En.Citatepedia^®.ro

The Land Of The Dawning

Darkrose her shore in seas of amethyst
By tropic breezes kissed,
A summer land in watery wastes forlorn,
Her ranges floating in the snow-white mist
And gold of early morn.
The tides of Empire ebbed and flowed afar;
The thrones of nations in the dust were hurled,
Silent she slept beneath the morning star,
A virgin world.
Love, Birth, and Death, the stress of Age and Race,
Changed not her maiden face—
Unstocked her pastures and untilled her soil—
She who for labour builds a throne apace
Saw not her people toil;
Down the low valleys, up the stormy steeps,
Careless they roamed at will: the land was free
From desert stark to where the mangrove sleeps
Upon the sea.

There dropped no anchor at her river bars
Beneath the quiet stars;
No wandering sail her silent waters swept;
By waste and scrub, o’er plain and rocky scars
No alien footstep crept;
In feathery billows of her grassy seas
Some lonely mountain stretched its capes of blue;
Only the heavens above her and the breeze
Her secrets knew.

Where the wild grass grew rank on slopes forlorn
Rise fields of yellow corn,
And purple lucerne-bloom makes sweet the air;
The sullen mountain, lost in mists of morn,
Its golden heart lays bare.
Spoils of her pastures crowd full many a mart;
Her glittering treasure calls to many a land;
She has no secrets for the daring heart
And strong brown hand.

The smoke and thunder of her cities rise
To the same careless skies;
Her arteries thread the same wide sunlit leas,
Her fleets stretch forth their wings of enterprise
O’er the same summer seas.
She to the Nations cries: “No Past, no Fame,
No Memories quicken round my flag unfurled;
The mightier, therefore, shall I carve my name
Upon the World.”

poem by George Essex Evans
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The Burden of Time

Before the seas and mountains were brought forth,
I reigned. I hung the universe in space,
I capped earth's poles with ice to South and North,
And set the moving tides their bounds and place.

I smoothed the granite mountains with my hand,
My fingers gave the continents their form;
I rent the heavens and loosed upon the land
The fury of the whirlwind and the storm.

I stretched the dark sea like a nether sky
Fronting the stars between the ice-clad zones;
I gave the deep his thunder; the Most High
Knows well the voice that shakes His mountain thrones.

I trod the ocean caverns black as night,
And silent as the bounds of outer space,
And where great peaks rose darkly towards the light
I planted life to root and grow apace.

Then through a stillness deeper than the grave's,
The coral spires rose slowly one by one,
Until the white shafts pierced the upper waves
And shone like silver in the tropic sun.

I ploughed with glaciers down the mountain glen,
And graved the iron shore with stream and tide;
I gave the bird her nest, the lion his den,
The snake long jung~le-grass wherein to hide.

In lonely gorge and over hill and plain,
I sowed the giant forests of the world;
The great earth like a human heart in pain
Has quivered with the meteors I have hurled.

I plunged whole continents beneath the deep,
And left them sepulchred a million years;
I called, and lo, the drowned lands rose from sleep,
Sundering the waters of the hemispheres.

I am the lord and arbiter of man --
I hold and crush between my finger-tips
Wild hordes that drive the desert caravan,
Great nations that go down to sea in ships.

In sovereign scorn I tread the races down,
As each its puny destiny fulfils,
On plain and island, or where huge cliffs frown,
Wrapt in the deep thought of the ancient hills.

The wild sea searches vainly round the land
For those proud fleets my arm has swept away;
Vainly the wind along the desert sand
Calls the great names of kings who once held sway.

Yea, Nineveh and Babylon the great
Are fallen -- like ripe ears at harvest-tide;
I set my heel upon their pomp and state,
The people's serfdom and the monarch's pride.

One doom waits all -- art, speech, law, gods, and men,
Forests and mountains, stars and shining sun, --
The hand that made them shall unmake again,
I curse them and they wither one by one.

