To the Rev. John Saunders on his Departure for England
If a large love of the whole human race,
With charity that hopeth a meet cure
For life’s worst evils, indicates the grace
Of goodness, thine is such as will endure.
And if pure prayers to stablish what is pure
Waste not away in the dim voids of space,
But, Godward rising, pierce heaven’s starry face,
Thine have been heard and thy reward is sure.
Farewell! This people might be well content
To part with much beside, if so it might
Keep burning through its mortal glooms, unblent
With earthlier ardours, perilous, though bright,
Thy eloquent fervour, kindling wise intent—
Thy steady flame of purpose in the right.
poem by Charles Harpur
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Life and Death
A little light, heat, motion, breath;
Then silence, darkness, and decay;
This is the change from life to death
In him the weareth clay.
But Time’s one drop ’twixt that and this,
Ah! What a gulf of doom it is.
The cheek is fair, the eye is bold,
The ripe lip like a berry red;
Then the shroud clothes them;—thus behold
The living and the dead!
And how time’s last cold drop serence
Swells to eternity between.
Yet not for horror, nor to weep;
But through the solemn dark to see
That life, though swift, is wonder-deep,
And death the only key
That lets to that mysterious height
Where earth and heaven in God unite.
[...] Read more
poem by Charles Harpur
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The Verse of Coleridge’s ‘Christobel’
MARK yon runnel how ’tis flowing,
Like a sylvan spirit dreaming
Of the Spring-blooms near it blowing
And the sunlight in it gleaming!
Where that shelving rock is spied,
There with a smooth warbling slide
It lapses down into a cool
And brimming, not o’erflowing pool.
Then between its narrow’d banks
Playing mellow gurgling pranks,
It gushes till a channel’d stone
Gives it a more strenuous tone;
Or with an under-swirling spread
Over a wide pebbled bed
It bubbles with a gentle pleasure,
Ere some new mood change the measure:
Such a runnel typeth well
The sweet wild verse of ‘Christabel;’
But what
The Wonder-World it warbles through?
poem by Charles Harpur
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A Love Fancy
Night was new-throned in heaven, and we did rove
Together in the cool and shadowless haze
That thickened round, at the wild stars to gaze
Ere yet the moon’s red rim had showed above
The pine-trees. For in both our souls did move
The same fond lover-fancy,—that their rays
Were richer for all those who from the ways
Of man’s long past had looked at them in love;
And when our glances through their midst did run
From orb to orb of all that seemed most fair,
To fix at last with mutual heed on one
That gloried in the West beyond compare,
It seemed to us that when the day was done,
The spirit of our joy was mansioned there
poem by Charles Harpur
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To My Young Countryman D.H.D.
Who doubteth, when the morning star doth light
Her lamp of beauty, that the day is coming?
Or, where prime odours track the breezes’ flight,
That rare flowers in the vicinage are blooming?
Or, where the wild bees all about are humming,
That honey’s stored in some near cedar’s height?
Or, that the sea is heaving into sight
When more and more long surgy rolls come booming?
And surely, as the observer understands
What each of these foretokens in its kind,
Thy manhood’s mental amplitude expands
Before me in its omens, when I find
Something of promise fashioned by thy hands,
Some blossom breathing of thy forming mind.
poem by Charles Harpur
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Dreams of the Beloved
HER IMAGE haunts me. Lo! I muse at even,
And straight it gathers from the gloom to make
My soul its mirror, which (as some deep lake
Impictures the cerulean smiles of heaven)
Through the hushed night retains it, when ’tis given
To take a warmer presence and incline
A glowing cheek all blushfully to mine,
Saying, “The heart for which thou long hast striven
With pale looks, fancy pale, I grant thee now,
And if for pity, yet more for Love’s sweet sake,
My lips shall seal this promise on thy brow.”
Thus blest in sleep, who would not weep to wake
When the cold truth from his belief must shake
Such vows, like blossoms from a shatter’d bough?
poem by Charles Harpur
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Trust in God
Deep trust in God—for that I still have sought
Through all the grim doubts that bemock the soul,
When in the amazement of far-reaching throught,
We list the labourings that for ever roll
Like dubious thunders through those clouded regions
Where night and destiny the counsels keep
Of Time developing his shadowy legions.
And when I ve stood upon some hazardous steep
Of speculation—heaving up its bare
And rugged ridge high in the nebulous air
Of endless change, and thence tremendously
Throwing its shadow, like a blind man’s stare,
Out through the dread unknown—deep trust in Thee,
O God! Hath likewise been my refuge there.
poem by Charles Harpur
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The Temperance Movement
A POWER is stirring—a broad light has shone
Amid the nation’s—in the wilderness
Of the world’s social horror and distress,
Heralding temperance as the Baptist John
Announced the Christ. Amazed upon her throne,
Built up of skulls that were in life not less
Than temples of great souls—behold Excess
Blinks in its rays, and feels her empire gone!
And Ignorance and Crime—each brutal vice
That brands the brow with shame and steels the heart,
Are starting from their lairs in human sties,
Like felons scared, and gathering to depart:
Even as the fiend-gods of the pagan earth
Trooped hell-ward at the Babe of Bethlehem’s birth.
poem by Charles Harpur
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To Doctor Lang
Little, perhaps, thou valuest verse of mine—
Little hast read of what my hand has wrought,
Yet I with thy brave memory would entwine
The muse’s amaranths. For thou well hast fought
For freedom; well her sacred lessons taught;
Well baffled wrong; and delved with far design
Into those elements where treasures shine
Excelling those wherewith our hills are fraught.
And when thy glorious grey head shall make
One spot all-hallowed for the coming days—
Tombed in the golden land for whose sole sake
With labour thou hast furrowed all thy ways,—
Well a young nation shall thy worth appraise
Even through the grief which then shall o’er thee break
poem by Charles Harpur
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Love
My soul; is raying like a star,
My heart is happier than a bird,
And all because, through fortune’s jar,
I hear one little word.
I feel as if all life and might
Had started on a loftier course,
As if all passion and delight
Were deepened at the source.
I feel as if the very air
Was breathed from out the heart of love,
And in my heart, still rapture rare,
Sat brooding like a dove.
O beauty! Even through a word
What powers are thine to raise and bless!
O love! A seraph’s voice is heard
In thy confiding Yes!
Love is God’s messenger divine,
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poem by Charles Harpur
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