Preface
This Australian poet was born in 1839 near Milton, New South Wales, and began publishing verse in Sydney journals in 1859. He published his first volume of verse in 1862. His verse brought critical success, but no real income, and his life ended in despondency, alcoholism and ill health, in 1882. However, his 1880 third volume of poems, Songs from the Mountains, was a popular success, and broke contemporary sales records for Australian verse.
Listed below are the 15 different Henry Kendall poems. Clicking on any link will take you directly to that poem.
By channels of coolness the echoes are calling,
And down the dim gorges I hear the creek falling;
It lives in the mountain, where moss and the sedges
Touch with their beauty the banks and the ledges;
Through brakes of the cedar and sycamore bowers
Struggles the light that is love to the flowers.
And, softer than slumber, and sweeter than singing,
The notes of the bell-birds are running and ringing.
The silver-voiced bell-birds, the darlings of day-time,
They sing in September their songs of the May-time.
When shadows wax strong and the thunder-bolts hurtle,
They hide with their fear in the leaves of the myrtle;
When rain and the sunbeams shine mingled together
They start up like fairies that follow fair weather,
And straightway the hues of their feathers unfolden
Are the green and the purple, the blue and the golden.
October, the maiden of bright yellow tresses,
Loiters for love in these cool wildernesses;
Loiters knee-deep in the grasses to listen,
Where dripping rocks gleam and the leafy pools glisten.
Then is the time when the water-moons splendid
Break with their gold, and are scattered or blended
Over the creeks, till the woodlands have warning
Of songs of the bell-bird and wings of the morning.
Welcome as waters unkissed by the summers
Are the voices of bell-birds to thirsty far-comers.
When fiery December sets foot in the forest,
And the need of the wayfarer presses the sorest,
Pent in the ridges for ever and ever.
The bell-birds direct him to spring and to river,
With ring and with ripple, like runnels whose torrents
Are toned by the pebbles and leaves in the currents.
Often I sit, looking back to a childhood
Mixt with the sights and the sounds of the wildwood,
Longing for power and the sweetness to fashion
Lyrics with beats like the heart-beats of passion -
Songs interwoven of lights and of laughters
Borrowed from bell-birds in far forest rafters;
So I might keep in the city and alleys
The beauty and strength of the deep mountain valleys,
Charming to slumber the pain of my losses
With glimpses of creeks and a vision of mosses.
Henry Kendall
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Grey 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 ways of the frost have been filled of the flowers,
While the forest discovers
Wild wings, with the halo of hyaline hours,
And the music of lovers.
September, the maid with the swift, silver feet!
She glides, and she graces
The valleys of coolness, the slopes of the heat,
With her blossomy traces;
Sweet month, with a mouth that is made of a rose,
She lightens and lingers
In spots where the harp of the evening 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,
Is filled with a tender and tremulous tune
That touches and teaches;
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,
In the cool mountain-mosses,
May whisper together, September, alone
Of our loves and our losses!
One word for her beauty, and one for the grace
She gave to the hours;
And then we may kiss her, and suffer her face
To sleep with the flowers.
High places that knew of the gold and the white
On the forehead of Morning
Now darken and quake, and the steps of the Night
Are heavy with warning.
Her voice in the distance is lofty and loud
Through the echoing gorges;
She hath hidden her eyes in a mantle of cloud,
And her feet in the surges.
On the tops of the hills, on the turreted cones -
Chief temples of thunder -
The gale, like a ghost, in the middle watch moans,
Gliding over and under.
The sea, flying white through the rack and the rain,
Leapeth wild at the forelands;
And the plover, whose cry is like passion with pain,
Complains in the moorlands.
Oh, season of changes - of shadow and shine -
September the splendid!
My song hath no music to mingle with thine,
And its burden is ended;
But thou, being born of the winds and the sun,
By mountain, by river,
Mayst lighten and listen, and loiter and run,
With thy voices for ever!
Henry Kendall
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The warrigal's lair is pent in bare,
Black rocks at the gorge's mouth;
It is set in ways where Summer strays
With the sprites of flame and drouth;
But when the heights are touched with lights
Of hoar-frost, sleet, and shine,
His bed is made of the dead grass-blade
And the leaves of the windy pine.
Through forest boles the storm-wind rolls,
Vext of the sea-driv'n rain;
And, up in the clift, through many a rift,
The voices of torrents complain.
The sad marsh-fowl and the lonely owl
Are heard in the fog-wreaths grey,
When the warrigal wakes, and listens, and takes
To the woods that shelter the prey.
In the gully-deeps the blind creek sleeps,
And the silver, showery moon
Glides over the hills, and floats, and fills,
And dreams in the dark lagoon;
While halting hard by the station yard,
Aghast at the hut-flame nigh,
The warrigal yells - and flats and fells
Are loud with his dismal cry.
