|
SPc | |
|
- |
g5.-i.oa. |
|
P^lB $L>I? | |
COUCXmLi'btiM
BY
MEDWYN d Pascoe.
kHIS small cbiteetyn of verses represents some of x the reflectiv^moments of the authors life, but [V it is the belief that the feelings given expression to, are in sympathy with the emotions of others, that has suggested the title, ‘‘The Pilgrim of the Heart.”
Verses that lead us into our own hearts, awakening slumbering emotions, and setting the noblest faculties =: of the soul in operation, are dearest to us.
As we can enjoy only our own emotions, the author’s®:^ business—if his motive is to comfort and encourage his^” fellows—is to labour for those thoughts which all menSs: may feel, though none may feel alike. He looks forS^-this result with an unassuming mind, knowing as he*3 does, that all good that will come from his effort, will » be between the reader and his own heart. The deepest ♦ impressions any man may receive are accidental in character, and the most abiding thoughts are those which the heart gives to itself.
The author acquainted with his own heart, knows how deep-seated are emotions, and knows that a suggestion received, in perfect harmony with his own soul, opens to him wide fields of thought and feeling; he therefore strives to strike the note that is human, for what is human is universal, and if one can be made, to shed a tear or to smile, thousands will just restrain it.
none.
After all we are all of us pilgrims of the heart, and in our thoughts, that land of sunshine and shadows, we spend long long lines of wandering. Encompassed in them are our joys and sorrows, our labours and our hopes. With them our Battle of Life is fought, and our earthly race is run. Do we not live over in the heart with friends that have gone, or feel the emotions, and enjoy the experiences of friendships still before us. What years the storehouse of memory can crowd into our reflective moments, and what eternities a hot
How days hang heavily upon our shoulders there, or time speeds over us to fill our lives with a few grand events. The mind in which a faded portrait will bring back years of long ago, with their pleasures, and pains, and young faces that time has scattered over the world and age has furrowed ; the mind that can take the suggestion from a flower and wander up to God, this is the pilgrim of the heart.
Our Day, to those who are sensible of the sufferings of their fellows, is a sad time to live in, and many are the shadows of the heart to countless thousands— +• shadows in which they walk with fathers, brothers, and sons who have fallen, or in which they keep watch with anxious eyes, on the far horizon for messengers of good or ill tidings ; hearing good they move into the sunshine, or hearing ill, they sink down into the hearts .dark solitary avenues. Ah ! pilgrim of the heart, what " of all the human comfort can we offer you as a staying thought ? Only Jesus of our era can enter into your shadows, for in this calamity-stricken world life shall grow less and less worth while without Him.
We feel intuitively the approach of peace, but unless we, individually and nationally embrace the unadulterated teachings of Christ—the spirit as well as the law —calamity must follow calamity in dreadful succession.
The reader will pardon my deviation from the former, in these concluding remarks, but one is tempted to speak hard things of the haughty non-godliness of national life, and public sentiment the world over, when we think of the follies with which a restoration of earthly peace and happiness are sought.
Finally, should any of the imperfect verses of this collection make lifes journey a little easier, or more hopeful for the pilgrim of the heart, I shall feel they have been abundantly honoured.
M.D.P.
Honiton, *
Yorke Peninsula, .
Oct. 17, 1917.
Go Pilgrim of the heart,
Where’er, ’midst mortals, lives thy truth sublime,
In life’s wide ways, or in her haunts apart,
Pursue from clime to clime.
Turn then thy kingly face With steps intrepid to thy task before ;
From zone to zone, where’er 'tas found a place,
The heart of man explore.
VwoniA jo
M yji-Ysi i ryisrw
Let each new thought of his Humanity’s dim portals seem to light,
But each high thought of heav’n, mount over this Strong sentinels of right.
Go, satisfy the deep
That back of all sincere expressions, longs For some grand truth to plunge in that will keep r The soul where it belongs. *
Thoughts that are armour-clad Befriend thy queries ere they in the strife Of hard endeavour, turn that ever sad,
Reflective face on life.
Let tears that can be brave,
Seek miracles in sorrow that she sings,
While grief reforms, and o’er the nightly grave, Perpetual morning springs.
Oh Pilgrim, ere you bend With thoughts of pity to the vaults of men,
With Melancholy as thy guide and friend,
In sorrows cheerless den.
Ere Vanities display
Thy dazzled vision with extent will span,
To turn thee from desire in many a way,
To mock thy faith in man.
Ere this, brave hearts behold That are the smiles of our sad face of time,
Which, strength to youth, and patience to the old, Widen from clime to clime.
Hearts that can light the trail Winding for thee, with radiance as fair As lustres all things but the shimmering pale Of madness and despair.
What though the heart is sad,
Or the disquietudes of life compel Thy soul with robes of sorrow to be clad If it is brave as well ?
In our imperfect thought We find strange visions in the things that seem Till loftier brotherhood for man, is wrought In the long dreams we dream.
In the hearts highest light Where the now lonely minds of great men roam, O.ur race, if it will follow heav’n aright,
Shall some day find a home.
Some day the world shall start With new conception, purpose to repair,
When right shall have no traitor in the heart To bring it to despair.
There Pilgrim stay the while,
Where whispers from the heart of human kind Give prophecies that wake some future smile In many a noble mind.
Where grandly Virtue towers,
Or Ignomy behind her shadows bends.
Through life’s wide lonely wastes, or awful hours, Thy path of hearts extends ;
Where kindnefes cannot live,
Or melancholy travels to despair ;
Or love a path thy pilgrimage shall give,
Soft as the plaided stair.
Far as the mind aspires To her reward of duty, there thy way Extending heav’nward doth her noblest fires In splendid life display.
Strive in the heart’s dim maze,
High heav’n thy guide, some lengths of life to span, That brings her God far nobler thoughts of praise Than man could speak to man.
Me, God, in my vocation loved, inspire,
That still new thoughts may come like folds unfurled
To sing that song that in me, like a fire Must burn its ragged entrance to the world.
A chamber only made for Reverence’ sake,
Its crude designs offend the eye of skill;
And though no councils now its flock shall wake,
The solemn air of worship haunts it still.
From those dispersed, who took their homeward way, Consent to close these doors no tear forbade ;
And clasping hands, with casual words to say,
They went, methinks, with no misgivings weighed.
In lonely berth it stands—the meeting place Of those who learned to love its hallowed walls—
So shorn of use that Reverence turns her face;
Or else the eye of pity on it falls.
A place where knotted arms of flesh decay,
Has change, those Sires of life sincere, assigned ;
And stands the church a remnant of their day,
The drifting tides of time have left behind.
For what it was, remembrance still is kind,
And impulse makes the'passers who reflect,
Suppose, with vague suggestions of the mind,
A history that has brought it to neglect.
’Tis fungus marked : Along the lapse of years The growl of tempest round its walls has been ;
And each like some disfigured face appears,
Or like a lingering malady is seen.
Through paneless windows’patched and perished frames, On swift and certain wings the sparrows flit;
And yonder tongueless bell no more proclaims The hour for men at worship here to sit.
Where baby hands once got their bunches large,
The flowers of many a Spring have died, unplucked ;
And they’ve grown old, who left in maidens’ charge, Once heard them here in children’s games instruct.
Once wooded hills around it now are bare,
Where they like stone-capped sentinels remain ;
And neath its grass no steps of comers wear,
Are footways here, for many a winter lain.
On rusty hinges hangs the closed door,
And roofing, loosened, rattles overhead ;
While from her spacious corner t’wards the floor,
The spiders dusty web like curtains spread.
No pulpit marks the place where once, for God,
His truth the wliite-haired preacher did expound,
Nor comes the step, where oft his people trod,
To wear the moss-grown carpet from the ground.
With David’s Psalms some longing to express,
In anxious tones, once fervent prayers were made ;
In close response the preacher’s cries to press,
And as one soul, his people l’ound him prayed.
No font, the rite baptismal to suggest,
Does furnish near the altars place supposed ;
I see, with touching signs of change impressed,
The doors of knowledge here for ever closed.
Within the catacombs of years so long,
Hours sacred to their memories are spread ;
And from the past, their praise is like a song Come back in husky voices of the dead.
The thoughts of social hours this place supplies. Where men conversed, or children round it played Or down the homely aisle, with downcast eyes.
The timid bride towards the altar made,
Or here fair organist in plain attire,
With tunes, their songs of sacred fame, controlled Or truths exulted, infants to inspire,
By many a story apt their teachers told ;
Around like souls of them, I seem to feel,
As reckoners of a sum of Sabbaths large,
The ghosts of reverence and memory steal,
To bring ommission to their children’s charge.
Like lives lived over, and distress endured,
The lost long histories of the heart are told The free glad days of youth, the mind matured,
The slow and solemn pictures of them old ;
And on the lamp of life, the glass is dark,
Where man to read with many an error strives,. And in the mind antique, the church’s, mark The annals of her long departed lives.
Though touched with maladies, the years of men Unfurnished with the lustres of our day,
And full with long routines of duty then,
To few illusions fell the restless prey.
A window here towards the world I find,
Whose lifted blind the brain’s dim regions light,. And at it, 'neath the high broad arch reclined,
A sad grand spectacle I have in sight:
Around the rostrums of eternal day,
Afar, creation fills her trains immense,
And like a shadow cast across their way,
The troubled epochs of the flesh commence.
On panels of the reason as I gaze,
In letters made with sculpture of their own.
As time’s fast-changing finger-post amaze,
They write the elegy of all things known.
See ! from the dusts of continents they make,
The slow dim caravans of ages creep,
And feuds that ever in their bosoms wake,
The knarled and knotted idols of them keep ;
And mortals who have gone their ways on earth, Their full infirmaries of time contain,
And there, sad questions ask unhappy birth To stern conventionalities of pain :
And there deep streams the moistened eyes have fed On through the shadows of their meaning mind ; But in the light of hope upon them shed They glisten like a road to God, behind.
And orphans, widows, destitute and slave—
The sorrowers of all unhappy state,
In millions take their passage to the grave 111 succoured from their melancholy fate.
Their reign of gloom a thousand mysteries hold Erst with uncertain minds dim candle lit,
The world, whose tale by lapse of time is told, Comes near eternal heritage unfit;
For what of her whom knowledge now exults,
And gives her guides of ages old, to use ?
Shall long experience her graver faults With pending evidence immense, accuse.
The strife of nations grim with nameless rage Like tireless hands, the faults of systems feed r And far along the misty lines of age,
The unmistaken wounds of mortal bleed ;
As years of time unfold their massive scroll, Through histories of their countless cities grand The voices of their dreadful meaning, roll In mingled thunders on immortal strand ;
And words of men of once illustrious days,
And works, and wars, and birth beside decease, And thoughts, like seas whose magnitudes dismay, In times immense procession joined, increase
Till it would seem across the universe
The growing volume of their voice was heard—
The prayer, the song, the cry, the groan, the curse, Merged in the utterance of their passion stirred.
Too long, mankind to low ambitions chained :
In vain the creature’s Patron asks to bless,
For in their mad contention never saved,
Distraction adds its horrors to distress.
And down the shaken ways of nations’ wrongs, Magestie images of life are trod ;
And wild with strife and crime, their frenzied throngs, Confused, can find no image of their God.
If ills of man, his hour of ruin dispute,
Still o’er his world a force perplexing reigns ;
And war is one, with many a hideous brute That tears the gaps of error in her trains.
On pedestals of God, in judgment set,
The furnaces of retribution burn ;
And from their dreaded hour, for succour yet The patrons of their thousand follies turn.
On those dim plains of centuries carried by,
Shall never foes of anguish close her gates ?
Or God the race’s suicides defy,
With floods of pity from his own estates ?
