An Anthology of Australian Verse Part 31

Roderic Quinn.

The House of the Commonwealth

We sent a word across the seas that said, "The house is finished and the doors are wide, Come, enter in.

A stately house it is, with tables spread, Where men in liberty and love abide With hearts akin.

"Behold, how high our hands have lifted it!

The soil it stands upon is pure and sweet As are our skies.

Our t.i.tle deeds in holy sweat are writ, Not red accusing blood -- and 'neath our feet No foeman lies."

And England, Mother England, leans her face Upon her hand and feels her blood burn young At what she sees: The image here of that fair strength and grace That made her feared and loved and sought and sung Through centuries.

What chorus shall we lift, what song of joy, What boom of seaward cannon, roll of drums?

The majesty of nationhood demands A burst of royal sounds, as when a victor comes From peril of a thousand foes; An empire's honour saved from death Brought home again; an added rose Of victory upon its wreath.

In this wise men have greeted kings, In name or fame, But such acclaim Were vain and emptiest of things If love were silent, drawn apart, And mute the People's mighty heart.

The love that ivy-like an ancient land doth cherish, It grows not in a day, nor in a year doth perish.

But, little leaf by leaf, It creeps along the walls and wreathes the ramparts h.o.a.ry.

The sun that gives it strength -- it is a nation's glory; The dew, a people's grief.

The love that ivy-like around a home-land lingers, With soft embrace of breast and green, caressive fingers, We are too young to know.

Not ours the glory-dome, the monuments and arches At thought of which takes arms the blood, and proudly marches Exultant o'er the foe.

Green lands undesolated For no avengement cry; No feud of race unsated Leaps out again to triumph, Leaps out again to triumph, or to die!

Attendant here to-day in heart and mind Must be all lovers of mankind, Attendant, too, the souls sublime -- The Prophet-souls of every clime, Who, living, in a tyrant's time, Yet thought and wrought and sought to break The chains about mankind and make A man where men had made a slave: Who all intent to lift and save Beheld the flag of Freedom wave And scorned the prison or the grave; For whom the darkness failed to mar The vision of a world afar, The shining of the Morning Star.

Attendant here, then, they must be, And gathering close with eyes elate Behold the vision of a State Where men are equal, just, and free: A State that hath no stain upon her, No taint to hurt her maiden honour; A Home where love and kindness centre; A People's House where all may enter.

And, being entered, meet no dearth Of welcome round a common hearth; A People's House not built of stone, Nor wrought by hand and brain alone, But formed and founded on the heart; A People's House, A People's Home, En-isled in foam and far apart; A People's House, where all may roam The many rooms and be at ease; A People's House, with tower and dome; And over all a People's Flag -- A Flag upon the breeze.

The Lotus-Flower

All the heights of the high sh.o.r.es gleam Red and gold at the sunset hour: There comes the spell of a magic dream, And the Harbour seems a lotus-flower;

A blue flower tinted at dawn with gold, A broad flower blazing with light at noon, A flower forever with charms to hold His heart, who sees it by sun or moon.

Its beauty burns like a ceaseless fire, And tower looks over the top of tower; For all mute things it would seem, aspire To catch a glimpse of the lotus-flower.

Men meet its beauty with furrowed face, And straight the furrows are smoothed away; They buy and sell in the market-place, And languor leadens their blood all day.

At night they look on the flower, and lo!

The City pa.s.ses with all its cares: They dream no more in its azure glow, Of gold and silver and stocks and shares.

The Lotus dreams 'neath the dreaming skies, Its beauty touching with spell divine The grey old town, till the old town lies Like one half-drunk with a magic wine.

Star-loved, it breathes at the midnight hour A sense of peace from its velvet mouth.

Though flowers be fair -- is there any flower Like this blue flower of the radiant South?

Sun-loved and lit by the moon it yields A challenge-glory or glow serene, And men bethink them of jewelled shields, A turquoise lighting a ground of green.

Fond lovers pacing beside it see Not death and darkness, but life and light, And dream no dream of the witchery The Lotus sheds on the silent night.

Pale watchers weary of watching stars That fall, and fall, and forever fall, Tear-worn and troubled with many scars, They seek the Lotus and end life's thrall.

The spirit spelled by the Lotus swoons, Its beauty summons the artist mood; And thus, perchance, in a thousand moons Its spell shall work in our waiting blood.

Then souls shall shine with an old-time grace, And sense be wrapped in a golden trance, And art be crowned in the market-place With Love and Beauty and fair Romance.

David McKee Wright.

An Old Colonist's Reverie

Dustily over the highway pipes the loud nor'-wester at morn, Wind and the rising sun, and waving tussock and corn; It brings to me days gone by when first in my ears it rang, The wind is the voice of my home, and I think of the songs it sang When, fresh from the desk and ledger, I crossed the long leagues of sea -- "The old worn world is gone and the new bright world is free."

The wide, wild pastures of old are fading and pa.s.sing away, All over the plain are the homes of the men who have come to stay -- I sigh for the good old days in the station whare again; But the good new days are better -- I would not be heard to complain; It is only the wind that cries with tears in its voice to me Of the dead men low in the mould who came with me over the sea.

Some of them down in the city under the marble are laid, Some on the bare hillside in the mound by the lone tree shade, And some in the forest deeps of the west in their silence lie, With the dark pine curtain above shutting out the blue of the sky.

And many have pa.s.sed from my sight, whither I never shall know, Swept away in the rushing river or caught in the mountain snow; All the old hands are gone who came with me over the sea, But the land that we made our own is the same bright land to me.

There are dreams in the gold of the kowhai, and when ratas are breaking in bloom I can hear the rich murmur of voices in the deeps of the fern-shadowed gloom.

Old memory may bring me her treasures from the land of the blossoms of May, But to me the hill daisies are dearer and the gorse on the river bed grey; While the mists on the high hilltops curling, the dawn-haunted haze of the sea, To my fancy are bridal veils lifting from the face of the land of the free.

The speargra.s.s and cabbage trees yonder, the honey-belled flax in its bloom, The dark of the bush on the sidings, the snow-crested mountains that loom Golden and grey in the sunlight, far up in the cloud-fringed blue, Are the threads with old memory weaving and the line of my life running through; And the wind of the morning calling has ever a song for me Of hope for the land of the dawning in the golden years to be.

Christopher John Brennan.

Romance

Of old, on her terrace at evening ...not here...in some long-gone kingdom O, folded close to her breast!...