On the topmost peak of mountains bleak
The south wind sobs, and strays
Through moaning pine and turpentine,
And the rippling runnel ways;
And strong streams flow, and great mists go,
Where the warrigal starts to hear
The watch-dog's bark break sharp in the dark,
And flees like a phantom of fear.
The swift rains beat, and the thunders fleet
On the wings of the fiery gale,
And down in the glen of pool and fen,
The wild gums whistle and wail,
As over the plains and past the chains
Of waterholes glimmering deep,
The warrigal flies from the shepherd's cries,
And the clamour of dogs and sheep.
He roves through the lands of sultry sands,
He hunts in the iron range,
Untamed as surge of the far sea verge,
And fierce and fickle and strange.
The white man's track and the haunts of the black
He shuns, and shudders to see;
For his joy he tastes in lonely wastes
Where his mates are torrent and tree.
Henry Kendall
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(The name of a watercourse, often dry, which in flood-time reaches the river Darling.)
As when the strong stream of a wintering sea
Rolls round our coast, with bodeful breaks of storm,
And swift salt rain, and bitter wind that saith
Wild things and woeful of the White South Land
Alone with God and silence in the cold -
As when this cometh, men from dripping doors
Look forth, and shudder for the mariners
Abroad, so we for absent brothers looked
In days of drought, and when the flying floods
Swept boundless; roaring down the bald, black plains
Beyond the farthest spur of western hills.
For where the Barwon cuts a rotten land,
Or lies unshaken, like a great blind creek,
Between hot mouldering banks, it came to this,
All in a time of short and thirsty sighs,
That thirty rainless months had left the pools
And grass as dry as ashes: then it was
Our kinsmen started for the lone Paroo,
From point to point, with patient strivings, sheer
Across the horrors of the windless downs,
Blue gleaming like a sea of molten steel.
But never drought had broke them: never flood
Had quenched them: they with mighty youth and health,
And thews and sinews knotted like the trees -
They, like the children of the native woods,
Could stem the strenuous waters, or outlive
The crimson days and dull, dead nights of thirst
Like camels: yet of what avail was strength
Alone to them - though it was like the rocks
On stormy mountains - in the bloody time
When fierce sleep caught them in the camps at rest,
And violent darkness gripped the life in them
And whelmed them, as an eagle unawares
Is whelmed and slaughtered in a sudden snare.
All murdered by the blacks; smit while they lay
In silver dreams, and with the far, faint fall
Of many waters breaking on their sleep!
Yea, in the tracts unknown of any man
Save savages - the dim-discovered ways
Of footless silence or unhappy winds -
The wild men came upon them, like a fire
Of desert thunder; and the fine, firm lips
That touched a mother's lips a year before,
And hands that knew a dearer hand than life,
Were hewn - a sacrifice before the stars,
And left with hooting owls and blowing clouds,
And falling leaves and solitary wings!
Aye, you may see their graves - you who have toiled
And tripped and thirsted, like these men of ours;
For, verily, I say that not so deep
Their bones are that the scattered drift and dust
Of gusty days will never leave them bare.
O dear, dead, bleaching bones! I know of those
Who have the wild, strong will to go and sit
Outside all things with you, and keep the ways
Aloof from bats, and snakes, and trampling feet
That smite your peace and theirs - who have the heart,
Without the lusty limbs, to face the fire
And moonless midnights, and to be, indeed,
For very sorrow, like a moaning wind
In wintry forests with perpetual rain.
Because of this - because of sisters left
With desperate purpose and dishevelled hair,
And broken breath, and sweetness quenched in tears -
Because of swifter silver for the head,
And furrows for the face - because of these
That should have come with age, that come with pain -
O Master! Father! sitting where our eyes
Are tired of looking, say for once are we -
Are we to set our lips with weary smiles
Before the bitterness of Life and Death,
And call it honey, while we bear away
A taste like wormwood?
Turn thyself, and sing -
Sing, Son of Sorrow! Is there any gain
For breaking of the loins, for melting eyes,
And knees as weak as water? - any peace,
Or hope for casual breath and labouring lips,
For clapping of the palms, and sharper sighs
Than frost; or any light to come for those
Who stand and mumble in the alien streets
With heads as grey as Winter? - any balm
For pleading women, and the love that knows
Of nothing left to love?
They sleep a sleep
Unknown of dreams, these darling friends of ours.
And we who taste the core of many tales
Of tribulation - we whose lives are salt
With tears indeed - we therefore hide our eyes
And weep in secret, lest our grief should risk
The rest that hath no hurt from daily racks
Of fiery clouds and immemorial rains.
Henry Kendall
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The rain-clouds have gone to the deep -
The East like a furnace doth glow;
And the day-spring is flooding the steep,
And sheening the landscape below.