See monarchs then, as God’s, their causes raise,
With wines of blasphemy to damn their race :
See Christendom with deeper stains decays,
And social darkness triumphs in her place !
Some state emaculate, a rarer dream,
For her, to stir the songs of triumph now,
As famine, misery, convultion, stream,
With dire momentous curses on her brow ;
Far on, exalted, Progress stops, aghast,
As men beneath historic morals sink ;
And from the violence on their remnants cast, Impieties of stricken ages shrink ;
And of dark symptoms of it never rid The systems of her failing order drift,
As future comes, from solemn mazes hid,
And scenes from feature on to feature shift.
Oh ! ere the race is finished that you run,
Or summits of ambition find you day,
A darker age, to crown your darkest one,
Waits on the bridge of future, in your way ;
For mysteries greatening as the torrents rise,
Seas of perplexity upon them pour,
Till reason’s mazes fill their lowering skies With lust behind, and madness on before.
Upon the scarred and furrowed face of age,
Where earth's dark chapters yet unfinished stand, Expression changes, as with madd’ning rage,
A shuddering vengeance still prevents her hand :
And from them, penitence, ere fate alarms,
A raging lust’s gigantic hand shall pluck ;
Nor leave them rank, or opulence, or arms,
To fight the shapes that haunt them, terror struck.
Shall then the Will, earth's final years require, Tested beneath the sway of Sattn, bend,
Or lift her tensed brow with holy fire.
To hurl the retribution from her end ?
With God to wed your aimless future, speed,
A pilgrimage your nobler self to find,
That upward roads your altered course shall lead,
To leave these old unhappy ways behind.
0 ! that perception’s high exalted mind,
The universal charge of earth would hear,
To lift her hence, from error, long confined,
And muster all her citizens to prayer !
Would God would craftsmen wiser still engage,
Who nobler dreams of nations joined enjoy,
Who He, here round his edifice of age,
From life despond, may still, to love, employ.
0 ! shall no principle to shape your end,
Safeguard the life before you from decay ?
No motive in the years that you shall spend,
Give Heaven back, with mastery, to your way ?
To change, with some repentance, so profound That on you, frail, eternal favour falls ;
By Heaven, in meek obedience, so, be found To bound you destiny with higher walls ?
Your doom with such contrition then defy As aids your later ages staggering line ;
By universal heed of God, to cry,
In one petition to the ear divine.
And now within the church’s cheerless walls,
A ray of evening casts its mellowed light;
And in the dusk, that soon succeeding falls,
I leave the place to silence, and the night.
Though so we live,
Servile to frailties of the mortal clay,
God gives us patience, and the life entire Merged in the greatness of immortal day, Slumbers beneath the soul’s conflicting fire.
The life of friendship like the life of man A thousand unforeseen events may try, ’Tis tested, broken, mended in its span, But grows immortal, or deserves to die.
Fireside, and sweet repose,
With thoughts, and dreams, and memories, Around me, as the doors of day About my cottage close.
Kindness, and life consoled,
With wife, and child, and sympathies,
And all the cherished fires of home Z The hearth of life can hold.
“ 3 Bible, and evening prayer,
? And flowers, and books and melodies,
>: ~ And one warm hand to hold in mine,
And one warm heart to care.
CJ °
jp Rest hours, and lighted loads,
£ With health, and hope, and sacredness, To oil the wheels of life, that grind Along its gusty roads.
Think’st thou, lone friend, far from thy master kind, Tired in thy even watch, this night to find A welcome here ?
Think’st thou because the twilight veils thy way,
And hunger draws thy run for thee this day,
Thy task is done ?
Think’st thou that these of thy long march have known, To come, ere midnight finds thee still alone,
And let thee in ?
Think’st thou lone friend thy patience, these,
Whose ears thy winnies low can never please,
Shall give reward ?
Yon lights are out, and on thee falls the dew,
'Tis vain, thy own unguided course pursue Blindly astray.
But hark ! thy name a voice familiar cries ;
Thy grateful master comes with glad surprise,
To take thee in.
Oh should my feet in paths perplexing stray,
Far from my Master’s well illumined way,
Till I am lost.
Should I, when twilight clouds my march and me, Be then from Heav’n’s kind hospitality Not turned away ;
And should some thought my aimless feet invite, My watch, far from my faith, to keep that night, May God be there.
Where are the builders now,
That in this quiet place I find to rest,
In yonder boughs, as Nature showed them how,
Built their now broken nest ?
How plainly can I see
Those songsters, as the floods of morning light Swept o’er these hills, pursue the industry Of life, with long rare delight.
For ever too and fro,
Tireless in Springtime’s dreamy world they passed, And laboured till these clustered trees, their slow Long evening shadows cast.
As the days passed away,
And neath them bloomed the fragrance-breathing flowers,
New voices murmured in the leaves, that lay Matted about their bowers ;
Yet these, ah, where are these ?
For Time, that has a heavy hand for all The life that serves her, brings her stern decrees Of change to great and small.
The winds, of winter’s rage And moonlit nights, have done their work since then, And now this nest, fast tumbling down with age, Murmurs to me of men.
For years must come and go,
And bring their changes as they leave decay Upon the relics that remain to show Some marks of yesterday.
So, it is loving hearts
That build the homelife noble, pure, and kind,
With bairns to bless glad years, who each departs,
And leaves grey heads behind.
Death has no place to go From truths that hurt her triumph, man himself Hears his own heart speak master-thoughts, as though It were the grave itself.
Time in us, of the dead
Sad shadowy experience doth crave.
And losing those we love, requires instead,
Enigmas, of the grave.
This is a grave that worries Death Enquiring if Life is stronger,
A woman is inmate here, it cries.
That Life ought have suffered longer.
From city’s haste, and human industry,
Far up on mind’s triumphant wings we rise ;
Through gaseous heights, and changing astral fields,
In void’s eternal stillness sweeping on :
Past realms of silence, pending strange and lone ;
O’er chasms, walled by spheres of endlessness, Through stretching wastes of mileless awful space Where stillness reigns, and never cosmic day Throws off its gleam to night’s respondent shades. Through ether, on, past ether, ever led ;
No mileposts mark, no city spires appear,
No home, no friends, no moving influence felt:
Not up, nor down, with force, nor backward drawn Unless by some far planet’s jealous arm ;
With sombre thought, and solemn feeling weighed, And lost upon the earth’s eternal blue ;
So wings the mind in trifling steps beyond ;
And seeming in their vast expansions lost,
Is universe in universe obscured.
Suns on the starry pavement far below,
Incessant toss their waves of mystic powei\
And round the vast recess of silence lit The radium way enfolds its countless flocks.
Oh far beyond, who knows your silent realms,
And from your haunts unthought, approach to gaze ; Or on the fringe of times gigantic bounds,
Survey its universe of life and light ?
Who stepped in wrath across your border once,
From some low place still inconceived and strange,
In Satan’s person leads his legions yet.
Can scarce some place, with reverent thoughts of awe, Our spark, remote across the radium tide,
To mind in sad unhappy state, be born.
From scenes of sadness here, we turn to ask Why heav’n and hell our destinies attend,
Why heav’n’s outcast, and earth’s repellent foe, Impugns our hope with untold woes besprent;
Why heaven assigned to e’en impute the wrong
Of man, upon the peerless heir of God.
Our Star’s approach, propelling all its orbs,
The mind, with wild incertitude surveys :
Great, mystic, flashing out its fiery tongues,
O’er shrieking gassy columns rolling off ;
With circling, plunging, ruptures roaring forth,
On countless crests of tameless raging flame ; Then racing o’er the crimson burning sea,
Like some undying demon chained beneath,
Who heaves a mileless lake of flame aside,
To gaze in rage on peaceful fields afar.
As lines of light to widening circles move,
Their ether waves these tangled tempests spoil; And on the distant, planets, cloudless skies,
Look down on faded flower, or dying beast;
Or tempest rage, and craters shake their hills ;
Or cities’ streets like rivers surging past,
Bear floods, or arid stretches swelter long,
Or seasons from their wanted place disturbed, Leave death and sickness in their troubled path.
So far there weary lengths of bursting flame,
With theirs unset the ether waves afar,
And burst again like taunted savagery,
And plunge afresh in still unfathomed flame,
Like whips of tried and wierd infinity :
In dreadful length they fling their lightening arms To put the stars of universe out;
And roar again around their chasm belt,
Then plunge like echoes of some beaten God,
And roll far down immortal depths below.
Mind, proof to fire, wades through the vortex vast, Down ghastly walis on steps of peaceless flame, Like matchless arrows shooting forth and back, While curtains twirling through the boiling space, Like lurid scrolls unfurled across their gulf,
Sweep upwards, while the massing volumes roll, Illumined in its contact far below.
With elements a thousand systems feed,
The clustered planets, lit with ceaseless light,
For ever round their endless paths are sped.
While our dire Star’s wild storms tempestuous rage Frail creatures sit and sun themselves afar,
And roses bloom, and poppies shed their seed,
And harvest fields grow white beneath its ray ; Anew the bud of vine and fig tree burst *
In mild response to this wild orb of light;
On breeze’s wings the violet spreads its breath ;
The tender young from neath its mother’s breast Is drawn without on earth’s enchanted cord.
Their green, sweet colours deck the planet fields, And insects round ils sleeping nature move,
Or swallows sweep along its placid seas.
One atom star of universes hid :
Germ into germ, and life in lectron twined,
Matter in mind, and kingdoms interwoven ;
Death into birth, and cloud in wave returned ; Planet with planet, each designed to act With woven arms across the endless sky ;
Sun into sun, with system coupled up,
And Nebula with Nebula restored.
O’er lurid space with nameless wonders hid,
The light of suns to suns again return.
Amazing wisdom ! only order reigns,
For God, who hides his wonders in unknown.
While Summer evenings stoop beneath repose,
And quiet flocks their latent pasture take,
And earth’s nocturnal rest begins to turn The steps of weary men from fields of toil,
Far off, where distance sinks in distance lost,
Where canopy on canopy of stars Provoke the flights of man’s ambitious mind,
There mighty oceans sweep their ceaseless wave On rockbound coasts, and shrieking caves unknown Or tumble cliffs within their frenzied graves ;
Or weird with midnight’s lonely shapes and sounds, Unnumbered forest move beneath the storm ; Perchance the wolf’s wild howl—the foxes’ yelp Echo within the still recesses there.
Some lunar system, rich in mellow light,
Breaks in artistic wonder on its hills ;
Auroras like the domes of heaven’s dreams.
In new designs of splendour drape their skies,
Ah ! there what songs new nature holds unsung, Where stranger suns in wondrous morning break ; Or burst on vineclad hills and matchless slopes,
On field, and beast, and grand imperial hills Their seas of life through bars of gold to tide. Impaled in heaven’s fantastic starry shapes A thousand thousand worlds of light amaze ;
Law webbed In law, and governed order there, Dewdrops and grain, and noontides waning hour, Sunset and starlight, and worlds, worlds at rest. Mind wanders on, with never a fancied end ; Sound lost in space, and space in light forgot Vapor and light, evolving still with life,
Matter and mind, and heaven on beyond.
The following poem was suggested by one of Mr. Harold Begbie’s books, in which book reference was made to the use of a white flower by the Mission Sisters, in their endeavours to rouse memories, and better feelings, in those fallen ones whom they met in Piccadilly.
Darkly hung the midnight O’er London’s thoroughfare ;
Underneath the street light,
A woman lingered there.
Low hung the thunderclouds,
Far reached the reign of vice,
Toy of the city crowds.
Selling at such a price.
Love lost, and left behind,
Childhood’s affections slain—
Comes moving on the mind,
Like purity again,
The fair white flower of Piccadilly.
