Poetry

RISING and setting suns of Liberty—
Mountainous exploits and the wrecks thick strewn
By stormy Passion o’er Life’s treacherous sea,
Relieved with shores of green delight, and boon
And starry dreams and the serene pale moon
Of Pathos,—these with all of which they be
Idealisms, are of Poesy
The bodily temple into fitness hewn,
And for its Soul, all that the mind can seize
Of beauty harmonising with the might
Of natural ties and social sympathies
And that deep spirit of Piety whose flight
Is strongest and most heavenward ’mid the blight
Of mortal misery—its Soul are these.

poem by Charles Harpur
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Freedom in Faith

HIS MIND alone is kingly who (though one)
But venerates of present things or past
What he believeth good, kneeling to none
Save God and Truth! Who awed not by this vast
And shadowy scheme of Life, but anchored fast
In Love and sitting central like the sun
So gives his mental beams to pierce and run
Through all its secrets while his days may last;
And thus progressive, little faith hath he
For mysteries, till sounding them he hear
The gathered tones of their stirr’d depths agree
With that religious harmony severe
Which anthems to his spiritual ear
The invisible Presence of the Deity.

poem by Charles Harpur
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The End of the Book

My work is finished that has been to me
My only solace for this many a day.
But whether it in other company
May so beguile the time and hue the ray
Of loneliness and thought, I dare not say;
Nor whether with the future it shall be
A thing of note, nor whether presently
’Tis doomed to waste like a thin mist away.
Yet whatsoever be its worldly lot,
I know that, hive-like, it with love is stored,
And that through all its pages I have not
Written one wilfully misleading word,
Or traced one feeling that my heart ignored—
One line that truth has counselled me to blot.

poem by Charles Harpur
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The Forgotten

He shone in the senate, the camp, and the grove,
The mirror of manhood, the darling of love.
He fought for his country, the star of the brave,
And died for it’s weal when to die was to save.

And Wisdom and Valour long over him wept,
And Beauty, for ages, strewed flowers where he slept.

And the bards of the people inwrought with their lays
The light of his glory, the sound of his praise.

But afar in the foreworld have faded their strains,
And now of his being what record remains?

Within a lone valley a tomb crumbles fast,
And the name of the Sleeper is lost in the past

poem by Charles Harpur
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Forward Ho!

Forward ho! Forward ho! Soldiers of liberty,
Hope on; fight on; till man’s whole race shall be
Free of all good under heaven’s wide dome.
And doubt not, the earth that has grown old in sorrow
Shall grow young again in the light of that morrow
Predestined to make her fraternity’s home.
Forward ho! Forward ho! Lovers of truth and good!
Think on; write on; till earth’s whole herohood
Stand in one faith under heaven’s wide dome;
And shout to behold all the hilltops adorning
With sunflowers of glory the glow of that morning
Predestined to mark her fraternity’s home.

poem by Charles Harpur
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Records of Romantic Passion

THERE’S a rare Soul of Poesy which may be
But concentrated by the chastened dreams
Of constant hearts. Where’er the ministry
Of beautiful Nature hath enhanced the themes
Of some Petrarchian mind whose story gleams
Within the Past like a moon-silvered sea,
Or where grey Interest the spirit free
Of faithful Love hath caged in iron schemes,
Or round it stirr’d such dangers as o’erdrove
Long Ruin’s storm at last—there evermore
The very airs that whisper to the grove,
The echo’s mystery and the streamlet’s lore
Savour of Passion and transfusive pour
Abroad suggestions to heroic Love.

poem by Charles Harpur
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To James Norton Esq.

Think you I have not skill to gather gold,
If I could love it as some others do?
Or that I lack the spirit of a bold
And resolute man in any cause that’s true,
Because I scorn to juggle with yon crew
Of politics schemers? Let the truth be told:
Whatever I can value, I can mould
Right deftly to my ends, and boldly too.
“But fame he sought not through a gainful hand”
(This of my being let future tell),
“Nor through the arts of popular command;
But in retirement, where the muses dwell,
That his life’s legacy might be—a well
Pierian, in a wide and thirsty land. ”

poem by Charles Harpur
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The Death of Sisera

When Deborah the prophetess ruled in God’s land,
And Sisera died under Jael’s fierce hand,
His mother looked forth at the close of the day,
When the roar of the war died in silence away:
And she cried, “Still his charriot tarries afar!
Are its wheels clogged about with the slaughter of war?”
And her damsels made answer, “Awhile yet they stay
To trample the fallen, dividing the prey.”
Day shut, and the stars that had doomed him to death
Rushed out, while to listen she pent in her breath;
But the sound of his chariot over the plain
Like a far roll of thunder, came never again

poem by Charles Harpur
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A Sonnet dedicated to Sir George Gipps

My country! I am sore at heart for thee!
An in mine ear, like a storm-heralding breeze,
A voice against thee gathers warningly!
Lo, in what hands seem now thy destinies!
Hands grasping all, through party means, to seize
Some private benefit: and what should be
Thy Freedom's dawn, but gives ascendancy
To lawless Squatters, and the Hacks of these!
Woe waits a land, where men are wise and brave
For naught but self! When even the best aside
Are thrusting honesty to don the knave!
Where worth is trampled on by vulgar pride!
And where all beauty of the mind, decried,
Hangs dying o'er a Mammon-delved grave.

poem by Charles Harpur
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Andrew Marvell

Spirit, that lookest from the starry fold
Of truth’s white flock, next to thy Milton there
Accept my reverence though but feebly told.
And oh! My heart from thy example rare
Henceforth its being for worthiest ends would bear.
Thy deeds, though plain, were towering all and bold,
And like the stedfast columns that uphold
Some awful temple, to thy duty were.
How much thy story has enlarged my ken
Of real greatness! Of mere conquerors I
Read but with anger, or with shame; but when
Of thee, uplifted into virtue’s sky,
I glory in my brotherhood with men,
And feel how nobly all may live and die.

poem by Charles Harpur
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