Oh, ye who are gifted with souls
That delight in the music of birds,
Come forth where the scattered mist rolls,
And listen to eloquent words!
Oh, ye who are fond of the sport,
And would travel yon wilderness through,
Gather - each to his place - for a life-stirring chase,
In the wake of the wild Kangaroo!
Gather - each to his place -
For a life-stirring chase
In the wake of the wild Kangaroo!
Beyond the wide rents of the fog,
The trees are illumined with gold;
And the bark of the shepherd's brave dog
Shoots away from the sheltering fold.
Down the depths of yon rock-border'd glade,
A torrent goes foaming along;
And the blind-owls retire into shade,
And the bell-bird beginneth its song.
By the side of that yawning abyss,
Where the vapours are hurrying to,
We will merrily pass, looking down to the grass
For the tracks of the wild Kangaroo!
We will merrily pass,
Looking down to the grass
For the tracks of the wild Kangaroo.
Ho, brothers, away to the woods;
Euroka hath clambered the hill;
But the morning there seldom intrudes,
Where the night-shadows slumber on still.
We will roam o'er these forest-lands wild,
And thread the dark masses of vines,
Where the winds, like the voice of a child,
Are singing aloft in the pines.
We must keep down the glee of our hounds;
We must steal through the glittering dew;
And the breezes shall sleep as we cautiously creep
To the haunts of the wild Kangaroo.
And the breezes shall sleep,
As we cautiously creep
To the haunts of the wild Kangaroo.
When we pass through a stillness like death
The swamp fowl and timorous quail,
Like the leaves in a hurricane's breath,
Will start from their nests in the vale;
And the forester,* snuffing the air,
Will bound from his covert so dark,
While we follow along in the rear,
As arrows speed on to their mark!
Then the swift hounds shall bring him to bay,
And we'll send forth a hearty halloo,
As we gather them all to be in at the fall -
At the death of the wild Kangaroo!
As we gather them all
To be in at the fall -
At the death of the wild Kangaroo!
The kangaroo*
Henry Kendall
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(The Squatters' Song)
From the runs of the Narran, wide-dotted with sheep,
And loud with the lowing of cattle,
We speed for a land where the strange forests sleep
And the hidden creeks bubble and brattle!
Now call on the horses, and leave the blind courses
And sources of rivers that all of us know;
For, crossing the ridges, and passing the ledges,
And running up gorges, we'll come to the verges
Of gullies where waters eternally flow.
Oh! the herds they will rush down the spurs of the hill
To feed on the grasses so cool and so sweet;
And I think that my life with delight will stand still
When we halt with the pleasant Barcoo at our feet.
Good-bye to the Barwon, and brigalow scrubs,
Adieu to the Culgoa ranges,
But look for the mulga and salt-bitten shrubs,
Though the face of the forest-land changes.
The leagues we may travel down beds of hot gravel,
And clay-crusted reaches where moisture hath been,
While searching for waters, may vex us and thwart us,
Yet who would be quailing, or fainting, or failing?
Not you, who are men of the Narran, I ween!
When we leave the dry channels away to the south,
And reach the far plains we are journeying to,
We will cry, though our lips may be glued with the drouth,
Hip, hip, and hurrah for the pleasant Barcoo!
Henry Kendall
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The leaders of millions, the lords of the lands,
Who sway the wide world with their will
And shake the great globe with the strength of their hands,
Flash past us - unnoticed by Bill.
The elders of science who measure the spheres
And weigh the vast bulk of the sun -
Who see the grand lights beyond aeons of years,
Are less than a bullock to one.
The singers that sweeten all time with their song -
Pure voices that make us forget
Humanity's drama of marvellous wrong -
To Bill are as mysteries yet.
By thunders of battle and nations uphurled,
Bill's sympathies never were stirred:
The helmsmen who stand at the wheel of the world
By him are unknown and unheard.
What trouble has Bill for the ruin of lands,
Or the quarrels of temple and throne,
So long as the whip that he holds in his hands
And the team that he drives are his own?
As straight and as sound as a slab without crack,
Our Bill is a king in his way;
Though he camps by the side of a shingle track,
And sleeps on the bed of his dray.
A whip-lash to him is as dear as a rose
Would be to a delicate maid;
He carries his darlings wherever he goes,
In a pocket-book tattered and frayed.
The joy of a bard when he happens to write
A song like the song of his dream
Is nothing at all to our hero's delight
In the pluck and the strength of his team.
For the kings of the earth, for the faces august
Of princes, the millions may shout;
To Bill, as he lumbers along in the dust,
A bullock's the grandest thing out.
His four-footed friends are the friends of his choice -
No lover is Bill of your dames;
But the cattle that turn at the sound of his voice
Have the sweetest of features and names.