Missed from a stricken home,
Sunk in the lower ways,
Preyed on by shame to come, Crushed in a moral maze ;
Bride of a burning lust,
Wooed with a caitiff’s gold, Doomed in a deed of trust;
Callous, and hard, and bold. Curse on the message heard, Heaped with a woman’s cry— Warm as a mother’s word,
Burns in the sunken eye,
The fair white flower of Piccadilly.
Hungry, and cold, and lone,
And weary by the way,
Trembles the friendless moan Of London’s dying day ;
No memory lifts the veil,
No murmur wakes the dead,
The phantom lingers pale,
With vulture talons red.
Down in the lower cells,
Where stars may never shine, The fire that never quells,
Comes purity divine,
The fair white flower of Piccadilly.
Frail on the canyon’s side.
Bound by a ghastly spell,
Lost in the surging tide.
Swept by the flow of hell ;
No echo spans the deep,
No vision enters in,
No impulse comes to weep,
For wasted years of sin.
Kiss of the cankered lip,
Drugged by a passion wild, Purity, Heaven’s whip,
Flaunting, protesting, mild— The fair white flower of Piccadilly.
Toil of a pitiless sin,
Grip of a loveless arm,
Mortal to traffic in,
Damned with the least alarm. Bed of the craven beast,
Wine of the monger’s cup,
Bread of the ruffian’s feast, Poisoned and broken up ;
Pushed by a changeless seal,
Ruled with a demon’s rod ;
Soft in its mute appeal,
Comes like the voice of God,
The fair white flower of Piccadilly.
Gold of the morning sun,
Blue of the ocean deep,
Speed of the winds that run,
And calm of forest’s sleep,
Power of the mountain height,
Seed of the mystic sod,
Charm of the stellar light,
Works of an artist God.
From palm of desert heat,
To scented forest bower,
Of pure and fair and sweet,
Fairest of all this flower—
The fair white flower of Piccadilly.
The reason they give for his ending, Who had hurried through life so fast, Is, that he took to his coffin early,
As he thought it was going past.
Born in Adelaide, on February 25, 1890, Corporal A. N. Dickinson ; as the result of wounds received in action in the Dardanelles, died on a hospital ship on July 22nd, 1915, and was buried at sea.
Now counted with his race’s fallen brave.
Him, from his sleep no storm-rolled sea shall wake, To change the last and scarlet pledge he gave,
To do the thing he did, for England’s sake.
In crimson springs of wounds they dressed in vain,
The dear memories of his face are washed ;
And on the headstones of the heart, with pain They mark one grave the Aegean seas have lashed.
Far from the snapping cords of tyrants’ slave,
His place of death the sea’s grey Guards shall plough, But friendship there in shadows o’er his grave,
Erects herself a dwelling near him now ;
Along the dimlit corridors of time,
Her heart, yet bleeding from his wound untold, Pours on the callousness of fate and clime More kindness than the western seas can hold.
Too soon upon the lists of England’s dead Your hour of numbered years is dated down, But let your name, immortal friend, be read,
As one, not war, but friendship, gave renown.
Their fame, whom men with gifts of memory praise, By bronze and stone in others’ sight is spread ;
Some proud respect the wearying gesture prays, Where stands the cold memorial of the dead.
Can marble teach indifferent throngs to die ?
Or sculptor’s tool the souls of men unfold ?
The statue never lights its sightless eye,
Nor warms the lips of history with its gold.
Well pedestailed on its embellished stones,
Where mortal stops to read some peerless name,
Its plastered shape forgives the grave her bones,
And pays its debt of gratitude to fame.
Let me'from these to solitude retire,
Where nothing ghastly haunts my flights of mind,
Where, like compassion, floats in quiet desire, Reflections of impressions there I find.
Corroding walls of cottage old, I choose,
In pensive mood to make my frequent den ;
And midst its shaky shapes my thoughts I lose,
In contemplation of the lives of men.
These ruins in the peaceful starlight stand,
Where lived a master of their acres broad,
Whose scenes of life, with old experienced hand, Round him the genius of his drama strawed.
With downturned lights of fife, let me be found,
Here where the lot of other lives was cast;
Where life was lived to hear the echoes sound,
And feel the thrill and pathos of its past.
Seem sweeter thoughts of others’ past we glean,
That treasure up sensations of their day ;
And each, that crowds with all that might have been, Inquires of man his morals or decay.
The world goes by the heart’s tired watchman still,.
As thought by thought around its shrine is laid,
But here the spirit, struggling, learns its skill.
And sees the place where destiny is made.
Beneath these ragged walls, with thistles grown,
Their stones in many a tumbled heap are laid ;
Here for suggestions of their past unknown,
The quiet excursions of the mind are made.
As though some scenes in memory stored to claim,
Here recollection turns her pensive eye ;
To things grown old emotion lends her fame,
And guides the trembling movement of a sigh.
These things implore the care of other hands,
And seek some tenant for their acres spread,
But wasting, still their time-worn structure stands,
The infirm sentry of the nameless dead.
And where they guide the reverent step anew,
That impulse moves in their recesses still,
Like withered hands, once soft with youthful dew,
The mind with many a touching thought they fill.
Some dull response to each enquiring thought,
Forgives the long and wrapt intrusion here,
And low with age, and chill with changes fraught, Their voices still attract the muse’s ear ;
The wholesome tales of many a faultless day,
They speak, accented in the vaults of age,
Of infants, who no evening prayers now say,
Nor fathers’ eye close scans the sacred page.
Far back with duty, here unknown, they loved.
Whose modes this rough-hewn sculpture scarce conveys ;
From task to task with humble step they moved,
And mellowed in their quiet course of days.
Here once the child oft lisped th’ enquiring word When genial signs of life relieved the sight;
Now past it slinks the wandering dog unheard,
Or’t takes the night-bird from its noisless flight.
Yon oak low-murmuring in its lonely place,
v Like some ancestor, still imposing stands,
« To quiet flocks it lends its shaded base,
1 Or holds the eagle in its twisted hands ;
co .c
3 ^Once neath its shade the milkmaid plied her task,
2 > Or hot-winged birds its branches sought, to cool;
^ c Or children paused its freshening help to ask,
n Returning from their quaint and lonely school;
OD
Once well it held its now fantastic head With natures charm high o’er the homely thatch ;
Now o’er the quiet that passing time has spread,
'Tis spared by change its solitary watch.
And round these baring limbs, their covert still,
The twittering sparrows paused in cheerful song ;
Or genius suffering at her narrow sill,
Here heard the magpies morning chorus long.
On flights of time, some pleasant view to steal,
Here fancy wanders back beneath its shade ;
'Twould find the summer’s quiet sky, or feel The hand of kinship on the shoulders laid :
’Twould hear the laugh of playmates, cr would find The soul of greatness in untutored ways;
And to the transitory eye of mind,
In touching parts, its likely drama plays.
The well-razed fence in grass-grown mounds grows old— Of plain designs that still the eye can trace,
And half as though some secret here was told,
A wall-flower grows neglected in its place.
Some thoughts perhaps the wandering eye can teach That sees this flower with meaning much imbued,
Where some fair maid no city’s taint could reach, ’Midst tended flowers her dreams of love pursued ;
Her slender form in eve’s deep shadows closed, Reclining, waits her father’s late return ;
Or through the fabric of her yearnings, loosed,
She iets the flames of sweet impatience burn.
A household here once peaceful conference held, Whose book of memory too required a sigh ;
And then so moved, some touching word compelled To scan the fading print with closer eye :
Or mother, moved some reverent tears to spare,
The altered numbers of her care would grieve,
Some aid the feeling Sire’s kind glance would bear, Whose words did each beseeching look relieve.
Plain text, and portrait, round the nursery wall, From some bequest of generous fate, were strewn
Or letters shaped in infants’ artless scrawl,
Were left inscribed, with rude initials hewn.
The parents to their rare memorial clung,
Some remnant of their vanished charge to feel ;
By silken lock, and framed portrait hung,
They sought their infancy from change to steal.
While cares on ills of years infirm were thrown, Indulgent hands in their dispute were spent,
But stern necessity that ground them down,
Led them at last, in sorrow, to consent.
Perhaps a child for heaven to mature,
To God, in these neglected walls, they gave,
And found the medicines of prayer, a cure,
From rude awakened miseries to save.
As virtues gift the powers of mind to mend,
Her useful days contentment must disclose ;
She finds for man in life, a wiser friend,
And gives the mind extravagant repose.
The illclad form of penury to cheer,
For her, misfortune turns her wasted face ;
She comes befriending to neglect, and fear,
And stoops to give incompetence a place.
In nature’s school, here lived the rustic Sire,
Whom scripture taught his moral strength to find
But cares of him that duty did require,
From learning gave exemption to his mind.
Perhaps a tale he’d tell the listening child,
In quiet tones, of some adventure strange ;
Or jocund as the evening hours be whiled,
Would sing the songs of memory and of change ;
Down by the fire in his soft chair reclined,
With homely pipe, contentment did enjoy ;
Or on his shelves some author still could find,
The leisure hours of age to well employ.
Long did this veteran to his trophies cling ;
No more in youth to greet the morn inspired,
Now feeble on ambitions withered wing,
His quiet, th’ unuttered hours approach desired.
Here youthful lustre dimmed his aged eye,
And progress widened to his narrowing span ;
To dull the voice of age his tasks he’d ply,
And labour in the flickering light of man ;
Much sheltered now, low burns the vital flame, Once pregnant with invincible desire ;
And ills of doubt faith in the bosom claim,
For evidence it lights a better fire.
Turned by the world’s strict hard demands adrift, He lingers where disinterest drugs the soul ;
None now to task his bending form shall lift,
But God, who gives the moralist his goal.
Did one, ingratitude had caused to stray Turn wayward from his fathers quiet door,
That footsteps slow, for fancy on their way,
Would come, neglected honor to restore ?
An ear to hear of now stern life, he seeks,
Some right with old confessions to restore,
Or finds of earth’s, some virtue here that speaks.
In him some change more kindly to implore.
Let reason now her scanty tribute bring,
For once, this child of misspent years to greet;
Let pity’s hand accept the wasted thing Repentance lies before her careful feet;
He comes from out the crucible of night,
With grief’s emotions undisturbed to drift:
Now no command provides his wasted rieht;
Nor parents hand his aged head can lift;
His heart, each slow kind thought of silence swells. And has this home befriend his late return ;
Its tale in accents slow and sad, it tells,
And bends its listening ear, his grief to learn.
Each relic here, to sorrow memory takes,
Or else desertion holds her hapless sway,
Her chill reproof neglects the prayer he makes,
And wastes contrition in its long decay.
No softening word his grief of age can earn ;
Nor vows, oft broken, now persuade respect.
Each friend, the past’s plain texts from mercy turn, And leaves for God, repentance to direct:
To heav’n his term illfaulted, adds a need,
To earth, less kind, the suffering of complaint,
Yet e’en from ruins far-mastering power to lead, The father God bestows on heav’n a saint.
Cease slumber, let my soul be free,
Early the coming day to see.
From my dark chamber I have heard The shrill alarm of beast and bird ;
And long and purple arms of light,
Unlock the heavy doors of night,
And show the sleep-dimmed eye, the way That nature lights the fires of day :
Till on the lap of distance put,
Like windows of the vision, shut,
Night in the cycle of her way Wears out the crimson kiss of day.
The sun, from shrouding dusk of morn, Draws back the shadows that are born ;
On drenching herbage in its green.
From branch and bole their lengths are seen, And silvery arch from dew-filled blade, Around them on the grass is made.
From homesteads, dotted here and there, Come echoes on the silent air,
Of snatches from the teamster’s song,
Or birds that round the cottage throng From perches high, or lively wing,
In air, the chirp and warble fling.
The wetnosed lowing kine appear From dripping leaves of wattle near ;
Or winding through the shadowed way The horses come in quiet array.
