All is pitched in a higher key,
Lilac, topaz, and ivory,
Palest jade-green and pale clear blue
Like aquamarines that the sun shines through,
Golds and silvers, we have at will—
Silver and gold on each plain and hill,
Silver-green of the myall leaves,
Tawny gold of the garnered sheaves,
Silver rivers that silent slide,
Golden sands by the water-side,
Golden wattle, and golden broom,
Silver stars of the rosewood bloom;
Amber sunshine, and smoke-blue shade:
Opal colours that glow and fade;
On the gold of the upland grass
Blue cloud-shadows that swiftly pass;
Wood-smoke blown in an azure mist;
Hills of tenuous amethyst....
Oft the colours are pitched so high
The deepest note is the cobalt sky;
We have to wait till the sunset comes
For shades that feel like the beat of drums
Or like organ notes in their rise and fall—
Purple and orange and cardinal,
Or the peacock-green that turns soft and slow
To peacock-blue as the great stars show....
Sugar-gum boles flushed to peach-blow pink;
Blue-gums, tall at the clearing’s brink;
Ivory pillars, their smooth fine slope
Dappled with delicate heliotrope;
Grey of the twisted mulga-roots;
Golden-bronze of the budding shoots;
Tints of the lichens that cling and spread,
Nile-green, primrose, and palest red....
Sheen of the bronze-wing; blue of the crane;
Fawn and pearl of the lyrebird’s train;
Cream of the plover; grey of the dove—
These are the hues of the land I love.
FROM A TOWN WINDOW
From my high-jutting window in town
Looking down,
The lights constellated burn steady and far;
The purple skies meet with the dark at my feet,
I hardly can tell which is lamp and which star.
And the tall sombre buildings that rise
Near my eyes
Where one lighted window shines gold in the dark,
Unsubstantial show, that I see them as though
I could walk through the walls without leaving a mark.
And the purring and murmurous choir
Of the wire
That leads the chained lightning a slave through the street,
In the night-stillness comes like the throbbing of drums,
Like the distant, dread sound of innumerable feet.