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/ page 182 of 246 /De Profundis
© Christina Georgina Rossetti
Oh why is heaven built so far,
Oh why is earth set so remote?
I cannot reach the nearest star
That hangs afloat.
Mirage
© Christina Georgina Rossetti
The hope I dreamed of was a dream,
Was but a dream; and now I wake,
Exceeding comfortless, and worn, and old,
For a dream's sake.
The Youth of England To Garibaldi's Legend
© Sydney Thompson Dobell
O ye who by the gaping earth
Where, faint with resurrection, lay
An empire struggling into birth,
Her storm-strown beauty cold with clay,
The free winds round her flowery head,
Her feet still rooted with the dead,
Cousin Kate
© Christina Georgina Rossetti
I was a cottage maiden
Hardened by sun and air
Contented with my cottage mates,
Not mindful I was fair.
Reynard the Fox - Part 1
© John Masefield
Poor Polly's dying struck him queer,
He was a darkened man thereafter,
Cowed, silent, he would wince at laughter
And be so gentle it was strange
Even to see. Life loves to change.
A Sophistical Argument
© Lesbia Harford
Great crane o'ertopping the delicate trees
Why do you seem so fair,
Swaying and raising your load with ease
High in the misty air?
Eurunderee
© Henry Lawson
There are scenes in the distance where beauty is not,
On the desolate flats where gaunt appletrees rot.
Where the brooding old ridge rises up to the breeze
From his dark lonely gullies of stringy-bark trees,
There are voice-haunted gaps, ever sullen and strange,
But Eurunderee lies like a gem in the range.
Above Eurunderee
© Henry Lawson
There are scenes in the distance where beauty is not,
On the desolate flats where gaunt appletrees rot.
Where the brooding old ridge rises up to the breeze
From his dark lonely gullies of stringy-bark trees,
There are voice-haunted gaps, ever sullen and strange,
But Eurunderee lies like a gem in the range.
The Star of Australasia
© Henry Lawson
We boast no more of our bloodless flag, that rose from a nation's slime;
Better a shred of a deep-dyed rag from the storms of the olden time.
From grander clouds in our `peaceful skies' than ever were there before
I tell you the Star of the South shall rise -- in the lurid clouds of war.
The Cambaroora Star
© Henry Lawson
Then he stood up on a sudden, with a face as pale as death,
And he gripped my hand a moment, while he seemed to fight for breath:
`Tom, old friend,' he said, `I'm going, and I'm ready to -- to start,
For I know that there is something -- something crooked with my heart.
Tom, my first child died. I loved her even better than the pen --
Tom -- and while the STAR was dying, why, I felt like I did THEN.
Hermann And Dorothea - V. Polyhymnia
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
THE COSMOPOLITE.
BUT the Three, as before, were still sitting and talking together,
A Poets Daughter
© Fitz-Greene Halleck
"A lady asks the Minstrel's rhyme."
A lady asks? There was a time
When, musical as play-bell's chime
To wearied boy,
That sound would summon dreams sublime
Of pride and joy.
The Dons of Spain
© Henry Lawson
The Eagle screams at the beck of trade, so Spain, as the world goes round,
Must wrestle the right to live or die from the sons of the land she found;
For, as in the days when the buccaneer was abroad on the Spanish Main,
The national honour is one thing dear to the hearts of the Dons of Spain.
The Professional Wanderer
© Henry Lawson
When youve knocked about the countrybeen away from home for years;
When the past, by distance softened, nearly fills your eyes with tears
You are haunted oft, wherever or however you may roam,
By a fancy that you ought to go and see the folks at home.
Lemnos Visited
© Leon Gellert
Oh Peace! The Peace I knew. I thought thee dead!
And had not hoped again to see thy smile.
In The Days When The World Was Wide
© Henry Lawson
The world is narrow and ways are short, and our lives are dull and slow,
For little is new where the crowds resort, and less where the wanderers go;
Greater, or smaller, the same old things we see by the dull road-side --
And tired of all is the spirit that sings
of the days when the world was wide.
Cherry- Tree Inn
© Henry Lawson
The rafters are open to sun, moon, and star,
Thistles and nettles grow high in the bar --
The chimneys are crumbling, the log fires are dead,
And green mosses spring from the hearthstone instead.
The voices are silent, the bustle and din,
For the railroad hath ruined the Cherry-tree Inn.
Since Then
© Henry Lawson
I met Jack Ellis in town to-day --
Jack Ellis -- my old mate, Jack --
Ten years ago, from the Castlereagh,
We carried our swags together away
To the Never-Again, Out Back.
The Change Has Come
© Paul Laurence Dunbar
THE change has come, and Helen sleeps
Not sleeps; but wakes to greater deeps