A Federal Song
IN the greyness of the dawning we have seen the pilot-star,
In the whisper of the morning we have heard the years afar.
Shall we sleep and let them be
When they call to you and me?
Can we break the land asunder God has girdled with the Sea?
For the Flag is floating o’er us,
And the track is clear before us,
From the desert to the ocean, let us lift the mighty chorus
For the days that are to be.
We have flung the challenge forward: “Brothers, stand or fall as One!”
She is coming out to meet us in the splendour of the Sun.
From the graves beneath the sky
Where Her nameless heroes lie,
From the forelands of the Future they are waiting our reply!
We can face the roughest weather
If we only hold together,
Marching forward to the Future, marching shoulder-firm together,
For the Nation yet to be.
All the greyness of the dawning, all the mists are over-past,
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poem by George Essex Evans
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Adrift: A Brisbane River Reverie
An amphitheatre of purple hills
And emerald slopes where nestling villas gleam,
Flooded with golden light that crowns and fills
Height, vale, and stream.
The clouds float motionless like isles of snow
Set in the sapphire of the summer sky,
The river, like a ribbon, far below
Winds rippling by;
As, like a creeping snake, with curve and sweep
The languid current steals past mead and scar,
To the dark mangrove fringing on the deep
Abreast the bar.
Slow drifts the boat past homestead, town, and lea;
The waters laugh and sob against the side
As down the murmuring river to the sea,
Dreaming, I glide.
Past meadowy marshland and gray limestone bluff,
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poem by George Essex Evans
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The Secret Key
There is a magic kingdom of strange powers,
Thought-hidden, lit by other stars than ours;
And, when a wanderer through its mazes brings
Word of things seen, men say: “A poet sings.”
Its gates are guarded in a sterile land—
Mountain and deep morass, and shifting sand;
Storm-barred are they, and may not opened be
Save by the hand that finds the secret key.
That key, some say, lies in the sunset glow,
Or the white arc of dawn, or where the flow
Of some lone river stems the shoreward wave
In shuddering silver on its ocean grave.
Some say that when the wind wars with the sea,
In that stern music, one may find the key;
Or, in green glooms of forests, where the pine
Uplifts her spear amid great wreaths of vine;
Or, where the streaming mist’s white rollers climb
The dark ravine and precipice sublime—
A filmy sea that twines and intertwines
Wreathes the low hills, and veils the mighty lines
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poem by George Essex Evans
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A Grave By The Sea
No white cloud sails the lonely sky,
Thro’ the gaunt trees no breezes sigh,
Thro’ the lush grass no fall of feet;
No song of bird in all the land,
But, floating faintly, dreamily,
The distant dirge of waves that beat
In discontent upon the sand.
Here, where all Nature seems aswoon,
Time, languid as a summer stream,
Drifts down the sweet soft afternoon;
And Death, discrowned of terror, brings
Surcease to souls that wake not soon,
And casts above Life’s fevered dream
Cool shadows of Immortal Wings.
Here, by the old graves overgrown,
A bare mound, without wreath or stone,
Marks where he sleeps ’mid grasses long,
Who sought not things that others seek,
Who fought in silence and alone,
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poem by George Essex Evans
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By The Sea
Bright skies of summer o’er the deep,
And soft salt air along the land,
The blue wave, lisping in its sleep,
Sinks gently on the yellow sand;
And gray-winged seagulls slowly sweep
O’er scattered bush and white-limbed tree
Where the red cliffs like bastions stand
To front the salvos of the sea,
Now lulled by its own melody.
Yonder the rising waters ride,
O’er ironstone masses, celled and worn;
There, gnarled and bent by wind and tide,
A single mangrove stands forlorn,
Alone in melancholy pride
A symbol of the soul of man
In Life’s wild surges tossed and torn,
That yearns amid the battle’s van
For the vast good it may not scan.