The farmer calls his lingering mare,
And stock, impatient, have his care ;
And pleasant to the yawning Sire,
The scented smoke of kindling fire,
And air from savoury meal are spread By morn, that breathes them overhead.
In masses grand solemn rolled,
The woolpacks hang above the wold Where lark and swallow share the scene Of undulating lands of green ;
The lamb is there on clover bed, •
Or horses stand with drooping head :
The eagle hangs in sunny height,
Or starts the quail in sudden flight,
Or loud, the grievance of her search,
The crow proclaims, from hidden perch. Moths flutter past on coloured wings,
Or blund’ring, droning beetle brings Around the plowman’s sleepy team,
Him, many thoughts for muse and dream ; And to the lungs of nature lent,
The wattle, and the clover scent,
In pleasance on the sunny air Is breathed and scattered everywhere.
There lives a man who crawled from his cot To save himself from starvation,
And now, with his wealth dishonestly got,
He starves the most of his nation.
He stole first in the cradle,
So his biographers said ;
And they’ve fastened locks on his coffin Now that he’s dead.
She suffers a lot from a kink in the reason,
That muddles her nights with her days ;
And her fun’ral affair, when ’t comes in its season. Is only a final craze.
See me, my soul, from darksome hours of youth,
And mind’s long crisis come, refreshed to gaze,
No more on night, though night oft frost my panes ; But on the sill whence far my panting steed Bears my best years, and best ambitions claims. Give me my years within my cloister here,
Humbly to tread the path my hopes impose,
Give me the thoughts that make my fellows kind ; For them, in me some broader truths inspire.
That I, who serve, may so for right be spent:
That God may yet me to some place promote,
Where I by Him ordained to stand, shall be,
A friend in many a friendless hour of man.
Low in yon meadow fair.
The ploughman’s friends, once foals together, lie ; One motherless, they took one mother’s care, Beneath this wistful sky.
Time led them the same way,
And bade them to the yoke of labour yield,
So side by side, through harvests hardest days They tramped their lengths of field.
That all things should be kind,
On them age marked her unmistaken name,
Where in life’s lonliest place of earth confined,
To both, the shadows came ;
For they had both grown old,
And with slow dragging steps would come and go„ Perchance they’d seek, as shelter from the cold, The stall they used to know.
They both, at the day’s close,
From pasturing at the foot of yonder hill Would home return, their fodder lothe to lose,
For them provided still.
One day, as set the sun,
They came not through the shadow dimmed bowers ; Their absence though, disturbed the thoughts of none Through midnight’s mournful hours.
By the return of day
Fast at the post of friendship one was shown,
And one that in repose for ever lay,
Had gone that way alone.
Oh ! for as kind a frien d The vale of time’s long march can never chill,
Who. v» hen we’re old, and frail, and near the end, Will share these shadows still.
A friend whom I can bless With ages feeble breath I draw to sigh ;
Surrounded by whose plain kind humanness,
Though homeless, I can die.
The memory of a sympathy, The awful neutrality of friends.
There lives a man who is famous for playing, His history is incomplete,
But after his death, his neighbours are saying, They’ll find his soul in his feet.
He’s most unprovoked and complacent
When he’s raised the ire of another,
And is, in the face of the poor struggling fault of a brother,
Contemptibly saintly.
The statements of others distorting, wrong inference he draws,
For pious correction ;
And scans with a generous eye, all the mortals around him,
But those whom he lives with.
Listless, before the forge of years, Where wasted effort lies,
The child of life’s uncomely hand Gives up his way and dies.
No more the pride of freedom breathes From manhood’s noble breast;
Its vernal song’s glad note has ceased To charm ambition’s zest.
No more the virile blood of life Turns back its vital main :
The roll of Heaven’s glorious drum,
Is lost upon the plain.
Lo, o’er the triumphs of the mind Deaths martial triumphs tide—
The soul of man to men so lost,
And yet so satisfied.
Too plain the sad inertness speaks, Where seraph note could touch :
And tongs beside the forge of years, Have lost their iron clutch.
Within this sink, impregnable,
To rights empyreal rose,
The vase and goblet of the dead Enchant the morrow’s woes.
Pass childhood, death forgets your creed, Forgets your mother’s day ;
For ever silence pending there,
Protests no long delay.
Stay truth, not here the countless years Can foster life to right ;
The flower of destiny in vain Around the tomb may light.
Too full for song, the callous note Its sombre discords give ;
Nor comes response to cries far down From lips of those that live.
What plaintive cry disturbs the tomb Impugns the tyrant crowned,
But ne’er the spoils of dust shall wake To earth’s unsightly wound.
Death ! Death ! thy vigil watches keep With calm continued gaze ;
Beneath the gloom this vault contains No speeds of time amaze.
The world seems a vale of folly, as well as of tears. When you think what a man will do ;
He had got enough wealth for a thousand years When he only had life for two.
High over city, storm, and tide,
Where mountains pile their steeps,
And clouds of stately column ride Far off, round grand and granite spires, The mountain eaglet sleeps.
The thunder rocks its cradle here,
With fierce successive peals,
And cliff and canyon, falling sheer,
Its rugged sentinels remain,
Wherever foe could steal.
It hears not from the world below,
Men’s troubled voices rise,
Or knows the path its parents go For it, in strong majestic flight Across the widening skies.
And soon on inexperienced wing ’Twill go o’er hill and plain,
O’er dashing seas, and running spring, Where nature yawns with dangers grim, That wait to see it slain ;
But it shall soar high over these Circling its pathless sky,
Perchance in cornfields summer breeze,
Or in the teeth of mountain gale,
Watched by a parent’s eye ;
And should those eager wings fatigue Ere flight her haven brings,
Swift, through the intervening league To spread their powerful lengths beneath, Will speed the parent wings.
And God who makes this care sublime, Will watch my faulty flight,
And through the pathless storms of tim* That I must pass withont a choice Will keep my course aright.
And 0 should I be left alone To tire in the abyss,
I know that underneath my own The wings of God shall soon appear That cannot fly amiss.
Gone priceless heart, the staunchest, and the last To leave me with this past,
Where I, in its lone land.
Reach out in memory, to hold the hand I know is lost to me.
Back through the mists that shroud the loss I learn, My struggling hopes return,
And know no farther part
Along the lonely vistas of the heart That breaks with every thought.
World-wide the abyss of thy absence lies That swallows up my cries,
And suffocates the soul.
As on before my empty years unroll,
Which I must live alone.
He dreamt that the world got muddled up,
And did the right thing for the wrong, from the start; And when it was shown how good it had grown,
It died of a broken heart.
There is silence in the darkness Hanging o’er the furnished tomb,
And being men, we always falter, Ere we enter in its gloom.
With the candle of our reason Things are hardly what they seem,
'’yrfhtfn 3NIQW31 onsiw
But we face them as we know them ; And we know they’re not a dream,
God prefers to hide the meaning Of the slumbers of the dead,
But we feel that we’re united By some higher link instead.
We are more than love and ashes Sundered at the open grave ;
There are plans that God is making, To return the ones he gave.
Lord of all kindness—cloudless sympathy,
Thy melting touch gives every thought a lamp, And shows me that one lingering year of grief, Hides in it all the courage of an age ;
It teaches my distress a nobler thought,
And to my knowledge makes my pain a friend : It makes the meaning of my losses kind,
And gives me sympathy for other men.
Be brave, 0 be brave,
And turn with a smile to your trouble, Though you long for the sun that is set; For God, who holds your hope in his hand, Will bring it back to you yet.
Be brave, 0 be brave ;
In the weakness of your disappointment Let the heart grow brave with your prayer ; Only the one that’s afraid to prevail,
Drifts from defeat to despair.
Be brave, 0 be brave,
Give your pillow to rest, not to weeping When your fears grow great with the night, For heaven is under your ills, and your fate, And knows that the best is right.
Be brave, 0 be brave,
Let me rock your sick heart in a kindness That makes you a friend in a tear,
And whispers to me, that your courage Will see the faults of your fear.
Be brave, 0 be brave,
Though the candle is low in your lantern,
And you’ve done what a man could do ; There’s a hand, and a light for the eye,
That hide in the night for you.
/
Curtains from the slatey sky;
Tattered by the blast of storm, On the wings of tempest fly.
Coming with the leaden face, Monstrous in the heavens drift Clouds upon the frightened place.
Darker on their courses free Driven showers of blizzard come Ragged from the murky sea.
Stubborn in the fight of life, Beating bush and bending tree, Hurl defiance at the strife.
Shrieking1 blast of speeded wind Troubled in the tempest leave Nature’s rugged form behind.
*
These agonies, familiar mare, no more Thy noble frame shall shake,
Nor this deep sleep restore The care for which thy slumbering young will wake.
O’er thee, who, as in sleep, now prostrate lies,
The while thy orphan stands,
Or drops his wondering eyes,
Perplexed with signs that ill he understands ;
Slowly, as though with loneliness oppressed,
He turns his steps away;
And in despondent quest,
He winnies for the mother—not the clay.
With wistful eyes he scans the nether plain Peaceful before him spread ;
But turns to thee again,
And comes, athirst, to suckle from the dead.
Ah, friendless weakling, left as you were born ! 'Tis yours, in life unknown,
Dis-spirited, forelorn,
To struggle to maturity alone.
When winter winds shall lash thy little form,
Or many a cutting blast,
May kindness in the storm,
Round thee forsak’n, her mantle gently cast.
And may the heav’n that tnakes the started tear,
To lighten pity’s load,
At nature’s hardness here,
Remember frailty on its lonely road.
They say that he fell into wisdom Like a blind man falls in a pit, Marking the ill that was said of him; And believing it.
Found in seven feet of water. Age about 22, round face, fair hair, dark complexion. In fawn raincoat, fawn gloves, black stockings, patent leather shoes; and having a handkerchief with the name Conora on. it. —(News item).
Why was it midnight, Conora That crept on your lonely mind ?
Why was the wish to be braver,
Left in the gloom behind ?
Where was the kinship, Conora ?
Where was the mother-heart ?
Mightn’t the world that you lived in,
Have played a kinder part ?
We know of the place, Conora,
Where bravest spirits pall ;
We have slipped in its dreaded shadows.
And feel for those who fall.
While there’s a heaven, Conora,
Far though it seemed to you,
There’s never a hell to the mortal,
Too dark to struggle through.
We know of the fight, Conora,
Whatever brought you here ;
So we shield your deed in our pity,
And your name in a tear.
The breeze blows softly, Conora,
Over your gloomy grave,
But it tells the strong to be kinder,
And the lone to be brave.
We, in our measured state repose, resigned ;
While figures dusty grown, draw in our walls Around the solemn memories of the past Where fires go out, and our grey banners float In night-winds, as sad omen of our life Come near to mourn around our cheerless doors.
At fingertips we measure, where we tread The narrow cells in which our visions fade—
Bend o’er the gruesome parchments where they hang. And read their worthless tales with wearied eye. These things provoking in our narrowed walls,
Claim o’er our shuffling steps to reign supreme ;
But let rebellion burst this chamber dim,
And shrinking limbs expand within its change.
Where the new air of greater aims inspire,
Strive to be found, and at the stately gate That heaven opens to your soul, survey The broad deep sea of far futurity.
Then linger not where the’all awing throb Of the eternal life is only heard,
But out amidst the mighty deeps of God,
Of ages immemorial, be lost.
She seems to think she was made for a bird,
So ridiculous are her conceits,
Then she must have been meant for a featherless hawk. To strut in the city streets.
The morn that takes thy singing place from night, And bids thee heav’nward soar,
Knows not that never more Thy shattered wing shall lift thee in its height.
Oh ! do you listen while the glorious strains Of kindred singers wake In music that must make Thy prisoned soul seem with them o’er the plains.
