, Its days will be a brilliant tale Of effort and success.

Here ends my song; I have a dream Of beauty like the grace Which lies upon the land of stream In yonder mountain place.

John Bede Polding

-- * Roman Catholic Archbishop of Sydney --

With reverent eyes and bowed, uncovered head, A son of sorrow kneels by fanes you knew; But cannot say the words that should be said To crowned and winged divinities like you.

The perfect speech of superhuman spheres Man has not heard since He of Nazareth, Slain for the sins of twice two thousand years, Saw Godship gleaming through the gates of Death.

And therefore he who in these latter days Has lost a Father--falling by the shrine, Can only use the world's ephemeral phrase, Not, Lord, the faultless language that is Thine.

But he, Thy son upon whose shoulders shone So long Elisha's gleaming garments, may Be pleased to hear a pleading human tone To sift the spirit of the words I say.

O, Master, since the gentle Stenhouse died And left the void that none can ever fill, One harp at least has sorrow thrown aside, Its strings all broken, and its notes all still.

Some lofty lord of music yet may find Its pulse of passion. I can never touch The chords again--my life has been too blind; I've sinned too long and suffered far too much.

But you will listen to the voice, although The harp is silent--you who glorified Your great, sad gift of life, because you know How souls are tempted and how hearts are tried.

O marvellous follower in the steps of Christ, How pure your spirit must have been to see That light beyond our best expression priced The effluence of benignant Deity.

You saw it, Father? Let me think you did Because I, groping in the mists of Doubt, Am sometimes fearful that God's face is hid From all--that none can read His riddle out!

A hope from lives like yours must everywhere Become like faith--that blessing undefiled, The refuge of the grey philosopher-- The consolation of the simple child.

Here in a land of many sects, where God As shaped by man in countless forms appears, Few comprehend how carefully you trod Without a slip for two and forty years.

How wonderful the self-repression must Have been, that made you to the lovely close The Christian crowned with universal trust, The foe-less Father in a land of foes.

How patiently--with how divine a strength Of tolerance you must have watched the frays Of fighting churches--warring through the length Of your bright, beautiful, unruffled days!

Because men strove you did not love them less; You felt for each--for everyone and all-- With that same apostolic tenderness Which Samuel felt when yearning over Saul.

A crowned hierophant--a high Chief-Priest On flame with robes of light, you used to be; But yet you were as humble as the least Of those who followed Him of Galilee.

'Mid splendid forms of faith which flower and fill God's oldest Church with gleams ineffable You stand, Our Lord's serene disciple still, In all the blaze which on your pallium fell.

The pomp of altars, chasubles, and fires Of incense, moved you not; nor yet the dome Of haughty beauty--follower of the Sires-- Who made a holiness of elder Rome.

A lord of scholarship whose knowledge ran Through every groove of human history, you Were this and more--a Christian gentleman; A fount of learning with a heart like dew.

O Father! I who at your feet have knelt, On wings of singing fall, and fail to sing, Remembering the immense compassion felt By you for every form of suffering.

As dies a gentle April in a sky Of faultless beauty--after many days Of loveliness and grand tranquillity-- So passed your presence from our human gaze.

But though your stately face is as the dust That windy hills to wintering hollows give, Your memory like a deity august Is with us still, to teach us how to live.

Ah! may it teach us--may the lives that are Take colour from the life that was; and may Those souls be helped that in the dark so far Have strayed, and have forgotten how to pray!

Let one of these at least retain the hope That fine examples, like a blessed dew Of summer falling in a fruitful scope, Give birth to issues beautiful and true.

Such hope, O Master, is a light indeed To him that knows how hard it is to save The spirit resting on no certain creed Who kneels to plant this blossom on your grave.

Outre Mer

I see, as one in dreaming, A broad, bright, quiet sea; Beyond it lies a haven-- The only home for me. Some men grow strong with trouble, But all my strength is past, And tired and full of sorrow, I long to sleep at last. By force of chance and changes Man's life is hard at best; And, seeing rest is voiceless, The dearest thing is rest.

Beyond the sea--behold it, The home I wish to seek The refuge of the weary, The solace of the weak! Sweet angel fingers beckon, Sweet angel voices ask My soul to cross the waters; And yet I dread the task. God help the man whose trials Are tares that he must reap; He cannot face the future-- His only hope is sleep.

Across the main a vision Of sunset coasts and skies, And widths of waters gleaming, Enchant my human eyes. I, who have sinned and suffered, Have sought--with tears have sought-- To rule my life with goodness, And shape it to my thought; And yet there is no refuge To shield me from distress, Except the realm of slumber And great forgetfulness.

[End of Other Poems, 1871-82.]

Note on corrections made: Less than a dozen errors were corrected, mostly punctuation, and one incorrect letter. However, one correction is in question. On p. 339 of this 1920 edition, or in this etext, the 1st line of the 9th stanza of "On a Street", the copy reads:

I tell you, this not a tale

which is neither grammatically nor rhythmically correct, for the poem in question. It has been corrected as:

I tell you, this is not a tale

which is probably correct. As this is the most serious error noticed in the text, I trust the reader will find the whole to be satisfactory.--A. L.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Poems of Henry Kendall, by Henry Kendall