Shadows

Beside the Narrow Crossing-Place
(And night was falling gray),

Two Shadows met, the legends tell. .
Each Shadow went its way.

But there was anguish in their eyes,
And tears in both their hearts.

Beside the Narrow Crossing-Place,
Where Shade from Shadow parts.

For they had seen the Rising Sun

In opal and in rose,
For they had seen the Rising Sun,

Who saw the long day close.

And had they met at Mom or Noon

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poem by Edwin James Brady
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Roderic Quinn

No more will Rod his lyrics sing,
As tuneful as the thrush when Spring
With minstrel voice is calling;
As joyous as the gentle chime
Of bellbirds in the Summertime
From sylvan spires down-falling.

The harp is mute from which he drew
The magic of a music new
Of woods and golden beaches;
Its silent strings tell ne'er again
Enraptured tales of hill and plain
And gleaming river reaches.

But this fair land shall ever be
Indebted to his minstrelsy,
So, written on the portal
Of Art's proud temple, will his name
Go down forevermore in fame
Untarnished and immortal.

poem by Edwin James Brady
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Dross and Gold

**Life is dross, but Love is gold*
So, throughout the numbered days.

Mine to keep and thine to hold.
Be it as the Master says.

Clean-intentioned ; each to each
Shall a Staff of Travel be,

Down the Roadway to the Beach
Of the tideless, timeless Sea,

Down the Roadway of the years
Till our Web of Life is spun.

Ours the laughter and the tears;
Ours the cream of cloud and sun.

Some there be who place and gain

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poem by Edwin James Brady
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Twilight

When a heavy surf is droning

In the twilight on the bar;
When our Mother Sea is crooning

Her quaint cradle-song afar;

When the wild black swans are lining
To some still, remote lagoon;

And above the headland, shining,
Hangs a quiet, crescent moon;

When the panoply, the splendor

Of the tropic sunset dies, —
Then my Fancy turns to tender

Dreams beneath the queenly skies.

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poem by Edwin James Brady
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The Great Grey Water

Now two have met, now two have met,
Who may not meet again—
Two grains of sand, two blades of grass,
Two threads within the skein—
Beside the Great Grey Water.

Two hands to touch, two hearts to touch;
And, here forgathered, we
Will not forget, may not forget,
Where last forgathered three—
Beyond the Great Grey Water.

Two glasses filled, two pipes to fill—
‘To all our fortunes, brother!’
And as they clink—like so—we drink
Fair passage to the other
Across the Great Grey Water.

For three have sailed, and one has sailed,
His sins, like ours, still on him,

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poem by Edwin James Brady
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The 'Bulletin' Stairs

The Mecca of Bohemian men
Was Archibald's untidy den.
Firm-footed near the portals there
Uprose, as now, a spacious stair
That carried nearer to the sky
Their inky hopes in days forebye.

This ladder to Parnassus, they
Expectant climbed - as still one may.
Oft-times upon its steps appeared
The wiry brush of Daley's beard,
Of Henry Lawson's drooped moustache
Would upward glide and downward dash.

Betimes - a gem his pocket in -
Meandered upward Ronald Quinn,
Or Bayldon bore a sonnet new,
Or Broomfield occupied the view
Insistent, in a manner vain,
On making passes with his cane.

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poem by Edwin James Brady
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Vive Anarchy

With the lifting of the curtain,
Distance, dim, but grimly certain,
Breaks my vision of a city, populous and great,
To my senses, sorrow-sated,
Senses sad and satiated, Faintly comes the thunder peal of treasured wrong and hate
Broken down,
Beaten down,
By awakened people and the iron arm of Fate.
Pallid forms, by famine shrunken,
Helots, harlots, ribald, drunken,
Wine and blood-wet, onward thro' the torchlit highways sweep,
Through a city disunited,
Through a city flame ignited,
To the sound of song and trumpet and the cannon's deep
Distant boom,
Through the gloom,
While the fire fiends madly leaps from tower to temple steep.

Reinforced from slum and alley,
By this wild and weird reveille,

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poem by Edwin James Brady
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Lost and Given Over

A Mermaid’s not a human thing,
An’ courtin’ such is folly;
Of flesh an’ blood I’d rather sing,
What ain’t so melancholy.
Oh, Berta! Loo! Jaunita! Sue!
Here’s good luck to me and you—
Sing rally! ri-a-rally!
The seas is deep; the seas is wide;
But this I’ll prove whate’er betide,
I’m bully in the alley!
I’m bull-ee in our al-lee!

The Hooghli gal’er face is brown;
The Hilo gal is lazy;
The gal that lives by ’Obart town
She’d drive a dead man crazy;
Come, wet your lip, and let it slip!
The Gretna Green’s a tidy ship—
Sing rally!
The seas is deep; the seas is blue;

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poem by Edwin James Brady
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The Wardens of the Seas

Like star points in the ether to guide a homing soul
Towards God's Eternal Haven; above the wash and roll,
Across and o'er the oceans, on all the coasts they stand
Tall seneschals of commerce, High Wardens of the Strand --
   The white lights slowly turning
   Their kind eyes far and wide,
   The red and green lights burning
   Along the waterside.

When Night with breath of aloes, magnolia, spice, and balm
Creeps down the darkened jungles and mantles reef and palm,
By velvet waters making soft music as they surge
The shore lights of dark Asia will one by one emerge --
   Oh, Ras Marshig by Aden
   Shows dull on hazy nights;
   And Bombay Channel's laid in
   Its "In" and "Outer" lights.

When Night, in rain-wet garments comes sobbing cold and grey
Across the German Ocean and South from Stornoway,

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poem by Edwin James Brady
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