Far shimmering on thy opalescent sky,
Can those dear haunts of song That beckon thee so long,
Have now no meaning to thy saddened eye ?
Frail effort asks these trembling wings to rise As each new song is heard ;
But hark—the noble bird In long melodious bursts of song replies.
Oh teach us, wounded linnet, from regret In life, like thee, to turn,
And from thy singing, learn Our ever faded fortunes to forget;
And that, beyond our maimed and fettered frames There still are sunny skies That bid our spirits rise,
Above the thoughts we think too oftentimes.
Oh teach us, though our hurts should never heal, To feel it worth the while When others’ fortunes smile,
To emulate that gladness that they feel.
Calmed on the silent sea of memory,
To question if that way that might have been Hides now for ever in its mists, from me,
The sequel to a friendship once serene.
Slowly from portals mystery-dimmed, fair forms Of maidens from the graves of England, moved ;
In their sad iris-tinted eyes, still burned Love’s long unconquered flame as it had been Once kindled down long vistas; quiveringly,
Lips, pallid with a strange soft loveliness,
As is grave-saddened maiden innocence,
By love’s most infinite emotions stirred,
Told longing dreams—lips that alone Cold ages past have stolen near to kiss,
Sleep tangled locks on pulsing bosoms brushed,
Half radiant, as down soft graceful shoulders fall’n They hung, or round full beauteous throats entwined ; And with lost charms of some half-pagan age Virginities free graces of their day antique,
Dressed each love-speaking glance, and once gay step With which they passed, and with their lonely looks Some guiding chivalry implored, or asked A mortal love for theirs angelic.
Reverent, reflective, leisurely, apart,
The farmer to his fields, at evening strays;
And in the air serene, with cheerful heart Doth o’er his broad and peaceful acres gaze.
His stubbled fields, gold-tinted yet, he sees,
And grateful pleasure lights his watching eyes,
As from the rain-damped straw, and blossomed trees, Rich perfumes round him in the stillness rise.
With teatree, dips the seaward landscape here,
To fallowed fields that dot the shadowing plain,
And mounting up now purple slopes, appear To cast their quiet enchantments back again.
Close by, a home, by Sylvian walls concealed The Mill and haystack’s shapely top betray ;
And thither from reflecting and the field,
The farmer, now returning, makes his way ;
He soon his prattling girlie meets, and bends To lift her lightly to his shoulder wide ;
And with her thus, his cottage path ascends. And to the smiling mother’s generous side.
Beyond, the night her western window shuts, As drowsy darkness fills her solemn hours, When nature, on a lovelier freshness puts,
And builds the farmers morning in her bowers.
The links of life are made when men are born ; They fit the heart, and with the heart they break : Men hard to men, renew the wounds they make,
And law-compelled, the suffering thousands mourn.
What paths the slaves of sorrow tread in vain,
Are hard with jibes of yester’s bitter tongue : Unnerved with rage impatient council wrung,
The stricken bosom breathes its groans again.
He never learns to know another’s need,
Or finds the moral of his little while,
Who makes reproach his fellow’s weary mile That holds him back, and breaks his manhood down.
Where breathes a man whose heaven constructs his goal, A thousand, most of man’s oppressions taste ;
If few believe the soul was born to waste,
How few, beside the host that wastes the soul.
On seeing the headgear of a woman whose conceits eclipsed all else in her life.
This was the most that she had of her head—
The thing that would never pall ;
And now the rest of her being’s dead,
And her soul—it hangs in the hall.
Private R.S.M. Killed in action. No relations.
A stranger from the shadows of his birth,
In his decease but snaps a slender cord ;
He seems a child of no one’s love, who earth The luxuries of kin could not afford ;
The narrow margins of his name, explain Why it no mists of moistened eye will dim He seems for mothers of his fellows slain ; Yet he without a heart to bleed for him.
If homeward turned his dying hour’s desire, 'Twas asking life a kinsman, ere he slept, My whom the embers of his failing fire. Should, e’en with frail memorial, be kept.
And who shall ask in tender tones of care The things he strove with pallid lips to say ? Or try with pictures of the mind, to there The final tokens of devotion lay ?
A name to perish, but the grave receives,
As dust upon the royal road of some ;
His death required a native heart bereaved— The pathos of his sacrifice, a home.
From boyhood’s eager sight That cradled in the sheltered lap of ease,
To cheat us where we wished it still to please, Enchantment took her flight.
Life kept her secrets then,
Closed in the buds of man’s immortal Spring, But now she comes herself, a sterner thing, And tells us we are men.
With anxious thoughts of care,
Youth’s idle dreams fast from the mind she drives Far from our ends infirm she sets our lives,
And tempts us to despair.
Oft in her pageant seen,
By duty held to some repulsive task,
Prayed on with doubts, and lorn, we stay to ask, What else we might have been.
Deep in her fathoms though,
To meet her stern injunctions as we can,
We keep the front that still becomes the man, And mean to see it through.
Round us we see desire Hot in the breasts of men, and turned about,
We set to mend resolve—our own gone out,
At someone else’s fire.
Or else despair we meet,
Friendless, at trouble’s solemn gates, with scorn And in the heart to us is courage born,
That will not have defeat.
Sunset, sometimes sunset Bringeth to an end,
The joys of a companion That might have been a friend.
Sunset, sometimes sunset Whispers in the heart,
A farewell to the favours That memory sets apart.
Sunset, sometimes sunset Galls us to the ways Where a matured possession Lives, in longer days.
Sunset, sometimes sunset Gilds the joys we lose,
And hurries one dear chapter Early to its close.
Sunset, sometimes sunset Takes away a day
Before the work seems finished In the human way.
Sunset, blessed sunset,
Let me westward bend ;
Where dearer things I wait for Shall not so lightly end.
Stay loathsome thoughts, while yet my way I seek Where, lost I turn, in manhood’s restless mind ; Tell me, my soul, while at thy shrine I speak,
If death pursues my listless ways behind ?
%
Wrest with my soul, deep purpose, unafraid,
Lest reasons laws, her cease to more sustain ;
And stern concessions then, in madness made,
Prove my undoing, and my deeds in vain.
Still stay, dire thoughts that chill my restless soul— That fight my will, though knave, or saint, I go, Perchance, one yet may lend my manhood’s goal Some gleam before, some footway still, below.
Ah ! it is faith that heav’nward sets my race,
With vision turned eternal, now I see ;
What once I was, was darkness tomy face While that I am, hath heav’n’s imprints to me.
Were Nature this without her smiles,
There wounds indeed were sore ;
For here, in such a part remote,
Is found a sorrow more.
’Tis earth’s sad side, where life creates Affections tendr’est tie,
And then, with chill improvidence Permits it so to die ;
’Tis lingering pain, and love perplexed Through weary hours that wait;
But life, that so neglects her ills,
Forgets to smile, in Fate.
We, frail, like children in the darkness peer,
And there conceptions infant fingers throw ;
No sound, returned from God’s estates, we hear,
But feel they are, and greater than we know.
Oh solitude that swallows up our dreams :
What thoughts our wondering millions dare embrace!
And yet our fragmentary knowledge seems The only lonely atom out of place ;
For it the vision, now no more confined,
Runs up the galaxies aeons free,
Or falls where tracks of undimmed distance wind,
And drowns conception in immensity.
The strong and super faculties, distressed.
Break down in many a carriage of their thought:
And then by God in new conception dressed,
Where time and distance have no place, are brought;
Where fire, and field, and sea, no more portray,
Or myriads count, their universe grand ;
And they like heights ascended, still display The greater still Ionian hills that stand.
Infinity unfolding ere the veils Of mortals’ vanishing conceptions sink,
And wider yet, infinitude, in scales,
The watching angels wearies, as they think.
■Of ladders up to God, 0 ! dream again,
c.
Or
Vi'.'cno;,'. ’D J11 ^biqn'j i oi ignd
Aphelions of his heavens so extend ;
To go where yet eternal orders reign,
Their lines of law, like avenues, ascend.
See on the glimmering plains of God outspread Where realization crawls with torpid feet,
The grand conceptions of existence, fed With scenes the myriad heavens more, complete.
Oh man ! matured in little scraps of time.
If feeble age ne’er aids thy vision much,
The fires of life, these spectacles sublime _ Intensify for ever as they touch ;
And on beyond, and yet beyond them, spread Estates the angels yet for greater leave ;
And up the stairs of source eternal led,
In part their dreadful majesties conceive.
But what is He that mysteries enclose ?
Beyond ! beyond us ! who are you Supreme ?
We ask of you, who made us as you chose,
To know the lonely greatness that you seem.
With a fence between them of barb and rail, They argued and threatened in various strains ; And this is the moral I have to the tale Now only the fence remains.
TO THE CATERPILLAR FATALLY WOUNDED BY THE HOOP OF A PASSING HORSE.
So long thy happy trust,
Thy train, frail worm, that goes its way, unknown, Thee on its silver road doth leave alone To languish in the dust.
Spoiled ornament of clay,
Through dangers zones, and deserts waste with heat* Thy army’s weary march, thy careful feet So long have found a way.
Poor anguish eaten worm,
Wreathing, with unexpected pangs enraged,
Forego thy task, thy train, afar engaged,
Pursues its higher term.
Has Providence the eye
That sees thy seeming nobleness remote ?
Or heav’n herself a tenderness, to note The hurt with which you die ?
And now thy work is done,
And I, with mine before me still, would ask That my brief years mature in such a task,
Before my race is run ;
May I the road untrod,
That millions of my kind shall take, improve,
Or cast my mantle at their feet, who move With tired steps to God.
Written to a Publisher on receipt of a letter from him addressed Miss M.D.P.
If you and I were Mr. called In this fair world that bore y’,
I havn’t a doubt you’r older far,
But I am Miss befor y\
In life’s long marches by ourselves pursued,
Often to conference we turn, distressed,
And find our compacts—many a time renewed— Have failed our humbling weakness to arrest ;
Yet, to improve is the perpetual end,
More patience with our fellows to attain ;
But when we would to life’s high states ascend. We wake the protest of this body’s pain.
Ah what is it, like lead is to our feet,
That makes the hill of life we climb, so high.
That, tired with many an effort, in defeat We long to fling our weaknesses, and die ;
Yet struggle on t’ward triumph far removed, Betrayed of our own natures as we go,
To feel, in spite of failings ill improved,
Perhaps, to heav’n, we’re better than we know.
Where doth my vesperine perspective lead Through the wild greatness of yon lonely sunset ? Ay, what is it behind my puzzled soul That this stern grandeur hints at, as the day Shuts her wide windows grandly in the storm ?
Is there in these high solemn fires of thine Marks of eternal nature, that the soul,
Her powers awak’ning, sees, and reaching out Bends the frail bars of her mortality ?
I fancy down the vale of yonder scene,
As eastward drifts the lilac-scented air,
Familiarly, there to me comes, unseen,
The sweet remembrance of a mother’s care ;
’Tis in the breaths of Spring’s contenting sky, That gather recollections as they come ;
And from the scenes of boyhood, whence they fly, They bring the while, an atmosphere of home :
And in the light of memories’ biased eye,
I search the dim retreats of many a day ;
And find my rusted relics, where they lie In loneliness of what has passed away ;
And yet, the lark, that sheds its soul in song,
On those familiar fields must still be heard —
Must still, above the meadows pass along As then, o’er field and flock, and hill and herd.
Perhaps contented kine, in peaceful plains Find pasture midst the wild unnoticed flowers ;
Perhaps an old familiar draught remains,
To dream away his long and leisure hours.
Perhaps, as softly blows the meadow air,
From cottage rose, and kitchen’s savoured bowl,
And wafts the sweetness that he knows is there, To every window of the plowman’s soul.