Waste altars, tombs, dead cities where men trod,
Shall roll through space upon the darkened globe,
Till I myself be overthrown, and God
Cast off creation like an outworn robe.

poem by Frederick George Scott
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Adrift: A Brisbane River Reverie

An amphitheatre of purple hills
And emerald slopes where nestling villas gleam,
Flooded with golden light that crowns and fills
Height, vale, and stream.
The clouds float motionless like isles of snow
Set in the sapphire of the summer sky,
The river, like a ribbon, far below
Winds rippling by;

As, like a creeping snake, with curve and sweep
The languid current steals past mead and scar,
To the dark mangrove fringing on the deep
Abreast the bar.

Slow drifts the boat past homestead, town, and lea;
The waters laugh and sob against the side
As down the murmuring river to the sea,
Dreaming, I glide.

Past meadowy marshland and gray limestone bluff,
Low mangrove fens and waste lantana heights,
Long reaches where the tides and winds are rough,
And sheltered bights.

Now wider spread the waters to the eyes;
Now sparser grow the homesteads, scarcely seen,
Save where some roof or gaunt gray trunk may rise
Against the green.

And salter on the cheek the breezes blow;
And in a deeper key the river sings;
And from the viewless sea move to and fro
Swift snow-like wings.

These are the harbingers from voyaged seas
Who knows what seas of thought man yet may sail
As science slowly sifts Life’s mysteries—
And lifts the veil?

poem by George Essex Evans
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An Old Colonist's Reverie

Dustily over the highway pipes the loud nor'-wester at morn,
Wind and the rising sun, and waving tussock and corn;
It brings to me days gone by when first in my ears it rang,
The wind is the voice of my home, and I think of the songs it sang
When, fresh from the desk and ledger, I crossed the long leagues of sea
'The old worn world is gone and the new bright world is free.'

The wide, wild pastures of old are fading and passing away,
All over the plain are the homes of the men who have come to stay
I sigh for the good old days in the station whare again;
But the good new days are better
I would not be heard to complain;
It is only the wind that cries with tears in its voice to me
Of the dead men low in the mould who came with me over the sea.

Some of them down in the city under the marble are laid,
Some on the bare hillside in the mound by the lone tree shade,
And some in the forest deeps of the west in their silence lie,
With the dark pine curtain above shutting out the blue of the sky.

And many have passed from my sight, whither I never shall know,
Swept away in the rushing river or caught in the mountain snow;
All the old hands are gone who came with me over the sea,
But the land that we made our own is the same bright land to me.

There are dreams in the gold of the kowhai, and when ratas are breaking in bloom
I can hear the rich murmur of voices in the deeps of the fern-shadowed gloom.
Old memory may bring me her treasures from the land of the blossoms of May,
But to me the hill daisies are dearer and the gorse on the river bed grey;
While the mists on the high hilltops curling, the dawn-haunted
haze of the sea,
To my fancy are bridal veils lifting from the face of the land of the free.

The speargrass and cabbage trees yonder, the honey-belled flax in its bloom,
The dark of the bush on the sidings, the snow-crested mountains that loom
Golden and grey in the sunlight, far up in the cloud-fringed blue,
Are the threads with old memory weaving and the line of my life
running through;
And the wind of the morning calling has ever a song for me
Of hope for the land of the dawning in the golden years to be.

poem by David McKee Wright
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Morning Land

Around and beneath, the dull grey mist and the sullen roar of the sea,
Scant footing-place on the sheer cliffs face—with death for a penalty;
But afar and above there is rest and love, there is hope for brain and hand,
The valleys fair and the crystal air and the peaks of Morning Land.

Around and beneath are the mists of toil and the sullen roar of the world,
And the sneer of scorn for a foothold gone and a climber backward hurled;
But afar and above are the hopes of men with the heart and will to stand
On the thin rift’s edge and the slippery ledge that lead to Morning Land.

They slip and fall from the sheer cliffs face; ah, God! they are falling still!
But another leaps for the vacant place, and another his place will fill.
’Tis little they fear the coward’s sneer, or the scorn of a selfish band,
Whose eyes are set on the parapet and the heights of Morning Land.

Hark to the ring as their rock picks swing, and bite for a foothold there!
Grip by grip they are straining up that others may travel fair.
The world will follow them all some day, the men it has shunned and banned,
The gallant hearts that hewed the way that leads to Morning Land.

poem by George Essex Evans
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An Australian Symphony

Not as the songs of other lands
   Her song shall be
Where dim Her purple shore-line stands
   Above the sea!
As erst she stood, she stands alone;
Her inspiration is her own.
From sunlit plains to mangrove strands
Not as the songs of other lands
   Her song shall be.

