John Dunmore Lang
The song that is last of the many
Whose music is full of thy name,
Is weaker, O father! than any,
Is fainter than flickering flame.
But far in the folds of the mountains
Whose bases are hoary with sea,
By lone immemorial fountains
This singer is mourning for thee.
Because thou wert chief and a giant
With those who fought on for the right
A hero determined, defiant;
As flame was the sleep of thy might.
Like Stephen in days that are olden,
Thy lot with a rabble was cast,
But seasons came on that were golden,
And Peace was thy mother at last.
I knew of thy fierce tribulation,
Thou wert ever the same in my thought—
The father and friend of a nation
Through good and through evil report.
At Ephesus, fighting in fetters,
Paul drove the wild beasts to their pen;
So thou with the lash of thy letters
Whipped infamy back to its den.
The noise of thy battle is over,
Thy sword is hung up in its sheath;
Thy grave has been decked by its lover
With beauty of willowy wreath.
The winds sing about thee for ever,
The voices of hill and of sea;
But the cry of the conflict will never
Bring sorrow again unto thee.
On a Baby Buried by the Hawkesbury
[Lines sent to a Young Mother.]
A grace that was lent for a very few hours,
By the bountiful Spirit above us;
She sleeps like a flower in the land of the flowers,
She went ere she knew how to love us.
Her music of Heaven was strange to this sphere,
Her voice is a silence for ever;
In the bitter, wild fall of a sorrowful year,
We buried our bird by the river.
But the gold of the grass, and the green of the vine,
And the music of wind and of water,
And the torrent of song and superlative shine,
Are close to our dear little daughter.
The months of the year are all gracious to her,
A winter breath visits her never;
She sleeps like a bird in a cradle of myrrh,
By the banks of the beautiful river.
Song of the Shingle-Splitters
In dark wild woods, where the lone owl broods
And the dingoes nightly yell—
Where the curlew's cry goes floating by,
We splitters of shingles dwell.
And all day through, from the time of the dew
To the hour when the mopoke calls,
Our mallets ring where the woodbirds sing
Sweet hymns by the waterfalls.
And all night long we are lulled by the song
Of gales in the grand old trees;
And in the brakes we can hear the lakes
And the moan of the distant seas.
For afar from heat and dust of street,
And hall and turret and dome,
In forest deep, where the torrents leap,
Is the shingle-splitter's home.
The dweller in town may lie upon down,
And own his palace and park:
We envy him not his prosperous lot,
Though we slumber on sheets of bark.
Our food is rough, but we have enough;
Our drink is better than wine:
For cool creeks flow wherever we go,
Shut in from the hot sunshine.
Though rude our roof, it is weather-proof,
And at the end of the days
We sit and smoke over yarn and joke,
By the bush-fire's sturdy blaze.
For away from din and sorrow and sin,
Where troubles but rarely come,
We jog along, like a merry song,
In the shingle-splitter's home.
What though our work be heavy, we shirk
From nothing beneath the sun;
And toil is sweet to those who can eat
And rest when the day is done.
In the Sabbath-time we hear no chime,
No sound of the Sunday bells;
But yet Heaven smiles on the forest aisles,
And God in the woodland dwells.
We listen to notes from the million throats
Of chorister birds on high,
Our psalm is the breeze in the lordly trees,
And our dome is the broad blue sky.
Oh! a brave, frank life, unsmitten by strife,
We live wherever we roam,
And our hearts are free as the great strong sea,
In the shingle-splitter's home.