Part 35

The lark her warbling music lent, To give an added charm, And sleek-haired kine, in deep content, Forth from their milking slowly went Towards the homestead farm.

And here thy page on logic shows A troop of merry girls, A meadow smooth where clover grows, And lanes where scented hawthorn blows, And woodbine twines and curls.

And, turning o'er thy leaves, I find Of many a friend the trace; Forgotten scenes rush to my mind, And some whom memory left behind Now stare me in the face.

. . . . .

Ah, happy days! when hope was high, And faith was calm and deep! When all was real and God was nigh, And heaven was "just beyond the sky", And angels watched my sleep.

Your dreams are gone, and here instead Fair science reigns alone, And, when I come to her for bread, She smiles and bows her stately head And offers me -- a stone.

William Gay.

Primroses

They shine upon my table there, A constellation mimic sweet, No stars in Heaven could shine more fair, Nor Earth has beauty more complete; And on my table there they shine, And speak to me of things Divine.

In Heaven at first they grew, and when God could no fairer make them, He Did plant them by the ways of men For all the pure in heart to see, That each might shine upon its stem And be a light from Him to them.

They speak of things above my verse, Of thoughts no earthly language knows, That loftiest Bard could ne'er rehearse, Nor holiest prophet e'er disclose, Which God Himself no other way Than by a Primrose could convey.

To M.

(With some Verses)

If in the summer of thy bright regard For one brief season these poor Rhymes shall live I ask no more, nor think my fate too hard If other eyes but wintry looks should give; Nor will I grieve though what I here have writ O'erburdened Time should drop among the ways, And to the unremembering dust commit Beyond the praise and blame of other days: The song doth pass, but I who sing, remain, I pluck from Death's own heart a life more deep, And as the Spring, that dies not, in her train Doth scatter blossoms for the winds to reap, So I, immortal, as I fare along, Will strew my path with mortal flowers of song.

Vestigia Nulla Retrorsum

O steep and rugged Life, whose harsh ascent Slopes blindly upward through the bitter night! They say that on thy summit, high in light, Sweet rest awaits the climber, travel-spent; But I, alas, with dusty garments rent, With fainting heart and failing limbs and sight, Can see no glimmer of the shining height, And vainly list, with body forward bent, To catch athwart the gloom one wandering note Of those glad anthems which (they say) are sung When one emerges from the mists below: But though, O Life, thy summit be remote And all thy stony path with darkness hung, Yet ever upward through the night I go.

Edward Dyson.

The Old Whim Horse

He's an old grey horse, with his head bowed sadly, And with dim old eyes and a queer roll aft, With the off-fore sprung and the hind screwed badly, And he bears all over the brands of graft; And he lifts his head from the grass to wonder Why by night and day the whim is still, Why the silence is, and the stampers' thunder Sounds forth no more from the shattered mill.

In that whim he worked when the night winds bellowed On the riven summit of Giant's Hand, And by day when prodigal Spring had yellowed All the wide, long sweep of enchanted land; And he knew his shift, and the whistle's warning, And he knew the calls of the boys below; Through the years, unbidden, at night or morning, He had taken his stand by the old whim bow.

But the whim stands still, and the wheeling swallow In the silent shaft hangs her home of clay, And the lizards flirt and the swift snakes follow O'er the grass-grown brace in the summer day; And the corn springs high in the cracks and corners Of the forge, and down where the timber lies; And the crows are perched like a band of mourners On the broken hut on the Hermit's Rise.

All the hands have gone, for the rich reef paid out, And the company waits till the calls come in; But the old grey horse, like the claim, is played out, And no market's near for his bones and skin. So they let him live, and they left him grazing By the creek, and oft in the evening dim I have seen him stand on the rises, gazing At the ruined brace and the rotting whim.

The floods rush high in the gully under, And the lightnings lash at the shrinking trees, Or the cattle down from the ranges blunder As the fires drive by on the summer breeze. Still the feeble horse at the right hour wanders To the lonely ring, though the whistle's dumb, And with hanging head by the bow he ponders Where the whim boy's gone -- why the shifts don't come.

But there comes a night when he sees lights glowing In the roofless huts and the ravaged mill, When he hears again all the stampers going -- Though the huts are dark and the stampers still: When he sees the steam to the black roof clinging As its shadows roll on the silver sands, And he knows the voice of his driver singing, And the knocker's clang where the braceman stands.

See the old horse take, like a creature dreaming, On the ring once more his accustomed place; But the moonbeams full on the ruins streaming Show the scattered timbers and grass-grown brace. Yet HE hears the sled in the smithy falling, And the empty truck as it rattles back, And the boy who stands by the anvil, calling; And he turns and backs, and he "takes up slack".

While the old drum creaks, and the shadows shiver As the wind sweeps by, and the hut doors close, And the bats dip down in the shaft or quiver In the ghostly light, round the grey horse goes; And he feels the strain on his untouched shoulder, Hears again the voice that was dear to him, Sees the form he knew -- and his heart grows bolder As he works his shift by the broken whim.

He hears in the sluices the water rushing As the buckets drain and the doors fall back; When the early dawn in the east is blushing, He is limping still round the old, old track. Now he pricks his ears, with a neigh replying To a call unspoken, with eyes aglow, And he sways and sinks in the circle, dying; From the ring no more will the grey horse go.

In a gully green, where a dam lies gleaming, And the bush creeps back on a worked-out claim, And the sleepy crows in the sun sit dreaming On the timbers grey and a charred hut frame, Where the legs slant down, and the hare is squatting In the high rank grass by the dried-up course, Nigh a shattered drum and a king-post rotting Are the bleaching bones of the old grey horse.