Daybreak In The Desert

No cheerful note of bird in leafy bower,
No glistening water dancing in the light,
No dewdrop trembling on some modest flower,
No early cock to crow farewell to-night.

Only a greater stillness in the air,
Save for hot sighs of desert-heated breath,
Only the stars, ceasing their sleepless stare,
Only the east, rose-flushing, fresh from death.

All the wide plain, hid ’neath the waning round
Of a tired moon, grew dimly into view;
With a dull haze hung on its furthest bound,
Then sprang the sun into the steely blue.

poem by Ernest Favenc
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In The Desert

A cloudless sky o’erhead, and all around
The level country stretching like a sea—
A dull grey sea, that had no seeming bound,
The very semblance of eternity.

All common things that this poor life contained
Had passed from me, leaving no sign nor token;
My footfall first broke stillness that had reigned
For centuries unbroken.

Almost it was as if my steps had strayed
Into some strange old land or unknown isle,
Where Time himself, with drowsy hand had stayed
The shadow on the dial.

The sun at even sank down angry red
In the dim haze that bounded the far plain;
And then the stars usurped the heavens instead,
With silence in their train—

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poem by Ernest Favenc
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Song of the Torres Strait Islands

Bold Torres, the sailor, came and went,
with his swarthy, storm-worn band,
he saw Saavedra's Isle to north-
to south a loom of land.
He left unknowing his name would live
through ages with big fate,
as the first to stem with broad-bowed ship
the wash of the Northern Strait.

Round the western coast the Dutch ships crept,
seeking the hidden way;
some left their bones on that bare, west coast,
and the others sailed away.
Turned back, turned back, by reef and shoal,
twin guards of the narrow gate-
the path of the sun from the eastern seas-
they were mocked by the Northern Strait.

Year in, year out, the monsoons swept
o'er the isles of the coral shore,

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poem by Ernest Favenc
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