An Anthology of Australian Verse | Page 8

Bertram Stevens (editor)
all the glories glowing round its
brow.
Words

Words are deeds. The words we hear
May revolutionize or rear
A
mighty state. The words we read
May be a spiritual deed
Excelling
any fleshly one,
As much as the celestial sun
Transcends a bonfire,
made to throw
A light upon some raree-show.
A simple proverb
tagged with rhyme
May colour half the course of time;
The
pregnant saying of a sage
May influence every coming age;
A song
in its effects may be
More glorious than Thermopylae,
And many a
lay that schoolboys scan
A nobler feat than Inkerman.
A Coast View
High 'mid the shelves of a grey cliff, that yet
Riseth in Babylonian
mass above,
In a benched cleft, as in the mouldered chair
Of
grey-beard Time himself, I sit alone,
And gaze with a keen
wondering happiness
Out o'er the sea. Unto the circling bend
That
verges Heaven, a vast luminous plain
It stretches, changeful as a
lover's dream --
Into great spaces mapped by light and shade
In
constant interchange -- either 'neath clouds
The billows darken, or
they shimmer bright
In sunny scopes of measureless expanse.
'Tis
Ocean dreamless of a stormy hour,
Calm, or but gently heaving; --
yet, O God!
What a blind fate-like mightiness lies coiled
In slumber,
under that wide-shining face!
While o'er the watery gleam -- there
where its edge
Banks the dim vacancy, the topmost sails
Of some
tall ship, whose hull is yet unseen,
Hang as if clinging to a cloud that
still
Comes rising with them from the void beyond,
Like to a
heavenly net, drawn from the deep
And carried upward by ethereal
hands.
William Forster.
`The Love in her Eyes lay Sleeping'
The love in her eyes lay sleeping,
As stars that unconscious shine,

Till, under the pink lids peeping,
I wakened it up with mine;
And

we pledged our troth to a brimming oath
In a bumper of blood-red wine.
Alas! too well I know
That it
happened long ago;
Those memories yet remain,
And sting, like
throbs of pain,
And I'm alone below,
But still the red wine warms,
and the rosy goblets glow;
If love be the heart's enslaver,
'Tis wine that subdues the head.
But
which has the fairest flavour,
And whose is the soonest shed?
Wine
waxes in power in that desolate hour
When the glory of love is dead.

Love lives on beauty's ray,
But night comes after day,
And when
the exhausted sun
His high career has run,
The stars behind him
stay,
And then the light that lasts consoles our darkening way.
When beauty and love are over,
And passion has spent its rage,
And
the spectres of memory hover,
And glare on life's lonely stage,
'Tis
wine that remains to kindle the veins
And strengthen the steps of age.

Love takes the taint of years,
And beauty disappears,
But wine in
worth matures
The longer it endures,
And more divinely cheers,

And ripens with the suns and mellows with the spheres.
James Lionel Michael.
`Through Pleasant Paths'
Through pleasant paths, through dainty ways,
Love leads my feet;
Where beauty shines with living rays,
Soft, gentle, sweet;
The placid heart at random strays,
And sings,
and smiles, and laughs and plays,
And gathers from the summer days
Their light and heat,
That in its chambers burn and blaze
And beam and beat.

I throw myself among the ferns
Under the shade,
And watch the summer sun that burns
On dell and glade;
To thee, my dear, my fancy turns,
In thee its
Paradise discerns,
For thee it sighs, for thee it yearns,
My chosen maid;
And that still depth of passion learns
Which cannot fade.
The wind that whispers in the night,
Subtle and free,
The gorgeous noonday's blinding light,
On hill and tree,
All lovely things that meet my sight,
All shifting
lovelinesses bright,
Speak to my heart with calm delight,
Seeming to be
Cloth'd with enchantment, robed in white,
To sing of thee.
The ways of life are hard and cold
To one alone;
Bitter the strife for place and gold --
We weep and groan:
But when love warms the heart grows bold;

And when our arms the prize enfold,
Dearest! the heart can hardly
hold
The bliss unknown,
Unspoken, never to be told --
My own, my own!
Personality
"Death is to us change, not consummation."

Heart of Midlothian.
A change! no, surely, not a change,
The change must be before we
die;
Death may confer a wider range,
From pole to pole, from sea to
sky,
It cannot make me new or strange
To mine own Personality!
For what am I? -- this mortal flesh,
These shrinking nerves, this
feeble frame,
For ever racked with ailments fresh
And scarce from
day to day the same --
A fly within the spider's mesh,
A moth that
plays around the flame!
THIS is not I -- within such coil
The immortal spirit rests awhile:

When this shall lie beneath the soil,
Which its mere mortal parts
defile,
THAT shall for ever live and foil
Mortality, and pain, and
guile.
Whatever Time may make of me
Eternity must see me still
Clear
from the dross of earth, and free
From every stain of every ill;
Yet
still, where-e'er -- what-e'er I be,
Time's work Eternity must fill.
When all the worlds have ceased to roll,
When the long light has
ceased to quiver
When we have reached our final goal
And
Continue reading on your phone by scaning this QR Code

 / 61
Tip: The current page has been bookmarked automatically. If you wish to continue reading later, just open the Dertz Homepage, and click on the 'continue reading' link at the bottom of the page.