A father's chief joy is a favourite son,
When he reaches some eminent goal,
But the pride of Bill's heart is the hairy-legged one
That pulls with a will at the pole.
His dray is no living, responsible thing,
But he gives it the gender of life;
And, seeing his fancy is free in the wing,
It suits him as well as a wife.
He thrives like an Arab. Between the two wheels
Is his bedroom, where, lying up-curled,
He thinks for himself, like a sultan, and feels
That his home is the best in the world.
For, even though cattle, like subjects, will break
At times from the yoke and the band,
Bill knows how to act when his rule is at stake,
And is therefore a lord of the land.
Of course he must dream; but be sure that his dreams,
If happy, must compass, alas!
Fat bullocks at feed by improbable streams,
Knee-deep in improbable grass.
No poet is Bill, for the visions of night
To him are as visions of day;
And the pipe that in sleep he endeavours to light
Is the pipe that he smokes on the dray.
To the mighty, magnificent temples of God,
In the hearts of the dominant hills,
Bill's eyes are as blind as the fire-blackened clod
That burns far away from the rills.
Through beautiful, bountiful forests that screen
A marvel of blossoms from heat -
Whose lights are the mellow and golden and green -
Bill walks with irreverent feet.
The manifold splendours of mountain and wood
By Bill like nonentities slip;
He loves the black myrtle because it is good
As a handle to lash to his whip.
And thus through the world, with a swing in his tread,
Our hero self-satisfied goes;
With his cabbage-tree hat on the back of his head,
And the string of it under his nose.
Poor bullocky Bill! In the circles select
Of the scholars he hasn't a place;
But he walks like a man, with his forehead erect,
And he looks at God's day in the face.
For, rough as he seems, he would shudder to wrong
A dog with the loss of a hair;
And the angels of shine and superlative song
See his heart and the deity there.
Few know him, indeed; but the beauty that glows
In the forest is loveliness still;
And Providence helping the life of the rose
Is a Friend and a Father to Bill.
Henry Kendall
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No song is this of leaf and bird,
And gracious waters flowing;
I'm sick at heart, for I have heard
Big Billy Vickers "blowing".
He'd never take a leading place
In chambers legislative:
This booby with the vacant face -
This hoddy-doddy native!
Indeed, I'm forced to say aside,
To you, O reader, solely,
He only wants the horns and hide
To be a bullock wholly.
But, like all noodles, he is vain;
And when his tongue is wagging,
I feel inclined to copy Cain,
And "drop" him for his bragging.
He, being Bush-bred, stands, of course,
Six feet his dirty socks in;
His lingo is confined to horse
And plough, and pig and oxen.
Two years ago he'd less to say
Within his little circuit;
But now he has, besides a dray,
A team of twelve to work it.
No wonder is it that he feels
Inclined to clack and rattle
About his bullocks and his wheels -
He owns a dozen cattle.
In short, to be exact and blunt,
In his own estimation
He's "out and out" the head and front
Top-sawyer of creation!
For, mark me, he can "sit a buck"
For hours and hours together;
And never horse has had the luck
To pitch him from the leather.
If ever he should have a "spill"
Upon the grass or gravel,
Be sure of this, the saddle will
With Billy Vickers travel.
At punching oxen you may guess
There's nothing out can "camp" him:
He has, in fact, the slouch and dress
Which bullock-driver stamp him.
I do not mean to give offence,
But I have vainly striven
To ferret out the difference
'Twixt driver and the driven.
Of course, the statements herein made
In every other stanza
Are Billy's own; and I'm afraid
They're stark extravaganza.
I feel constrained to treat as trash
His noisy fiddle-faddle
About his doings with the lash,
His feats upon the saddle.
But grant he "knows his way about",
Or grant that he is silly,
There cannot be the slightest doubt
Of Billy's faith in Billy.
Of all the doings of the day
His ignorance is utter;
But he can quote the price of hay,
The current rate of butter.
His notions of our leading men
Are mixed and misty very:
He knows a cochin-china hen -
He never speaks of Berry.
As you'll assume, he hasn't heard
Of Madame Patti's singing;
But I will stake my solemn word
He knows what maize is bringing.
Surrounded by majestic peaks,
By lordly mountain ranges,
Where highest voice of thunder speaks
His aspect never changes.
The grand Pacific there beyond
His dirty hut is glowing:
He only sees a big salt pond,
O'er which his grain is going.
The sea that covers half the sphere,
With all its stately speeches,
Is held by Bill to be a mere
Broad highway for his peaches.
Through Nature's splendid temples he
Plods, under mountains hoary;
But he has not the eyes to see
Their grandeur and their glory.
A bullock in a biped's boot,
I iterate, is Billy!