Perhaps the kind September sun, may shine On fields as green, and youth as glad, as then ;
Perhaps that world, that only could be mine,
Can find a fondness now, in other men.
Perhaps, like tentacles the cloudlets spread,
As once, across its dear and sunny sky ;
And near their face, on tireless pinions sped,
The feathered stranger floats, unnoticed, by ;
And yet, as though my own desires were theirs, Those youthful days invite me o’er their grave,
Till hope, that knows no past, in me forbears To farther seek the dungeons of a slave.
Does nature mourn, that sadly smiles these scenes That life has left along its lengthened track ?
In vain the mind, of Life implores a means To reach the beck’ning hand that calls it back :
And why was thus the soul of man designed To feel the past grow dearer as it goes ?
Why opens it in sweetness to the mind,
In such a dark despondency to close ?
The pilgrim of the heart, by care outcast,
Prefers the self of many a bygone day ;
And finds a sad companion in the past To wander with him on his solemn way.
But whither through the burial place of Time, Where knowledge sows her seed amidst decay,
Shall we, who her pursues from clime to clime, Repair, this plan of ages to survey ?
Beyond the vistas of familiar years The hearts historian of ages guides,
And heav’n, to sooth the hung’ring heart, appears, And in herself its farthest longing hides.
Why thus hath circumstance with fateful hand These two, in dreaded conflict to me brought,
As though she would, by misery to me give One of the two that I expect as one,
In the full sorrow of the other lost ?
Can I the pangs of my selection bear,
For a contentment to have chosen one ?
How shall I though, with both immortal, choose Which heav’n above me, seeipg, best commends? Or would I, now grown desperate, blindly choose, And lose them both in deep remorse to come.
THOUGHTS ON SEEING AN AGED HORSE, HAVING PASSED THE STAGE OF USEFULNESS, TURNED INTO THE FIELD.
Life hath her change in touching forms expressed, And totters through the twilight as she knows ;
She drags her feeble remnants to a rest,
And brings a journey, wearied, to a close.
When years have tired these limbs with many a task, And I am life’s worn vessel placed aside,
May heaven spare me some small right, to ask A quiet journey through the solemn tide.
Here sleeps a man who never was known,
Through all his long life, to borrow,
And his neighbours they say, often asked by the way, What the dickens men meant by sorrow.
Where is the form, once here low-bending,
I miss so much
While I survey his dusty volumes,
I weep to touch ?
These were the playthings of his manhood, Marked with his hand,
Pencilled, as friends who his best yearnings Could understand ;
Oh that they had the lips, to echo Those days behind—
To tell the sweetest intercourses Had with his mind ;
Oh that their leaves would break this silence, Grown into years,
With snatches from his soul uncovered, Without these tears.
When shall their closed pages, waken At his request,
To speak to him their truths exalted,
Who knows them best.
Land of our devotion, ever have our care ;
We will serve our country as we breathe her air: Thousands yet, and thousands, warm with one desire, Till our island boundless, burns with native fire.
Land of dear relation, birthright never dies ;
Ours thy golden seashores, and thy azure skies : Heartened or afflicted, hold us in thy hand,
We have all to give thee, dear old native land.
Land we leave our children, better let them be ;
We because we love them, spend our lives on thee ; Greater still, and greater good shall kiss thy shores, Until like an eagle, thy ambition soars.
Land of hope and promise, heaven be by thee ;
God shall make an empire, born to bear the free : Whispered, still in whispers, nations breathe thy name, They have seen “ Australia” on the scroll of fame.
Land of peaceful greatness, wisdom still pursue ;
Set your pillars firmly while your years are new : Higher still, and higher, lifted in esteem,
•God who buildeth nations grant your grandest dream.
ON THE GRAVE OF A POLITICAL PARTY.
Here lies a political contamination That was buried before it was dead,
Men thought they would have condemnation,. So they chose them this burial instead.
How here within your place remote, sweet flower,.
Where God has found you room,
Can you as nobly pass the transient hour That lends your lonely bloom ?
Methinks, where here you lift your modest head, Some fate resolved your home—
I did expect your tenderness, to dread My reaper’s coming comb.
I grieve to snatch the bloom you show to me,
And pity you the while ;
You face the stern approach of destiny,
And only seem to smile.
Stoop noble flower, your little life extend,
For fuller beauty made ;
To heav’n, in bold obedience, though, you bend,. And perish ere you fade.
So let me find contentment in my place,
Cheered by its little things ;
And with as calm, serene a courage, face The destiny it brings.
Could you get behind yourself for a while,
And see how your follies appear,
You’d turn to your friend, and say, with a smile, Who’s the fool in front of me here ?
Approach where Eden still in part survives,
And look where careless feet of power have trod ;
The mind, it to unuttered wonder drives,
On hills majestic tablets, reads of God.
Marked with the scars of age, eclipsed hills,
Grand in their solemn magnitude appear.
Huge-massed, each shape deep entrance to it fills ; Peaks cleft, and cliff grim o’er their passes rear.
Imposing heights, where climbs the scanty flock With gum-trees’ gaunt and twisted shapes, are grown;
On their low base, with ragged brows of rock,
The bold stern sentinels of ages frown.
As mounts the mind on God’s colossal hills,
Drunk with extravagance thought staggers here ;
Here grand wTith wealth, where leaf their harbour fills. Through myriad charms the Silvan summits peer.
Bleed crystal streams where valley lends them way, Torn out by aeon’s slow and blunted shares,
Walled with its awe-draped heights, here grander day From peaks erect, runs down their shadowed stairs.
V
Clad in their splendid dress here nature’s parts Glad passage to the wandering sight can give ;
And here remote, far in their fertile hearts,
The toil-bent cottiers of their Eden live.
Just a memory, now returning,
Of a face I loved so well,
Just the sweet implicit thinking,
Of a lingering moment’s spell.
Just the memory of a mother,
Passing through the world, I roam,
Just the kindness of another
Bringing back the thoughts of home.
Just the sunny hours of childhood Drifting on a stranger’s sense ;
Just the aching arms of memory, Thrown across a cottage fence.
Just a chapter’s holy pages Opening in a faulty light ;
Just the haze of far removing Youthful days, upon the sight.
Just a rusty treasure, taken From the store of flitted time ;
Just a moment floating backwards Down the stair of years, we climb.
[Published originally in pamphlet form, in April, 1914.]
To the Ministers of the Church of God in Australia.
In venturing to address myself to you, I do not lightly bear in mind that yours is indeed a most excellent office, and your calling one which involves the eternal issues of men, and largely, the destiny of your nation.
Your office all men respect, your themes many embrace, your field of influence none surpass, but you, troubling men with the contrast between yourself and the divinity that hedges you about, lead them to theorize unfavourably of you, and of the Church to which you belong.
In writing, prompted by these considerations, I have striven for plainness of thought, and brevity of expression, alone by which one may in this day successfully claim the better attention of men who have ceased to look for anything substantial in verse.
I dare to hope for a reader who, differing from the general critic, finds more to understand than the latter finds to misunderstand.
He who writes to satisfy a class of critic has not always hope of satisfying the ordinary reader—not that our critics are less capable, or more capable than those of other times, or other places, but that they, finding little originality of note, and in many cases wearisome and uninteresting detail, have given themselves over to a play of words which seems to please them most when it conceals their meaning best. •
It may be an art for the writer to conceal his lack of matter, cunningly, and to misrepresent cleverly, but few readers can long deceive themselves, who endeavor so to consider it.
That critic who sets his meaning afar, seeks enchantment for the view where he knows it is sadly needed, and should the reader be disposed to explore all the probabilities that obscure the critics’ meaning, he may expect frequently to find, not corrected error, not literary lepd-lights, but so-called wit and humour, invented from foolish points of view, neither making the writer’s work the vehicle of any virtue, nor his own the vehicle of else than literary flourishes with which he wastes the audience of commonsense.
What then after these assertions I offer to the reader I leave the critic to do with as he will. Sufficient is it for me to say I have no hope to satisfy others where I am not satisfied myself.
To have a limited outlook is most usual, while the display of weak scansion leaves to a writer many companions, who, being readers, find the truth where it is seemingly hidden, rather than the error of expression that hides it.
To influence the mind of another is a genuine undertaking. but to correctly reach the mind of one who, through literary education, and mental limitation, demands literary excellence or nothing, is a disappointing task when it is accomplished. Could I have done justice where I seek justice, I assuredly would have, but being conscious of many limitations in myself, and consequently in my lines, I commit them to your care, where they will suffer your criticism, believing they will hurt none to whom they do not apply.
I seek only to be considered to have gathered up the fragments where you yourselves have feasted on the good things of intellectual excellence, and advanced education. They who would not own them, need not ; they who would condemn them as unsuitable and faulty, do no more than I have been tempted again and again to do.
Those who believe originality to have been killed by the apparent supremacy of set law6 in the learned world, will not be unwilling to believe that half of life is hidden through the inability of a certain class to
express its greatest truths in terms suited to the demands of the artistic and educated.
Permit me to refer you to the fact that this significance of class difference is manifest in the still broader fields of life. Yourselves, thought by many to know too little of human nature, have given much attention to the conceits of the conservative class who, considering even in this enlightened age, that class distinction is essential, wrongly use learning where wealth is ineffective to that end.
Had you the humanity that was Christ’s, you, instead of paying no heed to the fact that the poorer classes were leaving your churches, and that the middle classes had fallen into a state of indifference, would not have been content that that channel—the Legislature, through which the Church of the next age shall endeavour to operate—should in any way be the means of curtailing your efforts. Believing this dispensation of Christ to be one of divine activity amongst men, the one conclusion to be drawn is that divine activity must mean divine accomplishment. In no sense need it follow that the nominal Church has part in this, for they who in the Church have minimized their duty, find no possible choice but to minimize their God.
Sameness of thought has left this age believing the Church of God is confined to the God of the Church nominal. Religious thought has run in narrow grooves, and the outside world has been left to the care of “ Cseear. ” While the Church nominal has not owned “Caesar,” “Caesar” has owned God. Where, therefore, Christ has been unable to find a suitable instrument in the conservative, reluctant religious denominations, he has turned as a God of wide resources to political channels, and there offers a beacon to set the somewhat confused Church examples of humanity and brotherhood, inviting her energy to a religion which offers an opportunity, ripe for the establishment of Christ’s material kingdom.
Better conditions of life, however, demand of the masses obligations hitherto largely unasked by God.
Thus, the fact that Christ has been nationally recognised, in many instances makes glaring the inconsistencies found in offices of public responsibility.
Already there is an international conscience insisting on reason as the basis for national righteousness.
The attitude of Government, at present, and of the Church, is to this conscience absurd and inhuman.
Our own conscience, lumbered with legislation unfaithful to the better spirit of the age, and confused somewhat by a confused Church, shall be saved by definite Christian lines of action on the part of the community.
I would that you were so convinced, that you, broadening your conception of God, should in like manner strive for conditions favourable to the material comfort and happiness of the masses, which, while it in itself cannot give them heaven, would help them to enjoy with you, the better possibilities of a better earth.
More than you have done in others you have undone in yourselves for not so much what you have taught as what you have not taught has left the multitudes doubting their obligations to God. You have given them no duty because your own has been largely indefinite. Thus a decline in the spiritual qualifications necessary for the ministry has left inducement in your ranks for many good men, but for many indifferent also. A new doubter has arisen as the result; you having lost authority through having taught without authority.
If you are not sure of God, how can it be expected they will do else than doubt, who seek to find God through you ? Few now know so little of existence as to doubt the existence of God—few even doubt; the divinity of Christ—but who shall number those who doubt the value of Christian consistency ?
Without dwelling on the heart-breaking spiritual decline through the reasons already stated, little respect, and no sympathy can be shown for a stand taken in direct opposition to the simple laws of reason. Reason is the safeguard of this age of excessive thinking, and
nothing so much as bigotry and faction has robbed religion of its power, and politics of their appeal.
