Midnight And Moonlight
AS one singled out from his fellows,
Enchanted I roam
Through night with its music and moonlight,
And sea-sheen and foam.
'Twas Beauty herself that awoke me
And whispered 'Arise,
I have lit all the lamps of my palace
To gladden your eyes!'
I rose at her bidding, and surely
'Tis just as she said —
The moon, spilling splendour around me,
Brimfull overhead;
Rich perfumes from garden and garden
Rare blossoms outpour;
The sea, broad and bright to the skyline,
Sings low to the shore.
The beach, a brave riband of silver,
All radiant shines,
'Twixt the white of the surf on its sea edge
And the dark of the pines.
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poem by Roderic Quinn
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Noon On The Barrier Ranges
THE saltbush steeped in drowsy stillness lies,
The mulga seems to swoon,
A hawk hangs poised within the burning skies,
And it is noon.
The river-gums, their leaf-pores closed, distil
No fresh and cooling breath;
I stand upon an old hard-bitten hill,
Wide plains beneath.
Here stood tall mountains when the world was young,
Their peaks uplifted high;
Here was the song of many waters sung
In days gone by.
The monarch Change, whose will no power withstands
Vast lord of might
At work by night and day, with tireless hands
Planed down their height.
With such to see, and seeing ponder on,
Such mighty ruin wrought,
Why should we wonder at proud Babylon
Brought down to nought?
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poem by Roderic Quinn
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Garden Street
LONG and drowsy and white and wide,
Villas and arbours on either side,
Pleasant under the cloudless skies,
Garden Street in the sunlight lies.
Twice a day — at the morning hour,
And again when the lights of sunset flower —
Its pavements ring to the footfall-noise
Of men and women, and girls and boys.
Townward, sprightly of foot, they go;
Home they come in the evening glow,
Labours over and questing done —
Some with money and some with none.
Most hours through, from morn to night,
It dreams and dreams in the drowsy light:
No call is there of the huckster-clan,
Of the bottle-oh and the rabbit-man.
Wafted odours of nameless flowers
Perfume the march of the golden hours;
Under the laurels, cooling the eye,
Pools of shade in the sunshine lie.
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poem by Roderic Quinn
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The Vigil
THE rain is falling on the roof,
And no sound else disturbs the wife,
Except the trees and winds at strife,
Now near at hand and now aloof;
But listening, leaning evermore,
She waits a knock upon the door.
Her hair is braided round her head;
Her eyes are large and fierce and bright;
Her shapely throat is soft and white;
And on her mouth there burns the red
Of that rich, storied gem that shone
Upon the breast of Prester John.
Upon the couch her husband lies.
How is it that he lies so still?
Why sleeps he there so pale and chill,
The lamplight on his lidded eyes?
Has she not fire, and more than fire
To thrill his flesh with hot desire?
Anon she lifts her rounded arms
As though to feel that she is free;
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poem by Roderic Quinn
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The Allisons
ROOF and rafter and window and door
Totter and tumble in slow decay;
The house by the creek is a house no more
For the Allison folk have gone away.
Kept back no more by the hands of men —
Though here and there bare tracts there be —
The bush has come to its own again,
Little by little and tree by tree.
Free-footed winds through the doorways pass,
Whispering much in a guarded tone;
Plovers call in the knee-deep grass
That grows right up to the threshold stone.
Silence, watching the years, has kept
Vigil here with a muted tongue,
Since over yon threshold-stone they stept,
Man and woman, and old and young.
Brown-armed women and bearded men,
Love and labour and grief and mirth —
Harvester Time has reaped since then
Crop after crop from the teeming earth!
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poem by Roderic Quinn
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The Golden Yesterday
AFTER a spell of chill, grey weather,
(Green, O green, are the feet of Spring!)
The heaven is here of flower and feather,
Of wild red blossom and flashing wing.
Hither of old queer flotsam drifted,
Borne on the breast of an age-old stream —
Men and women, with hope uplifted,
Spurred and stirred by a splendid dream.
Hither they quested, the young and eager,
The social misfit, the aged, the banned;
Friends were lacking and fortune meagre,
And here was promise — the Promised Land.
Each had a goal, a star, a beacon —
A good-bye smile, or a soft love-trees —
To urge his feet lest his feet should weaken,
Drag and falter with weariness.
Love and honour, and mirth and pity —
The joy that brightens, the gloom that chills —
Dwelt at once in the tented city,
Set of old in these watching hills.
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poem by Roderic Quinn
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The Swamp
FOR one whole day and a long night through
We made our camp
In a she-oak grove by a coastal swamp.
Our tent gleamed white in the she-oak trees,
Whose falling hair
Made a soft, brown mist in the sweet blue air.
A sound subdued from their tresses rose —
A moan, a sigh
As of unseen seas, when the breeze went by.
'Twas wattle-time, and the scented bloom,
New lit and young,
In a mass of gold from the still trees hung.
There music dwelt, and a splendour moved
Through all the day
From the green of dawn to the twilight gray.
For careless ever, like one who goes
Where Joyance leads,
Sang the little reed-bird in the tall, green reeds.
Blue, swift and slender the dragonflies
A-hawking flew,
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poem by Roderic Quinn
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The Lovers' Walk
BY the slowly flowing river
Lies the old, shadowed walk,
Where the lovers, two and two,
Ere the falling of the dew,
Of the sweetest thing on earth in the soft shadows talk.
For, though honey has a sweetness,
As the tasting palate knows,
Yet young love is sweeter, sure,
Than the honey, pale and pure,
That the brown bee gets from the heart of the rose.
Though there's music in the waters
And the singing of the birds,
Yet a richer music dwells
In the tale each couple tells
In that scene of green enchantment, as they put their hearts in words.
Though they have not throne or sceptre,
They are kings and queens, in truth;
And their realm is all their own,
And they rule in it alone,
For the wonder and the splendour of the world belong to youth.
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poem by Roderic Quinn
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The Circling Hearths
MY Countrymen, though we are young as yet
With little history, nought to show
Of lives enleagued against a foreign foe,
Torn flags and triumph, glory or regret;
Still some things make our kinship sweet,
Some deeds inglorious but of royal worth,
As when with tireless arms and toiling feet
We felled the tree and tilled the earth.
’Tis no great way that we have travelled since
Our feet first shook the storied dust
Of England from them, when with love and trust
In one another, and large confidence
In God above, our ways were ta’en
’Neath alien skies—each keeping step in mind
And soul and purpose to one trumpet strain,
One urging music on the wind:
Yet tears of ours have wet the dust, have wooed
Some subtle green things from the ground—
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poem by Roderic Quinn
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The Lotus-Flower
All the heights of the high shores gleam
Red and gold at the sunset hour:
There comes the spell of a magic dream,
And the Harbour seems a lotus-flower;
A blue flower tinted at dawn with gold,
A broad flower blazing with light at noon,
A flower forever with charms to hold
His heart, who sees it by sun or moon.
Its beauty burns like a ceaseless fire,
And tower looks over the top of tower;
For all mute things it would seem, aspire
To catch a glimpse of the lotus-flower.
Men meet its beauty with furrowed face,
And straight the furrows are smoothed away;
They buy and sell in the market-place,
And languor leadens their blood all day.
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poem by Roderic Quinn
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