Marvellous Martin
Who sees him walk the street, can scarce forbear
To question thus his friend, What prig goes there?
So much hath Nature, as 'tis oft her plan,
Stamped inward trickery on the outward man!
And yet, with her great interdiction deep
Impressed thus on his being, see him creep
Into our Parliament, and dare to prate
About the god-like principles of State;
With this sole claim address him to the work,
That he has read that prince of sophists, Burke!
And though a dreary Plunkett's glad to praise
His talent, seeing that their feeble rays
Have just that kindred with his own pinched mind
Which (says the proverb ) makes us wond'rous kind.
No more could such a creature feel or think
Beyond Expediency's most beaten brink,
Or sum the onward pressure of our race,
Than I could heave a mountain from its base!
Nay, even the dogmas of his vaunted Burke
Work in him to no end, or backward work,
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poem by Charles Harpur
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Joshua
When Joshua in the days of old
Stood forth upon old Jordan’s bank,
And past the flood that backward rolled
His host came dryshod, rank on rank;
The warrior angel of the Lord,
A glorious shining creature, bared
Before him there a flaming sword,
And thus the mind of God declared—
“Lo, I am with you! Here shall dwell
My chosen people; here I plant thee, Israel!”
The walls of Jericho are strong,
And ribbed throughout with many a tower,
And yet her monarch’s armed throng
Stand trembling round his throne of power;
For circling still those walls about,
Behold the Ark of God is borne!
Blow, trumphets, blow! Shout, Israel, shout!
’Tis done, and from the earth uptorn
At once they scatter and disform
Like the grey, cloud-built bastions of a bursting storm.
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poem by Charles Harpur
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A Midsummer Noon in the Australian Forest
A MIDSUMMER NOON IN THE AUSTRALIAN FOREST
Not a bird disturbs the air!
There is quiet everywhere;
Over plains and over woods
What a mighty stillness broods.
Even the grasshoppers keep
[All the birds and insects keep]
Where the coolest shadows sleep;
Even the busy ants are found
Resting in their pebbled mound;
Even the locust clingeth now
In silence to the barky bough:
And over hills and over plains
Quiet, vast and slumbrous, reigns.
Only there's a drowsy humming
From yon warm lagoon slow coming:
'Tis the dragon-hornet - see!
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poem by Charles Harpur
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Dawn in the Mountains
It is the morning star, arising slow
Out of yon hill’s dark bulk, as she were born
Of its desire for day; then glides she forth
And into the dim sky, there leaving still
A whiteness in her wake that whitens more
As she ascends, till all the gloomy woods
Are touched along their multiformous lines
By a faint gleaming azure, creeping on:
A few thin stripes of fleecy clouds lie long
And motionless above the eastern steeps,
Like threads of silver lace; till suddenly,
Out from the flushing centre to the ends
On either hand, their lustrous layers become
Dipt all in crimson streaked with pink and gold;
And then at last are edged as with a band
Of crystal all on fire. Meanwhile the stars,
Those golden children of eternity,
Have all withdrawn within the Invisible;
That skiey gleam and azure prevalence
Which first bespoke the dawn works out and down
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poem by Charles Harpur
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Cora
Of Cora, once so dearly ours,
Would mournful memory sing;
Of how she came when came the flowers,
To leave us with the spring.
That day (returned) which gave her breath
Was that whereon she died,
And o’er the pangs of birth and death
Passed blooming as a bride.
The spring it came, with never a storm,
And nine times came and went,
Till its whole spirit with her form
In budding beauty blent.
Yea, till its sentiment was wreathed
About her eye it came,
And all its foregone influence breathed
At mention of her name.
And aye her soul, her inward worth,
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poem by Charles Harpur
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An Aboriginal Mothers's Lament
An Aboriginal Mother’s Lament
Charles Harpur
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[About the year 1842 a party of stockmen, several of whom were afterwards hanged for the crime, made a wholesale slaughter of a small tribe of defenceless blacks; one woman only, with her infant, escaped from the murderers.]
Still farther would I fly, my child,
To make thee safer yet,
From the unsparing white man,
With his dread hand murder-wet!
I’ll bear thee on as I have borne
With stealthy steps wind-fleet,
But the dark night shrouds the forest,
And thorns are in my feet.
O moan not! I would give this braid—
Thy father’s gift to me—
But for a single palmful
Of water now for thee.
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poem by Charles Harpur
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A Basket of Summer Fruit
First see those ample melons-brindled o'er
With mingled green and brown is all the rind;
For they are ripe, and mealy at the core,
And saturate with the nectar of their kind.
And here their fellows of the marsh are set,
Covering their sweetness with a crumpled skin;
Pomegranates next, flame-red without, and yet
With vegetable crystals stored within.
Then mark these brilliant oranges, of which
A by-gone Poet fancifully said,
Their unplucked globes the orchard did enrich
Like Lolden lamps in a green nilht of shade.
With these are lemons that are even more
Golden than they, and which adorn our Rhyme,
As did rough pendants of barbaric ore
Some pillared temple of the olden time.
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A Lament
Flowers in their freshness are flushing the earth,
And the voice-peopled forest is loud in its mirth,
And streams in their fulness are laughing at dearth—
Yet my bosom is aching.
There’s shadow on all things—the shadow of woe—
It falls from my spirit wherever I go,
As from a dark cloud drifting heavy and slow,
For my spirit is weary.
Ah! what can be flowers in their gladness to me,
Or the voices that people the green forest tree,
Or the full joy of streams—since my soul sighs, ah me!
O’er the grave of my Mary.
Under the glad face of nature, her face
Hath carried down with it all beauty and grace;
Pale is it there in that dark silent place—
Mary! oh Mary!
Children are by me—her children; oh God!
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poem by Charles Harpur
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Love, Dreaming of Death
I dreamt my little boys were dead
And I was sitting wild and lone;
On closed unmoving knees my head
Lay rigid as a stone.
And thus I sat without a tear,
And though I drew life’s painful breath,
All life to me seemed cold and drear,
And comfortless as death:
Sat on the earth as on a bier,
Where loss and ruin lived alone,
Without the comfort of a tear—
Without a passing groan.
And there was stillness everywhere,
Ensphering one wide sense of woe;
The stillness of a world’s despair,
Whose tides had ceased to flow.
Yea, so eternal seemed my grief,
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poem by Charles Harpur
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The Emigrant's Vision
As his bark dashed away on the night-shrouded deep,
And out towards the South he was gazing,
First there passed o’er his spirit a darkness like sleep,
Then the light of a vision amazing!
As rises the moon, from the white waves afar
Came a goddess, it seemed, of love, wisdom, and war,
And on her bright helmet, encircling a star,
Behold there was graven “Australia.”
Her robes were of green, like the mantle of spring
Newly spread by the streams that so mildly
Flow on through yon flock-dappled plains, or that sing
’Mid those blue ranging mountains so wildly:
Her locks were as bright as the lustre that lies
At morn on the seas of the South, and her eyes
Were as deep in their joy as the clear sunny skies—
The clear sunny skies of Australia.
“O stranger!” she said, “hast thou fled from the home
Which they forefathers bled for so vainly?
Does shame for its past thus induce thee to roam,
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poem by Charles Harpur
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