He crushes with a careless foot
The touching water-lily.
I've said enough - I'll let him go!
If he could read these verses,
He'd pepper me for hours, I know,
With his peculiar curses.
But this is sure, he'll never change
His manners loud and flashy,
Nor learn with neatness to arrange
His clothing, cheap and trashy.
Like other louts, he'll jog along,
And swig at shanty liquors,
And chew and spit. Here ends the song
Of Mr. Billy Vickers.
Henry Kendall
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The bard who is singing of Wollombi Jim
Is hardly just now in the requisite trim
To sit on his Pegasus fairly;
Besides, he is bluntly informed by the Muse
That Jim is a subject no singer should choose;
For Jim is poetical rarely.
But being full up of the myths that are Greek -
Of the classic, and noble, and nude, and antique,
Which means not a rag but the pelt on;
This poet intends to give Daphne the slip,
For the sake of a hero in moleskin and kip,
With a jumper and snake-buckle belt on.
No party is Jim of the Pericles type -
He is modern right up from the toe to the pipe;
And being no reader or roamer,
He hasn't Euripides much in the head;
And let it be carefully, tenderly said,
He never has analysed Homer.
He can roar out a song of the twopenny kind;
But, knowing the beggar so well, I'm inclined
To believe that a "par" about Kelly,
The rascal who skulked under shadow of curse,
Is more in his line than the happiest verse
On the glittering pages of Shelley.
You mustn't, however, adjudge him in haste,
Because a red robber is more to his taste
Than Ruskin, Rossetti, or Dante!
You see, he was bred in a bangalow wood,
And bangalow pith was the principal food
His mother served out in her shanty.
His knowledge is this - he can tell in the dark
What timber will split by the feel of the bark;
And rough as his manner of speech is,
His wits to the fore he can readily bring
In passing off ash as the genuine thing
When scarce in the forest the beech is.
In girthing a tree that he sells in the round,
He assumes, as a rule, that the body is sound,
And measures, forgetting to bark it!
He may be a ninny, but still the old dog
Can plug to perfection the pipe of a log
And palm it away on the market.
He splits a fair shingle, but holds to the rule
Of his father's, and, haply, his grandfather's school;
Which means that he never has blundered,
When tying his shingles, by slinging in more
Than the recognized number of ninety and four
To the bundle he sells for a hundred!
When asked by the market for ironbark red,
It always occurs to the Wollombi head
To do a "mahogany" swindle.
In forests where never the ironbark grew,
When Jim is at work, it would flabbergast you
To see how the ironbarks dwindle.
He can stick to the saddle, can Wollombi Jim,
And when a buckjumper dispenses with him,
The leather goes off with the rider.
And, as to a team, over gully and hill
He can travel with twelve on the breadth of a quill
And boss the unlucky offsider.
He shines at his best at the tiller of saw,
On the top of the pit, where his whisper is law
To the gentleman working below him.
When the pair of them pause in a circle of dust,
Like a monarch he poses - exalted, august -
There's nothing this planet can show him!
For a man is a man who can sharpen and set,
And he is the only thing masculine yet
According to sawyer and splitter -
Or rather according to Wollombi Jim;
And nothing will tempt me to differ from him,
For Jim is a bit of a hitter.
But, being full up, we'll allow him to rip,
Along with his lingo, his saw, and his whip -
He isn't the classical notion.
And, after a night in his humpy, you see,
A person of orthodox habits would be
Refreshed by a dip in the ocean.
To tot him right up from the heel to the head,
He isn't the Grecian of whom we have read -
His face is a trifle too shady.
The nymph in green valleys of Thessaly dim
Would never "jack up" her old lover for him,
For she has the tastes of a lady.
So much for our hero! A statuesque foot
Would suffer by wearing that heavy-nailed boot -
Its owner is hardly Achilles.
However, he's happy! He cuts a great "fig"
In the land where a coat is no part of the rig -
In the country of damper and billies.
Henry Kendall
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Lordly harp, by lordly master wakened from majestic sleep,
Yet shall speak and yet shall sing the words which make the fathers weep!
Voice surpassing human voices - high, unearthly harmony -
Yet shall tell the tale of hero, in exalted years to be!
In the ranges, by the rivers, on the uplands, down the dells,
Where the sound of wind and wave is, where the mountain anthem swells,
Yet shall float the song of lustre, sweet with tears and fair with flame,
Shining with a theme of beauty, holy with our Leichhardt's name!
Name of him who faced for science thirsty tracts of bitter glow,
Lurid lands that no one knows of - two-and-thirty years ago.
Born by hills of hard grey weather, far beyond the northern seas,
German mountains were his sponsors, and his mates were German trees;
Grandeur of the old-world forests passed into his radiant soul,
With the song of stormy crescents where the mighty waters roll.
