Table of Contents

1 MDCCCXCIII : a prelude

I TOWARDS THE SOURCE (the asterisk distinguishes the pieces already published in XXI Poems, Sydney, 1897)

2 We sat entwined an hour or two together *

3 Sweet silence after bells [*]

4 Autumn: the year breathes dully towards its death *

5 Where star-cold and the dread of space *

6 Dies Dominica ! the sunshine burns *

7 The grand cortege of glory and youth is gone *

 

8 Epigraph

9 Under a sky of uncreated mud

10 The yellow gas is fired from street to street * (Bulletin)

11 Ah, who will give us back our long-lost innocence *

12 Let us go down, the long dead night is done *

13 I saw my life as whitest flame *

14 Epigraph

15 Where the poppy-banners flow (B. Stevens-Anthology of Australian verse)

16 Deep mists of longing blur the land *

17 When summer comes in her glory * (Bulletin)

18 And shall the living waters heed *

19 And does she still perceive, her curtain drawn *

20 Of old, on her terrace at evening *

21 Was it the sun that broke my dream (Australian  Magazine)

22 When the spring mornings grew more long

23 An hour’s respite; once more the heart may dream

24 Spring-ripple of green along the way (Australian Magazine)

25 I am shut out of mine own heart (Bulletin)

26 Spring-breezes over the blue

27 White dawn, that tak’st the heaven with sweet surprise *

28 Four springtimes lost: and in the fifth we stand

29 Old wonder flush’d the east anew

30 The winter eve is clear and chill (The Heart of the Rose)

 

II THE FOREST OF NIGHT

31 D. H. Stephane Mallarme (Hermes, Jubilee no.)

32 Liminary (Bulletin)

I THE TWILIGHT OF DISQUIETUDE

33 Epigraph

34 The years that go to make me man

35 I said, And let horizons tempt

36 The pangs that guard the gates of joy (Bulletin)

37 My heart was wandering in the sands (XXI Poems)

38 The banners of the king unfold

39 What of the battles I would win? (Our Alma Mater)

40 Disaster drives the shatter’d night

41 The mother-deep, wise, yearning, bound

42 What do I know? myself alone

43 This is the sea where good and evil merge

44 The birds that fly out of the west (Australian Magazine)

45 Peace were in the woods, perchance

 

Interlude : The hearth and the window

46 Thou cricket, that at dusk in the damp weeds (Queen Victoria Home for Consumptives, Souvenir of Press Fair and Bazaar)

47 Dusk lowers in this uneasy pause of rain

II THE QUEST OF SILENCE

48 Oh, yon, when Holda leaves her hill (Bulletin)

49 What tho’ the outer day be brazen rude (Australian Magazine)

50 O friendly shades, where anciently I grew (Hermes)

51 The point of noon is past, outside: light is asleep  (Hermes)

52 The forest has its horrors, as the sea (Hermes)

53 No emerald spring, no royal autumn-red (Australian  Magazine)

54 Fire in the heavens, and fire along the hills (Our Alma Mater)

55 Peace dwells in blessing o’er a place

56 A gray and dusty daylight flows

57 Breaking the desert’s tawny level ring

58 Before she pass’d behind the glacier wall

59 Out of no quarter of the charted sky (Hermes)

60 This night is not of gentle draperies (Hermes Jubilee no.)

61 Lightning: and, momently, the silhouette

62 One! an iron core, shock’d and dispers’d

63 There is a far-off thrill that troubles me

 

Interlude : The window and the hearth

64 Twice now that lucid fiction of the pane (Our Alma Mater)

65 Chimaera writhes beside the tragic flame (Hermes)

III THE SHADOW OF LILITH

66 The tuberose thickens the air: a swoon

67 Cloth’d now with dark alone, O rose and balm

68 LILITH This of Lilith by her Hebrew name

Dead stars, beneath the midnight’s granite cope

The plumes of night, unfurl’d

The trees that thro’ the tuneful morn had made

O mother, only.

But on the zenith mass’d, a glittering throng,

They said, because their parcel-thought

The anguish’ d doubt broods over Eden: night

O thou that achest, pulse o’ the unwed vast,

Thick sleep, with error of the tangled wood,

Thus in her hour of wrath, o’er Adam’s head

She is the night : all horror is of her

69 This rose, the lips that kiss, and the young breast

 

Interlude : The casement

70 Once, when the sun-burst flew

71 The window is wide, and lo, beyond its bars (Lilley’s Magazine)

IIII THE LABOUR OF NIGHT

72 What gems’ chill glitter yon, thrice dipt

73 In Eblis’ ward now fall’n where wisdom rose

74 Northward, he dream’d, in Judah’s vine-clad hills

75 Because he felt against his hundred years (Our Alma  Mater)

76 Where Soliman-ben-Daoud sleeps, unshown

77 We nameless that have labour’d in the dumb

78 Are ye gone forth indeed, and is your place

79 In that last fight upon the western hill

80 Night has resumed our hope : the fight is done

81 An iron folk, with iron hand, and hate

82 O sunk in surge of purple, it is told (Hermes)

83 O vanish’d star, fall’n flower, O god deceased  (Hermes)

84 How long delays the miracle blossoming

85 Because this curse is on the dawn to yield

III THE WANDERER
(the asterisk distinguishes the eight original pieces published in Hermes, Jubilee no., 1902)

86 When window lamps had dwindled, then I rose *

87 Daily I see the long ships coming into port *

88 I am driven everywhere from a clinging home *

89 O tame heart, and why are you weary and cannot rest

90 Once I could sit by the fire hourlong when the dripping eaves

91 How old is my heart, how old, how old is my heart *

92 I sorrow for youth, ah not for it wildness (would that were dead!)

93 You at whose table I have sat, some distant eve *

94 I cry to you as I pass your windows in the dusk *

95 Come out, come out, ye souls that serve; why will ye die? (Lilley’s Magazine)

96 Dawns of the world! how I have known you all

97 What is there with you and me, that I may not forget

98 O desolate eves along the way, how oft *

99 The land I came thro’ last was dumb with night *

IIII PAVCA MEA

100 This night first have I learn’d to know thy boon (Hermes)

101 O white wind, numbing the world (The Heart of the Rose)

102 Droop’st thou and fail’st? but these have never tired

103 I said, This misery must end

V EPILOGUES

104 Deep in my hidden country stands a peak (Sydney Stock and Station Journal)

105 The droning tram swings westward: shrill