O Southern Singers! Rich and sweet,
   Like chimes of bells,
The cadence swings with rhythmic beat
   The music swells;
But undertones, weird, mournful, strong,
Sweep like swift currents thro' the song.
In deepest chords, with passion fraught,
In softest notes of sweetest thought,
   This sadness dwells.

Is this her song, so weirdly strange,
   So mixed with pain,
That whereso'er her poets range
   Is heard the strain?
Broods there no spell upon the air
But desolation and despair?
No voice, save Sorrow's, to intrude
Upon her mountain solitude
   Or sun-kissed plain?

The silence and the sunshine creep
   With soft caress
O'er billowy plain and mountain steep
   And wilderness --
A velvet touch, a subtle breath,
As sweet as love, as calm as death,
On earth, on air, so soft, so fine,
Till all the soul a spell divine
   O'ershadoweth.

The gray gums by the lonely creek,
   The star-crowned height,
The wind-swept plain, the dim blue peak,
   The cold white light,
The solitude spread near and far
Around the camp-fire's tiny star,
The horse-bell's melody remote,
The curlew's melancholy note
   Across the night.

These have their message; yet from these
   Our songs have thrown
O'er all our Austral hills and leas
   One sombre tone.
Whence doth the mournful keynote start?
From the pure depths of Nature's heart?
Or from the heart of him who sings
And deems his hand upon the strings
   Is Nature's own?

Could tints be deeper, skies less dim,
   More soft and fair,
Dappled with milk-white clouds that swim
   In faintest air?
The soft moss sleeps upon the stone,
Green scrub-vine traceries enthrone
The dead gray trunks, and boulders red,
Roofed by the pine and carpeted
   With maidenhair.

But far and near, o'er each, o'er all,
   Above, below,
Hangs the great silence like a pall
   Softer than snow.
Not sorrow is the spell it brings,
But thoughts of calmer, purer things,
Like the sweet touch of hands we love,
A woman's tenderness above
   A fevered brow.

These purple hills, these yellow leas,
   These forests lone,
These mangrove shores, these shimmering seas,
   This summer zone --
Shall they inspire no nobler strain
Than songs of bitterness and pain?
Strike her wild harp with firmer hand,
And send her music thro' the land,
   With loftier tone!

Her song is silence; unto her
   Its mystery clings.
Silence is the interpreter
   Of deeper things.
O for sonorous voice and strong
To change that silence into song,
To give that melody release
Which sleeps in the deep heart of peace
   With folded wings!

poem by George Essex Evans
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An Old Colonist's Reverie

Dustily over the highway pipes the loud nor'-wester at morn,
Wind and the rising sun, and waving tussock and corn;
It brings to me days gone by when first in my ears it rang,
The wind is the voice of my home, and I think of the songs it sang
When, fresh from the desk and ledger, I crossed the long leagues of sea --
"The old worn world is gone and the new bright world is free."

The wide, wild pastures of old are fading and passing away,
All over the plain are the homes of the men who have come to stay --
I sigh for the good old days in the station whare again;
But the good new days are better -- I would not be heard to complain;
It is only the wind that cries with tears in its voice to me
Of the dead men low in the mould who came with me over the sea.

Some of them down in the city under the marble are laid,
Some on the bare hillside in the mound by the lone tree shade,
And some in the forest deeps of the west in their silence lie,
With the dark pine curtain above shutting out the blue of the sky.

And many have passed from my sight, whither I never shall know,
Swept away in the rushing river or caught in the mountain snow;
All the old hands are gone who came with me over the sea,
But the land that we made our own is the same bright land to me.

There are dreams in the gold of the kowhai, and when ratas are breaking
   in bloom
I can hear the rich murmur of voices in the deeps of the fern-shadowed gloom.
Old memory may bring me her treasures from the land of the blossoms of May,
But to me the hill daisies are dearer and the gorse on the river bed grey;
While the mists on the high hilltops curling, the dawn-haunted
   haze of the sea,
To my fancy are bridal veils lifting from the face of the land of the free.

