For the Harvest going out,
Seen the smoke of battle closing round the bold Land! And our message shall be hurled
Up the ringing sides o' the world,
There are true hearts down here, beating for the Old
BEAUTEOUS Southland! land of yellow air,
That hangeth o'er thee slumbering, and doth hold
The moveless foliage of thy valleys fair
And wooded hills, like aureole of gold.
O thou, discovered ere the fitting time,
Ere Nature in completion turned thee forth! Ere aught was finished but thy peerless clime, Thy virgin breath allured the amorous North.
O land, God made thee wondrous to the eye!
But his sweet singers thou hast never heard;
He left thee, meaning to come by and by,
And give rich voice to every bright-winged bird.
He painted with fresh hues,thy myriad flowers,
But left them scentless: ah! their woful dole,
Like sad reproach of their Creator's powers,
To make so sweet fair bodies, void of soul.
He gave thee trees of odorous precious wood,
But midst them all bloomed not one tree of fruit;
He looked, but said not that his work was good,
When leaving thee all perfumeless and mute.
He blessed thy flowers with honey: every bell Looks earthward, sunward, with a yearning wist; But no bee-lover ever notes the swell
Of hearts, like lips, a-hungering to be kist.
O strange land, thou art virgin! thou art more Than fig-tree barren! Would that I could paint For others' eyes the glory of the shore
Where last I saw thee; but the senses faint
In soft delicious dreaming when they drain
Thy wine of color. Virgin fair thou art,
All sweetly fertile, waiting with soft pain
The spouse who comes to wake thy sleeping heart.
John Boyle O'Reilly.
HORSE amongst ten thousand! on the verge, The extremest verge, of equine life he stands; Yet mark his action, as those wild young colts Freed from the stock-yard gallop whinnying up; See how he trots towards them, nose in air, Tail arched, and his still sinewy legs out-thrown In gallant grace before him! A brave beast As ever spurned the moorland, ay, and more, He bore me once, such words but smite the truth I' the outer ring, while vivid memory wakes,
Recalling now, the passion and the pain,-
He bore me once from earthly Hell to Heaven!
The sight of fine old Widderin (that's his name,
Caught from a peak, the topmost rugged peak
Of tall Mount Widderin, towering to the North
Most like a steed's head, with full nostrils blown,
And ears pricked up), · the sight of Widderin brings
That day of days before me, whose strange hours
Of fear and anguish, ere the sunset, changed
To hours of such content and full-veined joy
As Heaven can give our mortal lives but once.
Well, here's the story: While yon bush-fires sweep
The distant ranges, and the river's voice
Pipes a thin treble through the heart of drouth,
While the red heaven like some huge caldron's top
Seems with the heat a-simmering, better far
In place of riding tilt 'gainst such a sun,
Here in the safe veranda's flowery gloom,
To play the dwarfish Homer to a song,
Whereof myself am hero:
Have passed since that wild autumn-time when last
The convict hordes from near Van Diemen, freed
By force or fraud, swept, like a blood-red fire,
Inland from beach to mountain, bent on raid
And rapine.
't was a marvellous morn,
With breezes from the calm snow-river borne
That touched the air, and stirred it into thrills,
Mysterious and mesmeric, a bright mist.
Lapping the landscape like a golden trance,
Swathing the hill-tops with fantastic veils,
And o'er the moorland-ocean quivering light
As gossamer threads drawn down the forest aisles
At dewy dawning, on this marvellous morn,
I, with four comrades, in this selfsame spot,
Watched the fair scene, and drank the spicy airs,
That held a subtiler spirit than our wine,
And talked and laughed, and mused in idleness, -
Weaving vague fancies, as our pipe-wreaths curled
Fantastic in the sunlight! I, with head
Thrown back, and cushioned snugly, and with eyes
Intent on one grotesque and curious cloud,
Puffed upward, that now seemed to take the shape
Of a Dutch tulip, now a Turk's face topped
By folds on folds of turban limitless,
Heard suddenly, just as the clock chimed one,
To melt in musical echoes up the hills,
Quick footsteps on the gravelled path without, -
Steps of the couriers of calamity,
So my heart told mc,—cre with blanched regards,
Two stalwart herdsmen on our threshold paused,
Panting, with lips that writhed, and awful eyes ;-
A breath's space in each other's eyes we glared,
Then, swift as interchange of lightning thrusts
In deadly combat, question and reply
Clashed sharply, "What! the Rangers?" "Ay, by
Heaven!
And loosed in force, - the hell-hounds!" "Whither bound?"
I stammered, hoarsely. "Bound," the elder said,
"Southward!--four stations had they sacked and burnt,
But I stopped to hear
No more with booming thunder in mine ears,
And blood-flushed eyes, I rushed to Widderin's side,
Drew tight the girths, upgathered curb and rein,
And sprang to horse ere yet our laggard friends
Now trooping from the green veranda's shade –
Could dream of action!
Love had winged my will,
For to the southward fair Garoopna held
My all of hope, life, passion; she whose hair
(Its tiniest strand of waving, witch-like gold)
Had caught my heart, entwined, and bound it fast,
As 't were some sweet enchantment's heavenly net!
I only gave a hand-wave in farewell,
Shot by, and o'er the endless moorland swept
(Endless it seemed, as those weird, measureless plains,
Which, in some nightmare vision, stretch and stretch
Towards infinity!) like some lone ship
O'er wastes of sailless waters: now, a pine,
The beacon pine gigantic, whose grim crown
Signals the far land-mariner from out
Gaunt boulders of the gray-backed Organ hill,
Rose on my sight, a mist-like, wavering orb,
The while, still onward, onward, onward still,
With motion winged, elastic, equable,
Brave Widderin cleaved the air-tides, tossed aside
The winds as waves, their swift, invisible breasts
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