Thus he came to be a brother of the river and the wood -
Thus the leaf, the bird, the blossom, grew a gracious sisterhood;
Nature led him to her children, in a space of light divine:
Kneeling down, he said - "My mother, let me be as one of thine!"
So she took him - thence she loved him - lodged him in her home of dreams,
Taught him what the trees were saying, schooled him in the speech of streams.
For her sake he crossed the waters - loving her, he left the place
Hallowed by his father's ashes, and his human mother's face -
Passed the seas and entered temples domed by skies of deathless beam,
Walled about by hills majestic, stately spires and peaks supreme!
Here he found a larger beauty - here the lovely lights were new
On the slopes of many flowers, down the gold-green dells of dew.
In the great august cathedral of his holy lady, he
Daily worshipped at her altars, nightly bent the reverent knee -
Heard the hymns of night and morning, learned the psalm of solitudes;
Knew that God was very near him - felt His presence in the woods!
But the starry angel, Science, from the home of glittering wings,
Came one day and talked to Nature by melodious mountain springs:
"Let thy son be mine," she pleaded; "lend him for a space," she said,
"So that he may earn the laurels I have woven for his head!"
And the lady, Nature, listened; and she took her loyal son
From the banks of moss and myrtle - led him to the Shining One!
Filled his lordly soul with gladness - told him of a spacious zone
Eye of man had never looked at, human foot had never known.
Then the angel, Science, beckoned, and he knelt and whispered low -
"I will follow where you lead me" - two-and-thirty years ago.
On the tracts of thirst and furnace - on the dumb, blind, burning plain,
Where the red earth gapes for moisture, and the wan leaves hiss for rain,
In a land of dry, fierce thunder, did he ever pause and dream
Of the cool green German valley and the singing German stream?
When the sun was as a menace, glaring from a sky of brass,
Did he ever rest, in visions, on a lap of German grass?
Past the waste of thorny terrors, did he reach a sphere of rills,
In a region yet untravelled, ringed by fair untrodden hills?
Was the spot where last he rested pleasant as an old-world lea?
Did the sweet winds come and lull him with the music of the sea?
Let us dream so - let us hope so! Haply in a cool green glade,
Far beyond the zone of furnace, Leichhardt's sacred shell was laid!
Haply in some leafy valley, underneath blue, gracious skies,
In the sound of mountain water, the heroic traveller lies!
Down a dell of dewy myrtle, where the light is soft and green,
And a month like English April sits, an immemorial queen,
Let us think that he is resting - think that by a radiant grave
Ever come the songs of forest, and the voices of the wave!
Thus we want our sons to find him - find him under floral bowers,
Sleeping by the trees he loved so, covered with his darling flowers!
Henry Kendall
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[Note: in this context, the title refers to those migrating to Australia, not those emigrating from Australia.]
How dazzling the sunbeams awoke on the spray,
When Australia first rose in the distance away,
As welcome to us on the deck of the bark,
As the dove to the vision of those in the ark!
What fairylike fancies appear'd to the view
As nearer and nearer the haven we drew!
What castles were built and rebuilt in the brain,
To totter and crumble to nothing again!
We had roam'd o'er the ocean - had travers'd a path,
Where the tempest surrounded and shriek'd in its wrath:
Alike we had roll'd in the hurricane's breath,
And slumber'd on waters as silent as death:
We had watch'd the Day breaking each morn on the main,
And had seen it sink down in the billows again;
For week after week, till dishearten'd we thought
An age would elapse ere we enter'd the port.
How often while ploughing the 'watery waste',
Our thoughts - from the Future have turn'd to the Past;
How often our bosoms have heav'd with regret;
For faces and scenes we could never forget:
For we'd seen as the shadows o'er-curtain'd our minds
The cliffs of old England receding behind;
And had turned in our tears from the view of the shore,
The land of our childhood, to see it no more.
But when that red morning awoke from its sleep,
To show us this land like a cloud on the deep;
And when the warm sunbeams imparted their glow,
To the heavens above and the ocean below;
The hearts ' had been aching then revell'd with joy,
And a pleasure was tasted exempt from alloy;
The souls ' had been heavy grew happy and light
And all was forgotten in present delight.
'Tis true - of the hopes that were verdant that day
There is more than the half of them withered away:
'Tis true that emotions of temper'd regret,
Still live for the country we'll never forget;
But yet we are happy, since learning to love
The scenes that surround us - the skies are above,
We find ourselves bound, as it were by a spell,
In the clime we've adopted contented to dwell.
Henry Kendall
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"All day a strong sun has been drinking
The ponds in the Wattletree Glen;
And now as they're puddles, I'm thinking
We were wise to head hitherwards, men!
The country is heavy to nor'ard,
But Lord, how you rattled along!