If this age still maintains that mind susceptible to the appeal of reason, it is the age’s misfortune to have unreasonable teachers ; but how much greater the misfortune to be those teachers. Who shall teach them ? Who shall rise above the chaotic and repellent contra-^ diction of things, to set matters in order for a reasonable race to denounce the sins of nations and rebuke the ?■ errors of the age ?
Who, but the strong men of the faith amongst you! £ They, blameless, invincible, indomitable, who are truly called ; antiquarian in their power as in their 1:,teaching, yet mighty in divine favour in ministry above their fellows—men who neither fear the frowns, nor court the smiles of any—independent of opposition or a? idolism, are they who hang the scarlet thread in the window of their nation. Well may their lips be silent whose vision of the age can spare these no gratitude— whose bourne can breathe no benediction on so strong a manhood.
The shuttle of Progress drives across our vast continent, and from its loom, strengthened and beautified by a new adventurous southern mind, comes, grand, elevated, struggling from the embarrassment of a beginning, the Hope of a Nation.
The dreams of thousands, wakened into a great ambition, as the seas run up the sands of our shores, surge over the dormant faculties of our nation’s soul to speed the day when the hearts of millions shall beat for her honor, and the lungs of patriots shall breathe the freest air on earth. Yours is the privilege to shape the destiny that lies before this people. Impugn it who may. they go where you go. and abide where you abide. Your God is to be their God. and your faith their faith, Either you lead them to an age in which the milk and honey of uncorrupted industry glistens in a benivn sun of righteousness, or you lead them to-cunningly hidden error that shall eat out the nation’s, heart, and trample its hope in the dust.
As it is, woven in the curtains of political difference through which pass the public mediators of men, are the words of promise, untainted by the blood of civil war.
Above the voice of the Loom, is a clearer accent, the highest conceptions of religion protest, persist, plead, that in the world in which she has been set, Australia may rise as the prophetess of God, to teach the old rude nations of immortal fame the first lessons in national righteousness.
Back in the heart of it all, hidden in humility, you who are called, bear the axiom of this great machine upon your bleeding hearts ; and at your very feet, your Lords and Kings shall see the full rich age of opportunity turn at your request, and offer its kingdom to the Son of God.
—M.D.P.
PART I.
Turn patriot by foeman’s sword undone, >
As storm unfolded sets your native sun ;
Bestrewn with shapes, like scenes of cities wrecked See western lights in blazing splendour decked As crawls the ragged cloud through evening fire,
Or heavenward twists its long fantastic spire,
Or rolls the drifting columns on its crest,
To flush and sink within its livid breast.
See, where the main its fitful colours turas— Though dim with storm the torn horizon burns,
Or lifts aloft its vast and stately head,
And frowns upon the lustre round it shed ;
Awhile its arms the fires beyond enfold,
And then return in tapering lengths of gold,
As t’wards some spectacle beyond them each,
High radiance-tipped thei’* monstrous pinions reach. At last with spire and whited dome, to weave Upon the breast of a declining eve ;
Henceforth no more to triumph o’er her shades
The lingering flush celestial on them fades : *
So know the path a nation’s fame pursues,
Her glory bears as evening bears her hues,
Though large your banners and increased your gold, Your march, proud pageant of the nations hold ;
The God your monarchs’ ventures dare defy Pursues your train with stern persistent eye ;
The soul of that domain that knows him not The baneful hour befriends best unforgot.
Who lie their faith on ought but God, declare For kindoms lost, and Empires in despair ;
Yet this your fault of each successive age.
Emphatic in the godless wars you wage—
That they achieve who swell the crimson tide To spoil the joys of others’ native pride :
And still beside the quivering cannon wheel Your sons will hear the battle-gods appeal,
Immersed in blood of thousands that they slay To dream the dream of Glory’s fickle day ;
And ere they learn devotion to their land They take the sword, detested, in their hand,
And thus pursue their deeds accounted great,
And earn renown on many a fellow’s fate.
Can still the world in suicide delight,
To teach at once, to love, and yet to fight ?
Your sons of toil your civil difference sink,
And turn to war before they turn to think As then, with sad mechanical consent The masses bear the magnate’s discontent,
The peasant, trembling ’neath his haughty lord, Retains his rent to bear that tyrant’s sword—
To dig with it their unintended graves.
And wrest existence from his fellow-slaves.
When shall the heart that stains the wounded breast, Of long injustices stitt unredressed,
No more the tools of monarchy and pride Be theirs it is, by sword no more denied ?
For now their grief impugns the loss immense ;
They turn disconsolate from recompense,
To lift the clouded brow in half despair,
And ask the reason in defiant prayer.
How long, deceived, shall man his mind debase In others blood to run his trifling race,
That ages wrong, with ages yet, combine The world to growing conflict to destine ?
In seeming grief o’er broken truce, men rise,
And wage their wars for some indifferent prize ; And round the shrine of Babel’s fairest dreams Their sons are slain, attaining worth that seems. Full many a warrior joins the ghastly train To earn the fame of slayer and the slain ;
Or trembling in the rage of nations’ hate.
The rest with pagan bitterness debate ;
By plagues of mind that errors still prolong,
To reap the fruit of long triumphant wrong.
What mocks us still, that nations cry for peace As in their hands the arms of war increase ? Expressed in mites their love of peace is found, Their love of war in many a willing pound :
The friend by trifling gifts of gold, they’d save.
But spend their strength to fill the foeman’s grave
Then turn, victorious from pagan lust
And praise the God whom they forebore to trust —
To songs of martial air and colours gay
They turn as one, who would not turn to pray.
They teach the world her savagry to mend,
With piety, themselves can but pretend ;
And God, who heathens far afield embrace,
The Senates nigh, have scarcely found a place. Why, Christendom, with all things face to face, These dogmas of the angry sword embrace ? Would mental light your moral laws retain,
And give you back to reason’s faith again.
Yet blind to God, and blinder to ascribe This jurisdiction over race and tribe,
You rule your ways with standards pending low, Nor dare apply a half the truths you know.
Who fear, that thus you falter where you tread Expecting right, but choosing wrong instead ?
You nations yield to God whose name you bear,
To take them back, at danger, from his care : While your devotion fills the trifling hour,
So long is he the everlasting power ;
But lo, the sky with smokes of war is dim,
And generous world—you turn to fight for him. See, nowT for home and right you take the sword, When friend and foe, for cause, dispute their Lord, What carnage this that meets the stranger’s eyes ? The friend for God, the foe for justice, dies :
A curse disguised th’ opponent then appears.
And each, to each, for some damnation, steers Exchange of blasphemy, exchange of shell,
They call it war, and later, call it hell.
Can heav’n afford the earth a right alone That men by hells of war must make their own ? Some sad bequest of grief that truth would seem That sword can touch, and soldier’s blood redeem ; And God must change, or man degrade desire,
For wounds are deep for morals, theirs require,
A half the world in errors grave delight;
The other half goes wrong to set it right;
To those whose feet are thus with chaos shod,
The lapse of law conceals the loss of God,
And him they make the figurehead of strife—
The God of battles—once the God of life.
Amazing race ! their own surpassing skill Creates the purposes of God at will.
Behold him come to spread a peace afar !
Now change his mind, and give the world to war. Awaken Paschal Lamb, ’tis your decade,
Ferchance the next for the avengers made ;
And now fraternity of race provide ;
And now despair, and cast the thought aside ;
Now all is well, a Saviour reigns above ;
Now all is wrong—the fiery sword of love.
See ! nations all, from sins of war forbear ;
Arise ! Arise ! approach millennium fair,
The God that strifes displease—but no, to arms ! And on to fame, the foeman’s sword alarms ;
'Tis right, the cause is just that onward leads;
The Prince of Peace is with us and concedes ;
The God that served our undisturbed years Is grown too old to meet our modern fears ;
The God of public inclination, Hail!
Without thy presence all our follies fail.
Come pagan gods of many a damning lust,
For man restores his idols from the dust;
Come new suspense, and superstitious blind,
And rise again o’er the domain of mind.
Come patrons of the world’s ambitions wrong Where plagues of mind, and evil deeds belong— Where vast resource in weak disunion lies,
And ethics suit whatever states arise ;
Like driven fires there follies so extend That inconsistencies in madness end.
But God’s the same, and nations change alone,
They add his name to purposes their own ;
And passions base assimulate their toils,
Till chaos great their moral standard spoils.
Blest time—if heaven with nations still shall chide— When war declines, and swords are laid aside ;
’Twill yet reveal that men with nobler grace Shall keep the resolutions of their race ;
And t’ward its day, the soul of nations, feels An age of kinder inclination steals,
When brotherhood o’er great tribunals set Will spread in justice, wide, and wider yet,
Till monarchs fail, and tyrants borders shrink,
And Empires change, and great dominions link,
And comes the day of God, not lightly sworn,
When men shall bless the day that they were bom.
PART 2.
Who nations now, from darker ages brought Shall teach you justice that yourselves have taught ? Are ones that might your thoughts with truth have led, The those you value most when they are dead.
They die in want, fatigued from long neglect,
And then the world rewards them with respect;
In irony too in monuments and gold A nations latent gratitude is told ;
But many a one for justice stands his post,
Who needs the kindness of his people most,
And needs the wealth his usefulness to spread That gratitude would lavish on the dead.
Irresolute in character they seem
Who thousands trust, their nation to redeem ;
For led by some misfortune to a throne,
They lose their peoples interest in their own ;
And these become, if men their wrongs excuse,
The frail receptacle of others’ views;
And others them to high positions call,
And wonder why they rose to them at all.
•Our laws they guard, and if some laws they make, They are not more than multitudes they break ; They fight their laws, and equity disdain ;
And give the most where they have most to gain ; Rich, soulless too, in fickle themes upbound.
Express themselves in what they are—but sound, Each lordly air of high class madness bred,
Is their asset who have no heart or head.
Mind yet with mind of influence and renown,
High truths embrace to no real purpose known ; They oftenest heard in reason’s shiftless track,
Send hundreds on, and turn their thousands back : While they, empowered, their nations’ issues guide, Themselves they lose in legislation’s tide ;
For in their seats restriction hurts their creeds,
Till theirs are most, who tend their nations needs. Their factions their dissentions shelter well,
As though they breed some faint respect for hell ; But less regard for heaven itself is shown Than they desire, in honesty to own.
Of small account its counsels here they find— Omnipotent in morals and in mind :
Confusion lies upon their chosen road ;
They fain would rise, but cannot raise their load ;
Each fears the cynic scowl his fellow fears,
And gives it first, before he gives his cheers :
And so reserved, with faltering steps and slow,
As mortals lost, your shambling leaders go ;
To chaos strayed you know not what you rule ; Your greatest self is in your meanest school.
To destinies beyond your city urn,
No Senates with benignity will turn ;
No words they breathe in high prophetic strain ; To lift their land in some exalted vein,
Unhappy they who to their God are true,
But feel the gall of being ruled by you ;
Regard you pay their conscience where you must, But oftener drag their virtues in the dust;
And seem no more the lovers of your land Than starving morals of your cliques demand,
To laws increased, some order to retain,
On those you rule, you regulations rain. Proposed reforms your judgments wise protract, But bribed, oblige the Devil with an Act;
And side by side, with purposes diverse,
A larger vision see—a larger purse ;
And 0 ! distinguished of your noble kind— Distinguished most for your illiberal mind —
We hear of you what duties us become,
And read your patriotism in a sum.
