Then breathe again that faint refrain, so tender, sad, and true,
My soul turns round with listening eyes unto the harp and you!

The fragments of a broken Past are floating down the tide,
And she comes gleaming through the dark, my love, my life, my bride!

Oh! sit and sing - I know her well, that phantomdeadly fair
With large surprise, and sudden sighs, and streaming midnight hair!

I know her well, for face to face we stood amongst the sheaves,
Our voices mingling with a mist of music in the leaves!

I know her well, for hand in hand we walked beside the sea,
And heard the huddling waters boom beneath this old Figtree.

God help the man that goes abroadamongst the windy pines,
And wanders, like a gloomy bat, where never morning shines!

That steals about amidst the rout of broken stones and graves,
When round the cliffs the merry skiffs go scudding through the waves;

When, down the bay, the children play, and scamper on the sand,
And Life and Mirth illume the Earth, and Beauty fills the Land!

God help the man! He only hears and fears the sleepless cries
Of smitten Love - of homeless Love and moaning Memories.

Oh! when a rhyme of olden time is sung by one so dear,
I feel again the sweetest pain I've known for many a year;

And from a deep, dull sea of sleep faint fancies come to me,
And I forget how lone we sit beneath this old Figtree.

DROWNED AT SEA
GLOOMY cliffs, so worn and wasted with the washing of the waves,

Are ye not like giant tombstones round those lonely ocean graves?
Are ye not the sad memorials, telling of a mighty grief -

Dark with records ground and lettered into caverned rock and reef?
Oh! ye show them, and I know them, and my thoughts in mourning go

Down amongst your sunless chasms, deep into the surf below!
Oh! ye bear them, and declare them, and o'er every cleft and scar,

I have wept for dear dead brothers perished in the lost Dunbar!
Ye smitten - ye battered,

And splintered and shattered
Cliffs of the Sea!

Restless waves, so dim with dreams of sudden storms and gusty surge,
Roaring like a gathered whirlwind reeling round a mountain verge,

Were ye not like loosened maniacs, in the night when Beauty pale
Called upon her God, beseeching through the uproar of the gale?

Were ye not like maddened demons while young children faint with fear
Cried and cried and cried for succour, and no helping hand was near?

Oh, the sorrow of the morrow! - lamentations near and far! -
Oh, the sobs for dear dead sisters perished in the lost Dunbar! -

Ye ruthless, unsated,
And hateful, and hated

Waves of the Sea!
Ay, we stooped and moaned in darkness -

eyes might strain and hearts might plead,
For their darlings crying wildly, they would never rise nor heed!

Ay, we yearned into their faces looking for the life in vain,
Wailing like to children blinded with a mist of sudden pain!

Dear hands clenched, and dear eyes rigid in a stern and stony stare,
Dear lips white from past affliction, dead to all our mad despair,

Ah, the groaning and the moaning - ah, the thoughts which rise in tears
When we turn to all those loved ones, looking backward five long years!

The fathers and mothers,
The sisters and brothers

Drowned at Sea!
MORNING IN THE BUSH

(A Juvenile Fragment)
ABOVE the skirts of yellow clouds,

The god-like Sun, arrayed
In blinding splendour, swiftly rose,

And looked athwart the glade;
The sleepy dingo watched him break

The bonds that curbed his flight;
And from his golden tresses shake

The fading gems of Night!
And wild goburras laughed aloud

Their merry morning songs,
As Echo answered in the depths

With a thousand thousand tongues;
The gully-depths where many a vine

Of ancient growth had crept,
To cluster round the hoary pine,

Where scanty mosses wept.
Huge stones, and damp and broken crags,

In wild chaotic heap,
Were lying at the barren base

Of the ferny hillside steep;
Between those fragments hollows lay,

Upfilled with fruitful ground,
Where many a modest floweret grew,

To scent the wind-breaths round;
As fertile patches bloom within

A dried and worldly heart,
When some that look can only see

The cold, the barren part!
The Miser, full with thoughts of gain,

The meanest of his race,
May in his breast some verdure hide,

Though none that verdure trace.
Where time-worn cliffs were jutting out,

With rough and ragged edges,
The snowy mountain-lily slept

Behind the earthy ledges;
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Like some sweet Oriental Maid,
Who blindly deems it duty

To wear a veil before her face,
And hide her peerless beauty;

Or like to Innocence that thrives
In midst of sin and sorrows,

Nor from the cheerless scene around
The least infection borrows,

But stayeth out her mortal life -
Though in that lifetimelonely -

With Virtue's lustre round her heart,
And Virtue's lustre only.

A patch of sunshine here and there
Lay on a leaf-strewn water-pool,

Whose tribute trickled down the rocks
In gurgling ripples, clear and cool!

As iguanas, from the clefts,
Would steal along with rustling sound,

To where the restless eddies roamed
Amongst the arrowy rushes round.

While, scanning them with angry eyes
From off a fallen myrtle log

That branchless bridged the brushy creek,
There stood and barked, a Shepherd's Dog!

And underneath a neighbouring mass
Of wattles intertwining,

His Master lay - his back against
The grassy banks reclining.

Beneath the shade of ironbarks,
Stretched o'er the valley's sloping bed -

Half hidden in a tea-tree scrub,
A flock of dusky sheep were spread;