Jack's chestnut's best leg was put for'ard,
And the bay from the start galloped strong;
But for bottom, I'd stake my existence,
There's none of the lot like the mare;
For look! she has come the whole distance
With never the 'turn of a hair'.
"But now let us stop, for the 'super'
Will want us to-morrow by noon;
And as he can swear like a trooper,
We can't be a minute too soon.
Here, Dick, you can hobble the filly
And chestnut, but don't take a week;
And, Jack, hurry off with the billy
And fill it. We'll camp by the creek."
So spoke the old stockman, and quickly
We made ourselves snug for the night;
The smoke-wreaths above us curled thickly,
For our pipes were the first thing a-light!
As we sat round a fire that only
A well-seasoned bushman can make,
Far forests grew silent and lonely,
Though the paw was astir in the brake,
But not till our supper was ended,
And not till old Bill was asleep,
Did wild things by wonder attended
In shot of our camping-ground creep.
Scared eyes from thick tuft and tree-hollow
Gleamed out thro' the forest-boles stark;
And ever a hurry would follow
Of fugitive feet in the dark.
While Dick and I yarned and talked over
Old times that had gone like the sun,
The wail of the desolate plover
Came up from the swamps in the run.
And sniffing our supper, elated,
From his den the red dingo crawled out;
But skulked in the darkness, and waited,
Like a cunning but cowardly scout.
Thereafter came sleep that soon falls on
A man who has ridden all day;
And when midnight had deepened the palls on
The hills, we were snoring away.
But ere we dozed off, the wild noises
Of forest, of fen, and of stream,
Grew strange, and were one with the voices
That died with a sweet semi-dream.
And the tones of the waterfall, blended
With the song of the wind on the shore,
Became a soft psalm that ascended,
Grew far, and we heard it no more.
Henry Kendall
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In the beams of a beautiful day,
Made soft by a breeze from the sea,
The horses were started away,
The fleet-footed thirty and three;
Where beauty, with shining attire,
Shed more than a noon on the land,
Like spirits of thunder and fire
They flashed by the fence and the stand.
And the mouths of pale thousands were hushed
When Somnus, a marvel of strength,
Past Bowes like a sudden wind rushed,
And led the bay colt by a length;
But a chestnut came galloping through,
And, down where the river-tide steals,
O'Brien, on brave Waterloo,
Dashed up to the big horse's heels.
But Cracknell still kept to the fore,
And first by the water bend wheeled,
When a cry from the stand, and a roar
Ran over green furlongs of field;
Far out by the back of the course -
A demon of muscle and pluck -
Flashed onward the favourite horse,
With his hoofs flaming clear of the ruck.
But the wonderful Queenslander came,
And the thundering leaders were three;
And a ring, and a roll of acclaim,
Went out, like a surge of the sea:
"An Epigram! Epigram wins!" -
"The Colt of the Derby" - "The bay!"
But back where the crescent begins
The favourite melted away.
And the marvel that came from the North,
With another, was heavily thrown;
And here at the turning flashed forth
To the front a surprising unknown;
By shed and by paddock and gate
The strange, the magnificent black,
Led Darebin a length in the straight,
With thirty and one at his back.
But the Derby colt tired at the rails,
And Ivory's marvellous bay
Passed Burton, O'Brien, and Hales,
As fleet as a flash of the day.
But Gough on the African star
Came clear in the front of his "field",
Hard followed by Morrison's Czar
And the blood unaccustomed to yield.
Yes, first from the turn to the end,
With a boy on him paler than ghost,
The horse that had hardly a friend
Shot flashing like fire by the post.
When Graham was "riding" 'twas late
For his friends to applaud on the stands,
The black, through the bend and "the straight",
Had the race of the year in his hands.
In a clamour of calls and acclaim,
He landed the money - the horse
With the beautiful African name,
That rang to the back of the course.
Hurrah for the Hercules race,
And the terror that came from his stall,
With the bright, the intelligent face,
To show the road home to them all!
Henry Kendall
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I dread that street - its haggard face
I have not seen for eight long years;
A mother's curse is on the place,
(There's blood, my reader, in her tears).
No child of man shall ever track,
Through filthy dust, the singer's feet -
A fierce old memory drags me back;
I hate its name - I dread that street.
Upon the lap of green, sweet lands,
Whose months are like your English Mays,
I try to hide in Lethe's sands
The bitter, old Bohemian days.
But sorrow speaks in singing leaf,
And trouble talketh in the tide;
The skirts of a stupendous grief
Are trailing ever at my side.
I will not say who suffered there,
'Tis best the name aloof to keep,
Because the world is very fair -
Its light should sing the dark to sleep.
But, let me whisper, in that street
A woman, faint through want of bread,
Has often pawned the quilt and sheet
And wept upon a barren bed.