The speargrass and cabbage trees yonder, the honey-belled flax in its bloom,
The dark of the bush on the sidings, the snow-crested mountains that loom
Golden and grey in the sunlight, far up in the cloud-fringed blue,
Are the threads with old memory weaving and the line of my life
   running through;
And the wind of the morning calling has ever a song for me
Of hope for the land of the dawning in the golden years to be.

poem by David McKee Wright
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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Australia

Earth's mightiest isle. She stands alone.
The wide seas wash around Her throne,
Crowned by the red sun as his own.
This is the last of all the lands
Where Freedom’s fray-torn banner stands,
Not wrested yet from freemen’s hands.

The world’s gray page lies bare to-day—
The rise of nations—the decay.
Will She, too, rise—and fall as they?

She called men to Her, and they came,
Whose deaths have given the Desert name.
Their fame is written with Her fame.

We toil and strive. We have our hour.
But She shall grow from power to power,
To wear the splendour of her dower.

The trust is ours—to us alone.
We are the strong foundation-stone,
The seed from which the flower is grown.

And whilst a realm in fee we hold,
To guard the New against the Old,
Nor take the glitter for the gold,

What shall it profit Her if we
Make gold our God, and strength our plea,
And call wild license Liberty?

If, in our scorn of creed and king,
All reverence to the winds we fling,
And fall before a baser thing?

Though in Her coming hour of pride
Her millions throng the Desert wide,
Her cities stud the water side?

What though Her sword unconquered be,
Her armoured navies sweep the sea,
If still Her people are not free?

To be the wave of thought indeed
From New World vaunt and Old World need,
To manlier day and mightier deed?

To be a people proved and strong—
True freemen of the Poet’s song
For whom the world has waited long?

poem by George Essex Evans
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Maoriland

MAORILAND, my mother!
Holds the earth so fair another?
O, my land of the moa and Maori ,
Garlanded grand with your forests of kauri ,
Lone you stand, only beauty your dowry ,
Maoriland, my mother!
Older poets sing their frozen
England in her mists enshrouded;
Newer lands my Muse has chosen,
'Neath a Southern sky unclouded;
Set, a solitary gem,
In Pacific's diadem.
Land of rugged white-clad ranges,
Standing proud, impassive, lonely;
Ice and snow, where never change is,
Save the mighty motion only
Where through valleys seared and deep
Slow the serpent glaciers creep.
Land of silent lakes that nestle
Deep as night, girt round with forest;
Water never cut by vessel,
In whose mirror evermore rest
Green-wrapt mountain-side and peak,
Reddened by the sunset's streak.

Land of forests richly sweeping,
By the rata's red fire spangled;
Where at noonday night is sleeping,
Where, beneath the creepers tangled,
Come the tui's liquid calls
And the plash of waterfalls.
Land where fire from Earth's deep centre
Fights for breath in anguish furied,
Till she from the weight that pent her
Flings her flames out fiercely lurid;
Where the geysers hiss and seethe,
And the rocks groan far beneath.
Land of tussocked plain extending
In the distant blue to mingle,
Where wide rivers sigh unending
Over weary wastes of shingle;
Cold as moonlight is their flow
From the glacier-ice and snow.
Land where torrents pause to dally
'Neath the toi's floating feather,
Where the flax-blades in the valley
Whisper stealthily together,
And within the cabbage-trees
Hides the dying evening breeze.

Land where all winds whisper one word,
“Death!”—though skies are fair above her.
Newer nations white press onward:
Her brown warriors' fight is over—
One by one they yield their place,
Peace-slain chieftains of her race.
Land where faces find no furrow,
With the flush of life elated;
Where no grief is, save the sorrow
Of a pleasure that is sated;
Land of children lithe and slim,
Fresh of face and long of limb.
Land of fair enwreathëd cities,
Wide towns that the green bush merge in;
Land whose history unwrit is—
Memory hath no chaster virgin!
Land that is a starting place
For a newer, nobler race.
Maoriland, my mother!
Holds the Earth so fair another?
O, my land of the moa and Maori ,
Garlanded grand with your rata and kauri ,
Lone you stand, only beauty your dowry ,
Maoriland, my mother!

poem by Arthur Henry Adams
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The Song of Australia

The centuries found me to nations unknown –
My people have crowned me and made me a throne;
My royal regalia is love, truth, and light –
A girl called Australia – I've come to my right.

