The Domain

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  The bulging cloud mounts lazily
  In shade where sunlight glances through,
  And sweeping lightly from the tree
  Melts indolently in the blue.

  The scanty grass-blades yonder shake,
  A tremulous flurry takes the smoke,
  And ancient memories start awake
  At pungent scent of fig and oak.

  For here of old an urchin strayed
  And gloomed in lonely pride the while,
  An outlaw in a forest glade
  Or pirate on a tropic isle.

  Here where a staid policeman strolls
  Ned Kelly in his armour stood,
  And underneath the roadway rolls
  The river of the Haunted Wood.

  And yonder, couched in phantom fern,
  Not far from Nelson’s rolling ship,
  I spied the antler’d head of Herne
  And saw the startled rabbit skip.

  And Will Wing shook in desperate strife
  Defiantly his bloody hand,
  And heard the waves of daily life
  Drone on the reef-ring, far from land.

  Not Robin, clad in verdant baize,
  Nor Britain’s silver-plated king,
  Was master of the winning ways
  That drew me to the flag of Wing.

  He sauntered on the southern isle
  In garments of eccentric cut,
  And, with his grim sardonic smile,
  Would masticate his coco-nut.

  Within his cave, upon a heap
  Of Spanish coin and rubies red,
  I’ve seen him lying half-asleep
  And dreaming of the blood he’d shed.

  The gold-dust, spilled about the ground,
  Made common dirt a treasure rare,
  And if you fingered it you found
  The flashing jewels buried there.

  The seabird, sweeping free and far
  On wings of wonder, will not see
  That green isle and its coral bar,
  That corsair and his mystery.

  As when a lump of sugar shrinks,
  When coffee waves about it glide,
  Crumbles and topples, melts and sinks,
  And mingles with the sombre tide,

  So is the islet vanished; yet
  As now I gulp a bitter draught
  The sweetness lingers. Up, and set
  The canvas of the rakish craft!

© John Le Gay Brereton