Let them repair who such corruptions fear, Think error real and innocence sincere,
Who can from ignomy of meanness turn,
To serve their land with nobler morals, learn. Goodness to find without the aid of God, Mortals the barren walks of life have trod;
And countless lives, the nations discontent In many a move divorced from God, have spent And more in blissful ignorance of their state, Admire their nonsense and ignore their fate. Who would th’ abuses of his kind oppose,
Finds those he helped the first to be his foes ; For one that marks the madness of his kind,
A thousand think that he is out of mind :
And who’d his creatures’ state with pity learn, Invites his creature’s pity, in return ;
Youth groans with ignorance, with bias, age,
And all the rest are reasonless with rage.
If few the world’s momentous tasks discern,
To needless ends united millions turn ;
The world admits no virtue she forsakes,
And in their name she makes her big mistakes ;
She learns her lessons over, as she goes,
But still she wants her wrongs without their woes ; And still foresees a state of earthly bliss,
But engineers her energies amiss ;
She thinks the age that comes is one benign,
And that its sun in equity shall shine,
But in the social mists around its dawn,
The daggers of conspiracy are drawn ;
And class with class, in contest soon engaged,
Seek justice foully, and content enraged.
There lords of wealth on others needs subsist,
And blind the restless thousandsHhey resist ;
For to disguise the ugliness of wrong,
The rich grow cunning, as the poor grow strong ; And men amidst the World’s misfortunes thrown, With rotting sores of these disorders, grown ;
You teach them then forbearance while they live, And ask their tithes for this advice you give ;
And while their lives, oppressed, and pinched, decay, The rich their gold for easy doctrines pay—
By misery fed, and in disease proclaimed .
For infamies of hell’s excesses famed.
Have groans no proof, and agonies no tears ?
Or hopes of men a life of endless years ?
Need carpets soak and curtains drip with blood ? Or victims ichor sour the tyrant’s food ?
Need men as sheep before his door be slain,
Ere terror strikes at greed’s remorseless brain ?
Or need his child, in screaming fits of fear,
Repeat their tortures in his stubborn ear ?
Need dungeons spew in fever’s feted breath Their loathsome ills, and faces wan in death ?
Or ghastly plagues in cheating systems, close,
The crimes of flagrant villainy expose ?
Do tyrants stifle where their fellows breathe Or justice torment to their minds bequeath That her fair reign their ravages remove,
And they the horrors of their thraldom love ? Monster, religion rocked, for wealth renowned, Whose estates vast require one honest pound.
Go though, bland brute, with justice still conjure By webs of wealth your utter hell secure ;
Its burning marl shall suit your retinue,
And bring your inhumanity its due.
From cottage cot, to death infested den,
Your cunning, trades in lives and souls of men,
See, on your native soil where cities stand Is evidence of wealth on every hand ;
While wistful eyes of hung’ring thousands gaze Where riches flash, and magnates’ treasures blaze \ See virtue sold within the shadow there;
And hear the slave repeat incondite prayer;
See woman pay your tribute with her child,
And man in want, reviling, and reviled ;
See tragic scenes of life with vice outworn,
And infant life from lives of infants born;
Or mother yield her virtue up for bread ;
Or virgins fall’n, escape the want they dread.
See blighted lives in penury distressed ;
And wretches mean with crime by crime oppressed ; Or wreckage drifts on life’s tempestuous tide,
Whose woes the orgies of the great provide.
Could tyrant’s turn to her dark hour of doom Would vile Gomorrah quake to find them room ? Would God that Molock’s priests could counsel them Or Sodom’s faults their deepening guilt condemn, How long shall men ’neath systems live and die That suffer these to gloom their native sky ?
For lax the millions by their despots pressed,
Who groan beneath their error unredressed ;
But strictly still stern nature’s hidden laws Will fight for God where they have left his cause.
A deeper strain attends my sombre song If sing I may to sense of deeper wrong :—
Of lines perturbed, and class with class enraged, Where contest blinds and moral wars are waged ; And in this vortex wasted as he goes,
Full many a son his sacred manhood throws In fetters bound in this incessant strife,
He begs by days the fragments of his life :
The race is fierce that takes him to his goal ;
In it too lost to know he’s lost his soul.
On chaos born, by fevered thoughts upkept Industrial slaves their shortened terms have stepped, But still the wheels of industry they drive,
And curse their speed, and still for greater strive ; By ills increased their lives grow old in gloom ;
And fathers sink, to give their children room. Bravely they strive where progress leads her train, The spirit, damped with drudg’ry to sustain ;
From toils of mind, and endless pangs of heart They lose desire, and then desire in part;
And thus ignored in this industrial face,
Full many a gem of life falls out of place ;
Or else with traps his manhood you impale ;
Then damn the soul and drive the rest to gaol;
And many a one that might have served them well, As given himself to make his fellows hell.
What problems here our patriots confound,
Where faction spreads its virulence around ;
A mean reward its motives yield our race ;
They least repair, and much repaired, misplace.
No crime so base with our intents discord As madness of party strife afford.
From truths sincere that lead to common good, They’re turned, to those best known misunderstood^ And these they teach, as artists of the mind Who paint their views to suit their country’s blind ; Till all at fault, convinced of motives pure,
Find righteous thoughts the hardest to endure; Then problems, found where problems have no place, Leave experts fools, and reason in disgrace.
So purpose, sickening, lends itself to none,
And those who work regret one half.they've done ;
They, sceptical in all but folly’s way
Put right things first, and put them first away :
Their progress too they make their highest cause But ill conceive their most congenial laws ;
The simple right they oft evade for shame,
Or handle it in some financial name.
Oft leaders rise, unsafe themselves unled,
Who’d error spoil, but spoil their cause instead ;
And some, with themes unearthed from mental gloom, Entomb themselves, as they true life entomb !
But greater themes with national issues weighed,
Are spoiled by some, by some are half displayed.
Some though, will not attempt reform, who can ;
And some desire no better state for man ;
And thousands join to widen out the breach,
Or live to spoil the unity they teach ;
So fate imprints, ill-ordered in the mind,
An image mean in millions of our kind :
And often as the nations’ visions fade,
State troubles rise, and grave mistakes are made,
Yet on the marl of man’s oft altered thought,
Where children played, and heartless bandits fought, An age to come shall form its wisdom then,
And hail the true humanity of men.
PART 3.
Shall men within religion’s nobler pale A purer air, with lives sincere, inhale ?
Or seeking some sound hav’n in life to bring,
Still to the Church with growing fondness cling ? There too, like serpents in the summer field,
The principles of error lie concealed ;
And many a teacher of her truths, beguiled Long on the evils of their race have smiled. Unhappy voice that called these men aside To love their error, and enjoy their pride.
They who professedly are wise and strong Are wise and weak, or firm in many a wrong ; Revered and loved in their appointed way,
They’re left, despised, effeminate, astray,
When for improvements that they seem to make They most unhappy changes ill mistake ;
From wrong to wrong unconsciously they grow,
And feel that they are greater than they know. Away contempt, I must not give you place,
But folly runs in them, her maddest race.
See them, with pride, who smile upon the great Their sins embrace, their follies imitate ;
Young men arise our people’s favoured type —
The flowers of time, the fruit of ages, ripe ;
From infant years in this confusion made Believing right in error best displayed.
A meaner type to holy orders trained,
Abuse the faith they only half attained ;
Intended once the souls of men to save,
They teach their doubts of things beyond the grave : There straying far, their fruitless course they take, And pathos marks the shambling steps they make. Some wiser still, perplexed with problems sad, Profess to lose the faith they never had ;
Such peace they find when science lights their brain, That they emerge with faith they lost, again :
Then themes anew their grateful spirits spread,
And give repasts of science to their dead ;
With precepts lax and idle themes like these,
Their ranks have spread in godliness, disease ;
From them we trace the errors of our day ;
And empires from their erring lips decay;
In the still seas of their loose truths disguised,
The morals retrogade in triumph rise ;
And they who then best lead their race astray,
Are lost themselves in nations’ troubled day.
When Church—for only goodness once begun—
Shall thy adultery with, the world be done ?
The instrument of some high aim of heav’n,
In charge to whom her excellence was given,
From sins, mankind in their ancestral gloom Outcast, to turn and find them better room ;
You, sent to purge dark ways of human kind,
Perform your task, half pleased with what you find’ And bear for them, the wars of nations rage—
Th’ adalterine of this unhappy age.
O faithless thou, and witness insincere,
Men seek your Christ, evading you with fear.
For those reproofs that oft your faults assail, Self-pleased, and self-consoled, you rail.
The worst to teach, who feigns to teach the best, Returning scorn to reason’s oft request;
And taught through life’s unsettled term, to stand With steadfat feet, and an unsullied hand,
You now external forms alone exalt,
For dauntless faith is turned to stubborn fault.
Has heav’n bestowed in vain the care you need,
That ill you aid your doctrine with your deed ?
And though the rich your vital themes condemn,
You half respect the godlessness of them ;
Your patronage to their beliefs you give,
And freely entertain the lives they live ;
Not love restrains your strictest measures here—
They have no friends who have no friends to fear ; Affection ? no, a thousand proofs complain You love the most where you have most to gain.
Is gold the charm, an evil to us all,
That where there beats a heart its shadows fall'?
Is it the fame from which men never shift,
That worthless there their hung’ring instincts drift, Not satisfied, but changed, corrupted, fired,
To sell the very God they once desired ?
Not this low path, He whom we love, once trod.
W’here lives of men, in error break from God ;
The fanes where men of godliness have learned,
For many a one, to sepulchres are turned ;
What wonder then, imposters gather there,
With godless hearts, and grave religious air ?
The homely.shrine has lost its ancient charm ;
And few the hearts of men its cloisters warm ;
And now on Christ, this age’s insults, cast,
Invite the grim disasters of the past.
Return O Church ! the world awaits distressed ;
Its signs observe, and sum the wide unrest;
Let pass no more with listless vagrant gait,
The teeming throngs of life’s uncertain state,
Move now, the sound of altered ages speak,
Across the years their startling volumes break, Onward, as lips afire, their signs invite,
And bring the dreamed age, afar in sight,
Haste on fair day to move these mists between,
Thy gleam our strife enfolded age has seen ;
New vistas to our hope it sheds around,
And calls us to futurity profound ;
It speaks of heaven's approach, repairing fast,
With wonders grand, the long chaotic past,
Lest men forget that yet connections bind,
This earth to heav’n, and God to human kind ;
And too, that God, in his triumphant day,
May justify and demonstrate his sway ;
And soon the heralds of this morn shall bring New thoughts to mind of our approaching king ;
And men shall see from throes of want and crime,
A hand that tears the crimson veils of time ;
And he who once did rear the vested height,
But once shall stoop to lift the veils of night;
Then ! Then ! shall men with wond’ring eyes, behold, The plumes of God in majesty enfold ;
And from the answered themes of mortals wrong;
Of life’s regrets, and problems pondered long ;
Of death, of pain, of kingdoms and their strife,
Shall burst the day of man’s immortal life ;
And through the mists of ways that men have trod, Shall come the sceptre and the face of God.
THE END.
W6L'C0E*tfOft<*
This Book must be returned WITHIN A
FORTNICHT (Sundays and Holidays included) from the latest date
_stamt>ed below.
THE PUBLIC LENDING LIBRARY OF VICTORIA.
NOTICE TO BOEEOWEES.
1. Borrowers are required to make themselves familiar with
the Lending Library Rules.
2. A fine of THREEPENCE a day, or portion of a day, is
incurred by borrowers who detain books longer than a Fortnight.
3. Borrowers are cautioned against writing upon, marking, or
otherwise injuring books; and their attention is specially directed to Lending Library Rules numbered 11 and 12.
4. Lending Library Books must bo immediately returned in
the event of the outbreak of any infectious disease in the house in which a borrower is dwelling.
5. Change of residence hy a borrower must be notified to the
Librarian without delay.
ERNEST R. PITT,
Y .201/11.29.—14285.
Chief Librarian.