Though no fields of conquest grew red at my birth,
My dead were the noblest and bravest on earth;
Their strong sons are worthy to stand with the best –
My brave Overlanders ride west of the west.

My cities are seeking the clean and the right;
My Statesmen are speaking in London to-night;
The voice of my Bushmen is heard oversea;
My army and navy are coming to me.

By all my grim headlands my flag is unfurled,
My artists and singers are charming the world;
The White world shall know its young outpost with pride;
The fame of my poets goes ever more wide.

By old tow'r and steeple of nation grown grey
The name of my people is spreading to-day;
Through all the old nations my learners go forth;
My youthful inventors are startling the north.

In spite of all Asia, and safe from her yet,
Through wide Australasia my standards I'll set;
A grand world and bright world to rise in an hour –
The Wings of the White world, the Balance of Power.

Through storm, or serenely – whate'er I go through –
God grant I be queenly! God grant I be true!
To suffer in silence, and strike at a sign,
Till all the fair islands of these seas are mine.

poem by Henry Lawson
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The Pass Of The Sierra

ALL night above their rocky bed
They saw the stars march slow;
The wild Sierra overhead,
The desert's death below.
The Indian from his lodge of bark,
The gray bear from his den,
Beyond their camp-fire's wall of dark,
Glared on the mountain men.
Still upward turned, with anxious strain,
Their leader's sleepless eye,
Where splinters of the mountain chain
Stood black against the sky.
The night waned slow: at last, a glow,
A gleam of sudden fire,
Shot up behind the walls of snow,
And tipped each icy spire.
'Up, men!' he cried, 'yon rocky cone,
To-day, please God, we'll pass,
And look from Winter's frozen throne
On Summer's flowers and grass!'
They set their faces to the blast,
They trod the eternal snow,
And faint, worn, bleeding, hailed at last
The promised land below.
Behind, they saw the snow-cloud tossed
By many an icy horn;
Before, warm valleys, wood-embossed,
And green with vines and corn.
They left the Winter at their backs
To flap his baffled wing,
And downward, with the cataracts,
Leaped to the lap of Spring.
Strong leader of that mountain band,
Another task remains,
To break from Slavery's desert land
A path to Freedom's plains.
The winds are wild, the way is drear,
Yet, flashing through the night,
Lo! icy ridge and rocky spear
Blaze out in morning light!
Rise up, Frémont! and go before;
The Hour must have its Man;
Put on the hunting-shirt once more,
And lead in Freedom's van!

poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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When A Child Is Born

A ray of hope flitters in the sky
A shiny star lights up way up high
All across the land dawns a brand new morn
This comes to pass when a child is born
A silent wish sails the seven seas
The winds have changed whisperin the trees
And the walls of doubt crumble tossed and torn
This comes to pass when a child is born
A rosy fume settles all around
Youve got the feel youre on solid ground
For a spell or two no-one seems forlorn
This comes to pass when a child is born
(spoken)
And all of this happened
Because whe world is waiting
Waiting for one child
Black, white, yellow, no one knows
But a child that would grow up and turn tears to laughter
Hate to love, war to peace
And everyone to everyones neighbour
Misery and suffering would be forgotten forever
Its all a dream and illusion now
It must come true, sometimes soon somehow
All across the land dawns a brand new morn
This comes to pass when a child is born
All across the land dawns a brand new morn
This comes to pass when a child is born
When a child is born

song performed by by Boney M.
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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My Own Sea

As the wind of peace blew my stormy clouds away,
I could see a hint of sunshine peering over the trees,
It swept through the bluest sea and brought happiness to me.

My own sea brushes away your doubts when you touch it,
My own sea washes along your heart and soul,
It creates high tides to protect you and it calms down to sooth you.

