The silver fountains sing forever. Far There rolls the grand hymn of the deathless wave. COOGEE SING the song of wave-worn Coogee, Coogee in the distance white, With its jags and points disrupted, gaps and fractures fringed with light; Haunt of gledes, and restless plovers of the melancholy wail, Ever lending deeper pathos to the melancholy gale. There, my brothers, down the fissures, chasms deep and wan and wild, Grows the sea-bloom, one that blushes like a shrinking, fair, blind child; And amongst the oozing forelands many a glad green rock-vine runs, Getting ease on earthy ledges, sheltered from December suns. Often, when a gusty morning, rising cold and gray and strange, Lifts its face from watery spaces, vistas full with cloudy change, Bearing up a gloomy burden which anon begins to wane, Fading in the sudden shadow of a dark determined rain, Do I seek an eastern window, so to watch the breakers beat Round the steadfast crags of Coogee, dim with drifts of driving sleet : Hearing hollow mournful noises sweeping down a solemn shore, While the grim sea-caves are tideless, and the storm strives at their core. Often when the floating vapors fill the silent autumn leas, Dreaming memories fall like moonlight over silent sleeping seas, Friend of mine beyond the waters, here and there these perished days Haunt me with their sweet dead faces and their old divided ways. You that helped and you that loved me, take this song, and when you read Let the lost things come about you, set your thoughts, and hear and heed. Time has laid his burden on us wear our manhood now, we who We would be the boys we have been, free of heart and bright of brow, Be the boys for just an hour, with the splendor and the speech Of thy lights and thunders, Coogee, flying up thy gleaming beach. Heart's desire and heart's division! who would come and say to me, With the eyes of far-off friendship, “You are as you used to be ?” Something glad and good has left me here with sickening discontent, Tired of looking, neither knowing what it was or where it went. So it is this sight of Coogee, shining in the morning dew, Sets me stumbling through dim summers once on fire with youth and you— Summers pale as southern evenings when the year has lost its power And the wasted face of April weeps above the withered flower. Not that seasons bring no solace, not that time lacks light and rest, But the old things were the dearest, and the old loves seem the best. We that start at songs familiar, we that tremble at a tone Floating down the ways of music, like a sigh of sweetness flown, We can never feel the freshness, never find again the mood Left among fair-featured places, brightened of our brotherhood. This and this we have to think of when the night is over all, When the woods begin to perish, and the rains begin to fall. SEPTEMBER IN AUSTRALIA GRAY Winter hath gone, like a wearisome guest, And, behold, for repayment, September comes in with the wind of the West And the Spring in her raiment ! The stories of Youth, of the burden of Time, And the death of Devotion, Come back with the wind, and are themes of the rhyme In the waves of the ocean. We, having a secret to others unknown, May whisper together, September, alone One word for her beauty, and one for the place She gave to the hours; And then we may kiss her, and suffer her face To sleep with the flowers. The ways of the frost have been filled of High places that knew of the gold and the the flowers, She lightens and lingers Chief temples of thunder In spots where the harp of the evening The gale, like a ghost, in the middle watch glows, Attuned by her fingers. The stream from its home in the hollow hill slips In a darling old fashion ; And the day goeth down with a song on its lips Whose key-note is passion; Far out in the fierce, bitter front of the sea I stand, and remember Dead things that were brothers and sisters of thee, Resplendent September. The West, when it blows at the fall of the noon And beats on the beaches, So filled with a tender and tremulous tune That touches and teaches; With the honey-voiced woman who beckons and stands, And gleams like a dream in his face THE VOICE IN THE WILD OAK TWELVE years ago, when I could face High heaven's dome with different eyes, In days full-flowered with hours of grace, And nights not sad with sighs, I wrote a song in which I strove To shadow forth thy strain of woe, Dark widowed sister of the grove Twelve wasted years ago. But youth was then too young to find But he who hears this autumn day Thy more than deep autumnal rhyme, He has no need, like many a bard, No more he sees the affluence The old delight God's happy breeze His song is like thine own. But I, who am that perished soul, Pure, perfect speech of thine. Yet here, where plovers nightly call Across dim melancholy leas Where comes by whistling fen and fall Beneath thy shade with tired wings, And fills thy strong, strange rhyme by fits With awful utterings. Then times there are when all the words Dream-haunted spirit, doomed to be Imprisoned, cramped in bands of bark, For all eternity. Yea, like the speech of one aghast At Immortality in chains, With moaning moors and meres! And when high thunder smites the hill Thy soul for some infernal crime That left it blasted, blind, and stripped A dread to Death and Time! But when the fair-haired August dies, And flowers wax strong and beautiful, Thy songs are stately harmonies By wood-lights green and cool, Most like the voice of one who shows Through sufferings fierce, in fine relief, A noble patience and repose A dignity in grief. But, ah! conceptions fade away, And he must speak the speech divine, By hollow lands and sea-tracts harsh, And, year by year, one step will break Thy home of many dreams. Percy F. Sinnett More than ever you could gather We have seen, and heard, and laughed, We tossed them like a plaything, We have laughed, and heard, and seen, And the growling thunder's blast ; For their fears. |