hero

HOW many singers before me! Are there yet songs unsung?

Dost thou, my sad soul, remember where was her dwelling place?

Tents in Jiwá, the fair wadi, speak ye to me of her.

Fair house of 'Abla my true love, blessing and joy to thee!

Doubting I paused in the pastures, seeking her camel-tracks,

high on my swift-trotting nága tall as a citadel,

Weaving a dream of the past days, days when she dwelt in them,

'Abla, my true love, in Házzen, Sammán, Mutathéllemi.

In my boyhood's days so drear

I was kept confined;
There I sat for many a year,

All alone I pined,
As within the womb.

Yet thou drov'st away my gloom,

Golden phantasy!
I became a hero true,

Like the Prince Pipi,
And the world roam'd through,

Many a crystal palace built,

Crush'd them with like art,
And the Dragon's life-blood spilt

With my glitt'ring dart.
Yes! I was a man!

Next I formed the knightly plan

Princess Fish to free;

To Thomas Pennant, Esquire.

... equidem credo, quia sit divinitus illis
Ingenium.
Virg., Georg.


When day declining sheds a milder gleam,
What time the may-fly haunts the pool or stream;
When the still owl skims round the grassy mead,
What time the timorous hare limps forth to feed;
Then be the time to steal adown the vale,
And listen to the vagrant cuckoo's tale;
To hear the clamorous curlew call his mate,
Or the soft quail his tender pain relate;

By the winding Wollondilly where the weeping willows weep,
And the shepherd, with his billy, half awake and half asleep,
Folds his fleecy flocks that linger homewards in the setting sun
Lived my hero, Jim the Ringer, "cocky" on Mylora Run.
Jimmy loved the super's daughter, Miss Amelia Jane McGrath.
Long and earnestly he sought her, but he feared her stern papa;
And Amelia loved him truly -- but the course of love, if true,
Never yet ran smooth or duly, as I think it ought to do.

FAIR OTAHEITE , fondly blest
By him who long was doom'd to brave
The fury of the Polar wave,
That fiercely mounts the frozen rock
Where the harsh sea-bird rears her nest,
And learns the raging surge to mock--
There Night, that loves eternal storm,
Deep and lengthened darkness throws,
And untried danger's doubtful form
Its half-seen horror shews!
While Nature, with a look so wild,
Leans on the cliffs, in chaos pil'd,
That here the aw'd, astonish'd mind
Forgets, in that o'erwhelming hour,

'Twas in the year of 1858, and on October the fourteenth day,
That a fire broke out in a warehouse, and for hours blazed away;
And the warehouse, now destroyed, was occupied by the Messrs R. Wylie, Hill & Co.,
Situated in Buchanan Street, in the City of Glasgow.

The flames burst forth about three o'clock in the afternoon,
And intimation of the outbreak spread very soon;
And in the spectators' faces were depicted fear and consternation;
While the news flew like lightning to the Fire Brigade Station.

Says Tom to Jack, 'tis very odd,
These representatives of God,
In color, way of life and evil,
Should be so very like the devil.
Jack, understand, was one of those,
Who mould religion in the rose,
A red hot methodist; his face
Was full of puritanic grace,
His loose lank hair, his slow gradation,
Declared a late regeneration;
Among the daughters long renown'd,
For standing upon holy ground;
Never in carnal battle beat,
Tho' sometimes forced to a retreat.
But Ct, hero as he is,

The Honorable Ardleigh Wyse
Was every fisherman's despair;
He caught his fish on floating flies,
In fact he caught them in the air,
And wet-fly men -- good sports, perhaps --
He called "those chuck-and-chance-it chaps".
And then the Fates that sometimes play
A joke on such as me and you
Deported him up Queensland way
To act as a station jackaroo.
The boundary rider said, said he,
"You fish dry fly? Well, so do we.

"These barramundi are the blokes
To give you all the sport you need:

(The Dark Side)

My mind goes back to Fumin Wood, and how we stuck it out,
Eight days of hunger, thirst and cold, mowed down by steel and flame;
Waist-deep in mud and mad with woe, with dead men all about,
We fought like fiends and waited for relief that never came.
Eight days and nights they rolled on us in battle-frenzied mass!
"Debout les morts!" We hurled them back. By God! they did not pass.

They pinned two medals on my chest, a yellow and a brown,
And lovely ladies made me blush, such pretty words they said.

Alas! Now o'er Britannia there hangs a gloom,
Because over 400 British Tars have met with a watery tomb;
Who served aboard the " Victoria," the biggest ship in the navy,
And one of the finest battleships that ever sailed the sea.

And commanded by Sir George Tyron, a noble hero bold,
And his name on his tombstone should be written in letters of gold;
For he was skilful in naval tactics, few men could with him cope,
And he was considered to be the nation's hope.

'Twas on Thursday, the twenty-second of June,