My sea is a sea of loyalty and harmony,
My sea is a sea of kindness and honesty,
My sea is a sea of determination and long haunted paths,
A sea of rocky waves and crashing tides,
On shore I hide my secrets and wishes,
But when the red light of summer sun sets behind my turquoised
kingdom,
I could float beneath the blue silent world and explore my own
mystical realm,
A maiden of the waves.

poem by Mimi Fakhira
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The Flag

See the glorious stars and stripes,
Floating over there;
See how gracefully they wave
In the summer air.
We love to see that starry flag,
Wave in peace with ease,
And its colors, red, white and blue,
Unfurled to the breeze.

God grant that flag may ever wave
O'er our native land,
Where sons of freemen are united
In a happy band,
To celebrate the glorious Fourth,
The day we should adore;
Hail each anniversary day,
Now and evermore.

Our fathers fought beneath that flag
In the days of yore,
To gain their freedom from British laws,
Which they could not endure.
The cry was then for liberty,
On land and on sea;
They gained the glorious victory --
Our country now is free.

The land of Columbia's sons,
To-day is filled with joy;
Every heart should beat as one,
In the blessings we enjoy.
We should love our native land,
Where our fathers died,
We should keep the country free --
The early pilgrim's pride.

See the glorious stars and stripes,
Waving over there,
See the starry emblem, friends,
Floating in the air.
Proud it waves o'er our land,
Where it has waved for years,
May every freeman greet that flag
With three rousing cheers.

poem by Julia A Moore
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Republic And Motherland

(Written after entering New York Harbor at Daybreak)

Up the vast harbor with the morning sun
The ship swept in from sea;
Gigantic towers arose, the night was done,
And--there stood Liberty.

Silent, the great torch lifted in one hand,
The dawn in her proud eyes,
Silent, for all the shouts that vex her land,
Silent, hailing the skies;

Hailing that mightier Kingdom of the Blest
Our seamen sought of old,
The dream that lured the nations through the West,
The city of sunset gold.

Saxon and Norman in one wedded soul
Shook out one flag like fire;
But westward, westward, moved the gleaming goal,
Westward, the vast desire.

Westward and ever westward ran the call,
They followed the pilgrim sun,
Seeking that land which should enfold them all,
And weld all hearts in one.

Here on this mightier continent apart,
Here on these rolling plains,
Swells the first throb of that immortal heart,
The pulse of those huge veins.

Still, at these towers, our Old-World cities jest,
And neither hear nor see
The brood of gods at that gigantic breast,
The conquering race to be.

Chosen from many--for no sluggard soul
Confronts that night of stars--
The trumpets of the last Republic roll
Far off, an end to wars;

An end, an end to that wild blood-red age,
That made and keeps us blind;
A mightier realm shall be her heritage,
The kingdom of mankind.

Chosen from many nations, and made one;
But first, O Mother, from thee,
When, following, following on that Pilgrim sun,
Thy Mayflower crossed the sea.

poem by Alfred Noyes
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A Pastoral

Nature feels the touch of noon;
   Not a rustle stirs the grass;
Not a shadow flecks the sky,
Save the brown hawk hovering nigh;
   Not a ripple dims the glass
   Of the wide lagoon.

Darkly, like an armed host
   Seen afar against the blue,
Rise the hills, and yellow-grey
Sleeps the plain in cove and bay,
   Like a shining sea that dreams
   Round a silent coast.

From the heart of these blue hills,
   Like the joy that flows from peace,
Creeps the river far below
Fringed with willow, sinuous, slow.
   Surely here there seems surcease
   From the care that kills.

Surely here might radiant Love
   Fill with happiness his cup,
Where the purple lucerne-bloom
Floods the air with sweet perfume,
   Nature's incense floating up
   To the Gods above.

'Neath the gnarled-boughed apple trees
   Motionless the cattle stand;
Chequered cornfield, homestead white,
Sleeping in the streaming light,
   For deep trance is o'er the land,
   And the wings of peace.

Here, O Power that moves the heart,
   Thou art in the quiet air;
Here, unvexed of code or creed,
Man may breathe his bitter need;
   Nor with impious lips declare
   What Thou wert and art.

All the strong souls of the race
   Thro' the aeons that have run,
They have cried aloud to Thee --
"Thou art that which stirs in me!"
   As the flame leaps towards the sun
   They have sought Thy face.