Along this silent shining sand
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poem by George Essex Evans
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A Vision Of Christ
There fell on me a dream when days were gray,
And Hope had left me there to grope alone
Amid the silence of an unknown way
Vaulted with night and paved with barren stone,
Wherein such awful stillness held the air,
’Twere comfort but to breathe one’s own despair.
Till in my terror called I Him, who bore
The whole world’s sin upon His sinless soul,
Saying:—“O mighty Heart, whose Godhead wore,
E’en as a garment, all our pain and dole,
Touch Thou my soul with fire; and let there be
Some meed of Godhead even unto me!”
Then from the purple dark I saw arise,
Silent, the pale form of the Nazarene,
With deathless light of message in His eyes,
And that vast human pity in His mien,
Purer than purest depths of summer skies,
Not less unfathomed and not less serene.
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poem by George Essex Evans
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The Lion's Whelps
There is scarlet on his forehead,
There are scars across his face,
’Tis the bloody dew of battle dripping down, dripping down,
But the war-heart of the Lion
Turns to iron in its place
When he halts to face disaster, when he turns to meet disgrace,
Stung and keen and mettled with the life-blood of his own.
Let the hunters ’ware who flout him,
When he calls his whelps about him,
When he sets the goal before him and he settles to the pace.
Tricked and wounded! Are we beaten
Though they hold our strength at play?
We have faced these things aforetimes, long ago, long ago.
From sunlit Sydney Harbour
And ten thousand miles away,
From the far Canadian forests to the Sounds of Milford Bay,
They have answered, they have answered, and we know the answer now.
From the Britains such as these
Strewn across the world-wide seas
Comes the rally and the bugle-note that makes us one to-day.
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poem by George Essex Evans
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To The Irish Dead
’TIS a green isle set in a silver water,
A fairy isle where the shamrock grows.
Land of Legend, the Dream-Queen’s daughter—
Out of the Fairies’ hands She rose.
They touched Her harp with a tender sighing,
A spirit-song from a world afar,
They touched Her heart with a fire undying
To fight and follow Her battle-star.
Too long, too long thro’ the grey years growing
Feud and faction have swept between
The Thistledown and the red Rose blowing
And the three-fold leaf of the Shamrock green;
But the seal of blood, ye shall break it never:
With rifles grounded and bare of head
We drink to the dead who live forever
A silent toast—To the Irish dead!
’Tis an Irish cheer on the hillside ringing,
Where, checked and broken, the vanguards reel,
But on and upward and forward swinging,
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poem by George Essex Evans
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The Average Man
His hat looks worn, and his coat-sleeves shine,
As I see him step from his ’bus at nine;
His boots are pieced and his tie home-made,
And his trousers patched where the edge was frayed,
And his face is lined by the stress of life
Where a man must fight for his bairns an wife.
“Who’s that?” I ask, as his face I scan.
And the answer comes—“O, an average man.”
He has not got notes, he has not got gold,
But his homely lunch, in his handbag old;
And day by day, as the seasons go,
He follows his duty to and fro,
And shadows follow him everywhere—
Grim want, and worry, and dread are there,
For life is not on a gorgeous plan—
Far, far from it—to the average man.
The floods, the banks, and the curtailed screw,
The weekly bills, and the grasping Jew,
The servant’s wage and the doctor’s fee,
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poem by George Essex Evans
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Out Of The Silence
Here in the silence cometh unto me
A song that is not mine,
With wash of waves along the cold shore line,
And sob of wind, and rain upon the sea.
It is the song and message of the dead!
Around my soul to-night
I feel the kinship of the Infinite,
I hear the sound of voices that are fled.
And as beneath the viewless angel’s wing
Bethesda’s pool was stirred,
My heart is troubled by the mystic word
Of one who through my soul and lips would sing.
There is no note of wailing in the strain,
But resonant and deep,
Out of the vastness, doth the music sweep,
Into the silence dieth it again.
To breaking hearts it saith, “Be comforted.
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poem by George Essex Evans
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