Henry Kendall

To the servants of God that are to be found in every denomination,
these verses, of course, do not apply. — H.K.You may have heard of Proclus, sir,
If you have been a reader;
And you may know a bit of her…

The heart that once was rich with light,
And happy in your grace,
Now lieth cold beneath the scorn
That gathers on your face;…

Men have said that ye were sleeping—
Hurl, Australians, back the lie;
Whet the swords you have in keeping,
Forward stand to do or die!…

Barren Age and withered World!
Oh! the dying leaves,
Like a drizzling rain,
Falling round the roof—…

My head is filled with olden rhymes beside this moaning sea,
But many and many a day has gone since I was dear to thee!
I know my passion fades away, and therefore oft regret
That some who love indeed can part and in the years forget.…

I am writing this song at the close
Of a beautiful day of the spring
In a dell where the daffodil grows
By a grove of the glimmering wing;…

Rolling through the gloomy gorges, comes the roaring southern blast,
With a sound of torrents flying, like a routed army, past,
And, beneath the shaggy forelands, strange fantastic forms of surf
Fly, like wild hounds, at the darkness, crouching over sea and earth;…

A song that is bitter with grief—a ballad as pale as the light
That comes with the fall of the leaf, I sing to the shadows to-night.The laugh on the lyrical lips is sadder than laughter of ghosts
Chained back in the pits of eclipse by wailing unnameable coasts.I gathered this wreath at the close of day that was dripping with dew;
The blossom you take for a rose was plucked from the branch of a yew.The flower you fancy is sweet has black in the place of the red;…

The caves of the sea have been troubled to-day
With the water which whitens, and widens, and fills;
And a boat with our brother was driven away
By a wind that came down from the tops of the hills.…

A silver slope, a fall of firs, a league of gleaming grasses,
And fiery cones, and sultry spurs, and swarthy pits and passes!.....The long-haired Cyclops bated breath, and bit his lip and hearkened,
And dug and dragged the stone of death, by ways that dipped and darkened.Across a tract of furnaced flints there came a wind of water,
From yellow banks with tender hints of Tethys' white-armed daughter.She sat amongst wild singing weeds, by beds of myrrh and moly;…

Down in the South, by the waste without sail on it,
Far from the zone of the blossom and tree,
Lieth, with winter and whirlwind and wail on it,
Ghost of a land by the ghost of a sea.…

You know I left my forest home full loth,
And those weird ways I knew so well and long,
Dishevelled with their sloping sidelong growth
Of twisted thorn and kurrajong.It seems to me, my friend (and this wild thought…

Take this rose, and very gently place it on the tender, deep
Mosses where our little darling, Araluen, lies asleep.
Put the blossom close to baby—kneel with me, my love, and pray;
We must leave the bird we've buried—say good-bye to her to-day.…

Where the sinister sun of the Syrians beat
On the brittle, bright stubble,
And the camels fell back from the swords of the heat,
Came Saul, with a fire in the soles of his feet,…

He crouches, and buries his face on his knees,
And hides in the dark of his hair;
For he cannot look up to the storm-smitten trees,
Or think of the loneliness there—…

A waving of hats and of hands,
The voices of thousands in one,
A shout from the ring and the stands,
And a glitter of heads in the sun!…

The crag-pent breezes sob and moan where hidden waters glide;
And twilight wanders round the earth with slow and shadowy stride.
The gleaming clouds, above the brows of western steeps uphurled,
Look like the spires of some fair town that bounds a brighter world.…

A strong sea-wind flies up and sings
Across the blown-wet border,
Whose stormy echo runs and rings
Like bells in wild disorder.Fierce breath hath vexed the foreland's face,…

(The poem which won the prize offered by the proprietors
of the "Sydney Morning Herald".)Now, while Orion, flaming south, doth set
A shining foot on hills of wind and wet—
Far haughty hills beyond the fountains cold…

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.…

The dauntless three! For twenty days and nights
These heroes battled with the haughty heights;
For twenty spaces of the star and sun
These Romans kept their harness buckled on;…

Path beside the silver waters, flashing in October's sun—
Walk, by green and golden margins where the sister streamlets run—
Twenty shining springs have vanished, full of flower, and leaf, and bird,
Since the step of Mary Rivers in your lawny dell was heard!…

The strong sob of the chafing stream
That seaward fights its way
Down crags of glitter, dells of gleam,
Is in the hills to-day.But far and faint, a grey-winged form…