But the faiths have flowered and flown,
   And the truth is but in part;
Many a creed and many a grade
For Thy purpose Thou hast made.
   None can know Thee what Thou art,
   Fathomless! Unknown!

poem by George Essex Evans
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The Last Song Of Camoens

The morning shone on Tagus' rocky side,
And airs of summer swelled the yellow tide,
When, rising from his melancholy bed,
And faint, and feebly by Antonio led,
Poor Camoens, subdued by want and woe,
Along the winding margin wandered slow,
His harp, that once could each warm feeling move
Of patriot glory or of tenderest love,
His sole and sable friend (while a faint tone
Rose from the wires) placed by a mossy stone.
How beautiful the sun ascending shines
From ridge to ridge, along the purple vines!
How pure the azure of the opening skies!
How resonant the nearer rock replies
To call of early mariners! and, hark!
The distant whistle from yon parting bark,
That down the channel as serene she strays,
Her gray sail mingles with the morning haze,
Bound to explore, o'er ocean's stormy reign,
New lands that lurk amid the lonely main!
A transient fervour touched the old man's breast;
He raised his eyes, so long by care depressed,
And while they shone with momentary fire,
Ardent he struck the long-forgotten lyre.
From Tagus' yellow-sanded shore,
O'er the billows, as they roar,
O'er the blue sea, waste and wide,
Our bark threw back the burning tide,
By northern breezes cheer'ly borne,
On to the kingdoms of the morn.
Blanco, whose cold shadow vast
Chills the western wave, is past!
Huge Bojador, frowning high,
Thy dismal terrors we defy!
But who may violate the sleep
And silence of the sultry deep;
Where, beneath the intenser sun,
Hot showers descend, red lightnings run;
Whilst all the pale expanse beneath
Lies burning wide, without a breath;
And at mid-day from the mast,
No shadow on the deck is cast!
Night by night, still seen the same,
Strange lights along the cordage flame,
Perhaps, the spirits of the good,
That wander this forsaken flood
Sing to the seas, as slow we float,
A solemn and a holy note!
Spectre of the southern main,
Thou barr'st our onward way in vain,
Wrapping the terrors of thy form,
In the thunder's rolling storm!
Fearless o'er the indignant tide,
On to the east our galleys ride.
Triumph! for the toil is o'er--
We kiss the far-sought Indian shore!
Glittering to the orient ray,
The banners of the Cross display!
Does my heart exulting bound?
Alas, forlorn, I gaze around:
Feeble, poor, and old, I stand,
A stranger in my native land!
My sable slave (ah, no! my only friend,
Whose steps upon my rugged path attend)
Sees, but with tenderness that fears to speak,
The tear that trickles down my aged cheek!
My harp is silent,--famine shrinks mine eye,--
'Give me a little food for charity!'

poem by William Lisle Bowles
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Sydney Cove, 1788

SHE sat on the rocks, her fireless eyes
Teased and tired with the thoughts of yore;
And paining her sense were alien skies,
An alien sea and an alien shore.
In gold-green dusks she glimpsed new flowers
And the glittering wings of gleaming birds —
But haunting her still were English bowers
And the clinging sweetness of old love-words.
A soft breeze murmured of unknown shores
And laughed as it touched her with fingers light,
But she mourned the more for the wind that roars
Down sullen coasts on a northern night.
Like topaz gems on a sable dome
The stranger stars stole shyly forth;
She saw no stars like the stars of home
That burned, white-fired, in the frosty north.
A restless sea was at her feet,
A restless sea of darkest blue;
The lights burned dimly on The Fleet,
And these were all the ships it knew.
She watched the dark tides rise and fall,
The lion-tides that, night and noon,
Range round the world, and moan and call
In sad sea-voices to the moon.
Thus while she watched they ebbed and flowed;
Till last with sudden splendour Day
Lit all the scene with gold, and showed
An arrow black on a garb of grey.

poem by Roderic Quinn
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The happy hunting grounds

Into the rose gold westland, its yellow prairies roll,
World of the bison's freedom, home of the Indian's soul.
Roll out, O seas! in sunlight bathed,
Your plains wind-tossed, and grass enswathed.