How gladly would I change my theme,
Or cease the song and steal away,
But on the hill and by the stream
A ghost is with me night and day!
A dreadful darkness, full of wild,
Chaotic visions, comes to me:
I seem to hear a dying child,
Its mother's face I seem to see.
Here, surely, on this bank of bloom,
My verse with shine would ever flow;
But ah! it comes - the rented room,
With man and wife who suffered so!
From flower and leaf there is no hint -
I only see a sharp distress -
A lady in a faded print,
A careworn writer for the press.
I only hear the brutal curse
Of landlord clamouring for his pay;
And yonder is the pauper's hearse
That comes to take a child away.
Apart, and with the half-grey head
Of sudden age, again I see
The father writing by the dead
To earn the undertaker's fee.
No tear at all is asked for him -
A drunkard well deserves his life;
But voice will quiver, eyes grow dim,
For her, the patient, pure young wife,
The gentle girl of better days,
As timid as a mountain fawn,
Who used to choose untrodden ways,
And place at night her rags in pawn.
She could not face the lighted square,
Or show the street her poor, thin dress;
In one close chamber, bleak and bare,
She hid her burden of distress.
Her happy schoolmates used to drive,
On gaudy wheels, the town about;
The meat that keeps a dog alive
She often had to go without.
I tell you, this is not a tale
Conceived by me, but bitter truth;
Bohemia knows it, pinched and pale,
Beside the pyre of burnt-out youth:
These eyes of mine have often seen
The sweet girl-wife, in winters rude,
Steal out at night, through courts unclean,
To hunt about for chips of wood.
Have I no word at all for him
Who used down fetid lanes to slink,
And squat in tap-room corners grim,
And drown his thoughts in dregs of drink?
This much I'll say, that when the flame
Of reason reassumed its force,
The hell the Christian fears to name,
Was heaven to his fierce remorse.
Just think of him - beneath the ban,
And steeped in sorrow to the neck,
Without a friend - a feeble man,
In failing health - a human wreck.
With all his sense and scholarship,
How could he face his fading wife?
The devil never lifted whip
With thongs like those that scourged his life.
But He in whom the dying thief
Upon the Cross did place his trust,
Forgets the sin and feels the grief,
And lifts the sufferer from the dust.
And now, because I have a dream,
The man and woman found the light;
A glory burns upon the stream,
With gold and green the woods are bright.
But still I hate that haggard street,
Its filthy courts, its alleys wild;
In dreams of it I always meet
The phantom of a wailing child.
The name of it begets distress -
Ah, song, be silent! show no more
The lady in the perished dress,
The scholar on the tap-room floor.
Henry Kendall
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Where Hornby, like a mighty fallen star,
Burns through the darkness with a splendid ring
Of tenfold light, and where the awful face
Of Sydney's northern headland stares all night
O'er dark, determined waters from the east,
From year to year a wild, Titanic voice
Of fierce aggressive sea shoots up and makes, -
When storm sails high through drifts of driving sleet,
And in the days when limpid waters glass
December's sunny hair and forest face, -
A roaring down by immemorial caves,
A thunder in the everlasting hills.
But calm and lucid as an English lake,
Beloved by beams and wooed by wind and wing,
Shut in from tempest-trampled wastes of wave,
And sheltered from white wraths of surge by walls -
Grand ramparts founded by the hand of God,
The lordly Harbour gleams. Yea, like a shield
Of marvellous gold dropped in his fiery flight
By some lost angel in the elder days,
When Satan faced and fought Omnipotence,
It shines amongst fair, flowering hills, and flows
By dells of glimmering greenness manifold.
And all day long, when soft-eyed Spring comes round
With gracious gifts of bird and leaf and grass -
And through the noon, when sumptuous Summer sleeps
By yellowing runnels under beetling cliffs,
This royal water blossoms far and wide
With ships from all the corners of the world.
And while sweet Autumn with her gipsy face
Stands in the gardens, splashed from heel to thigh
With spinning vine-blood - yea, and when the mild,
Wan face of our Australian Winter looks
Across the congregated southern fens,
Then low, melodious, shell-like songs are heard
Beneath proud hulls and pompous clouds of sail,
By yellow beaches under lisping leaves
And hidden nooks to Youth and Beauty dear,
And where the ear may catch the counter-voice
Of Ocean travelling over far, blue tracts.
Moreover, when the moon is gazing down
Upon her lovely reflex in the wave,
(What time she, sitting in the zenith, makes
A silver silence over stirless woods),
Then, where its echoes start at sudden bells,
And where its waters gleam with flying lights,
The haven lies, in all its beauty clad,
More lovely even than the golden lakes
The poet saw, while dreaming splendid dreams
Which showed his soul the far Hesperides.
Henry Kendall
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