Farther than vision ranges, farther than eagles fly,
Stretches the land of beauty, arches the perfect sky,
Hemm'd through the purple mists afar
By peaks that gleam like star on star.

Fringing the prairie billows, fretting horizon's line,
Darkly green are slumb'ring wildernesses of pine,
Sleeping until the zephyrs throng
To kiss their silence into song.

Whispers freighted with odour swinging into the air,
Russet needles as censers swing to an altar, where
The angels' songs are less divine
Than duo sung twixt breeze and pine.

Laughing into the forest, dimples a mountain stream,
Pure as the airs above it, soft as a summer dream,
O! Lethean spring thou'rt only found
Within this ideal hunting ground.

Surely the great Hereafter cannot be more than this,
Surely we'll see that country after Time's farewell kiss.
Who would his lovely faith condole?
Who envies not the Red-skin's soul,

Sailing into the cloud land, sailing into the sun,
Into the crimson portals ajar when life is done?
O! dear dead race, my spirit too
Would fain sail westward unto you.

poem by Emily Pauline Johnson
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The Cumberland

At anchor in Hampton Roads we lay,
On board of the Cumberland sloop-of-war;
And at times from the fortress across the bay
The alarum of drums swept past,
Or a bugle blast
From the camp on the shore.

Then far away to the south uprose
A little feather of snow-white smoke,
And we knew that the iron ship of our foes
Was steadily steering its course
To try the force
Of our ribs of oak.

Down upon us heavily runs,
Silent and sullen, the floating fort;
Then comes a puff of smoke from her guns,
And leaps the terrible death,
With fiery breath,
From each open port.

We are not idle, but send her straight
Defiance back in a full broadside!
As hail rebounds from a roof of slate,
Rebounds our heavier hail
From each iron scale
Of the monster's hide.

'Strike your flag!' the rebel cries,
In his arrogant old plantation strain.
'Never!' our gallant Morris replies:
'It is better to sink than to yield!'
And the whole air is pealed
With the cheers of our men.

Then like a kraken huge and black,
She crushed our ribs in her iron grasp!
Down went the Cumberland all awrack,
With a sudden shudder of death,
And the cannon's breath
For her dying gasp.

Next morn, as the sun rose over the bay,
Still floated our flag at the mainmast-head.
Lord, how beautiful was thy day!
Every waft of the air
Was a whisper of prayer,
Or a dirge for the dead.

Ho! brave hearts that went down in the seas!
Ye are at peace in the troubled stream.
Ho! brave land! with hearts like these,
Thy flag, that is rent in twain,
Shall be one again,
And without a seam.

poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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The Cumberland

At anchor in Hampton Roads we lay,
On board of the Cumberland, sloop-of-war;
And at times from the fortress across the bay
The alarum of drums swept past,
Or a bugle blast
From the camp on the shore.

Then far away to the south uprose
A little feather of snow-white smoke,
And we knew that the iron ship of our foes
Was steadily steering its course
To try the force
Of our ribs of oak.

Down upon us heavily runs,
Silent and sullen, the floating fort;
Then comes a puff of smoke from her guns,
And leaps the terrible death,
With fiery breath,
From each open port.

We are not idle, but send her straight
Defiance back in a full broadside!
As hail rebounds from a roof of slate,
Rebounds our heavier hail
From each iron scale
Of the monster's hide.

'Strike your flag!' the rebel cries,
In his arrogant old plantation strain.
'Never!' our gallant Morris replies;
'It is better to sink than to yield!'
And the whole air pealed
With the cheers of our men.

Then, like a kraken huge and black,
She crushed our ribs in her iron grasp!
Down went the Cumberland all a wrack,
With a sudden shudder of death,
And the cannon's breath
For her dying gasp.

Next morn, as the sun rose over the bay,
Still floated our flag at the mainmast head.
Lord, how beautiful was Thy day!
Every waft of the air
Was a whisper of prayer,
Or a dirge for the dead.

Ho! brave hearts that went down in the seas!
Ye are at peace in the troubled stream;
Ho! brave land! with hearts like these,
Thy flag, that is rent in twain,
Shall be one again,
And without a seam!

poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Submitted by Poetry Lover
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