"If you repent," the Parson said,"
Your sins will be forgiven.
Aye, even on your dying bed
You're not too late for heaven."

That's just my cup of tea, I thought,
Though for my sins I sorrow;
Since salvation is easy bought
I will repent . . . to-morrow.

To-morrow and to-morrow went,
But though my youth was flying,
I was reluctant to repent,
having no fear of dying.

'Tis plain, I mused, the more I sin,
(To Satan's jubilation)
When I repent the more I'll win
Celestial approbation.

The prison-house in which I live
Is falling to decay,
But God renews my spirit's strength,
Within these walls of clay.

For me a dimness slowly creeps
Around earth's fairest light,
But heaven grows clearer to my view,
And fairer to my sight.

It may be earth's sweet harmonies
Are duller to my ear,
But music from my Father's house
Begins to float more near.

Then let the pillars of my home
Crumble and fall away;
Lo, God's dear love within my soul
Renews it day by day.

AWAY! the moor is dark beneath the moon,
   Rapid clouds have drunk the last pale beam of even:
Away! the gathering winds will call the darkness soon,
   And profoundest midnight shroud the serene lights of heaven.
Pause not! the time is past! Every voice cries, 'Away!'
   Tempt not with one last tear thy friend's ungentle mood:
Thy lover's eye, so glazed and cold, dares not entreat thy stay:
   Duty and dereliction guide thee back to solitude.

Lost in the swamp and welter of the pit,
He flounders off the duck-boards; only he knows
Each flash and spouting crash,--each instant lit
When gloom reveals the streaming rain. He goes
Heavily, blindly on. And, while he blunders,
"Could anything be worse than this?"--he wonders,
Remembering how he saw those Germans run,
Screaming for mercy among the stumps of trees:
Green-faced, they dodged and darted: there was one
Livid with terror, clutching at his knees. . .
Our chaps were sticking 'em like pigs . . . "O hell!"

The light that spills through the crack in the door
Illumines only her face
And my grandmother smiles
If only all of life was this easy
To only be a child forever
With nothing to care about
And nothing to lose

Every day in the schoolyard
There was kickball
Dodge ball
Hopscotch
Friends were many, we were all the same
And nobody ever cried
When mothers called us home

Be the best, they told us

Ten miles down Reedy River
A pool of water lies,
And all the year it mirrors
The changes in the skies,
And in that pool's broad bosom
Is room for all the stars;
Its bed of sand has drifted
O'er countless rocky bars.

Around the lower edges
There waves a bed of reeds,
Where water rats are hidden
And where the wild duck breeds;
And grassy slopes rise gently
To ridges long and low,
Where groves of wattle flourish
And native bluebells grow.

Beneath the granite ridges
The eye may just discern

Rouse ye! torpid daylight-dreamers, cast your carking cares away!
As calm air to troubled water, so my night is to your day;
All the dreary day you labour, groping after common sense,
And your eyes ye will not open on the night's magnificence.
Ye would scow were I to tell you how a guiding radiance gleams
On the outer world of action from my inner world of dreams.

When, with mind released from study, late I lay note down to sleep,
From the midst of facts and figures, into boundless space I leap;

Sweet Dove! the softest, steadiest plume,
In all the sunbright sky,
Brightening in ever-changeful bloom
As breezes change on high; -

Sweet Leaf! the pledge of peace and mirth,
"Long sought, and lately won,"
Blessed increase of reviving Earth,
When first it felt the Sun; -

Sweet Rainbow! pride of summer days,
High set at Heaven's command,
Though into drear and dusky haze
Thou melt on either hand; -

Dear tokens of a pardoning God,
We hail ye, one and all,
As when our fathers walked abroad,

There are too many waterfalls here; the crowded streams
hurry too rapidly down to the sea,
and the pressure of so many clouds on the mountaintops
makes them spill over the sides in soft slow-motion,
turning to waterfalls under our very eyes.
--For if those streaks, those mile-long, shiny, tearstains,
aren't waterfalls yet,
in a quick age or so, as ages go here,
they probably will be.
But if the streams and clouds keep travelling, travelling,
the mountains look like the hulls of capsized ships,
slime-hung and barnacled.

Henry the first, surnamed " Beauclare,"
Lost his only son William at sea,
So when Henry died it were hard to decide
Who his heir and successor should be.

There were two runners-up for the title-
His daughter Matilda was one,
And the other, a boy, known as Stephen of Blois,
His young sister Adela's son.

Matilda by right should have had it,
Being daughter of him as were dead,
But the folks wasn't keen upon having a queen,
So they went and crowned Stephen instead.

This 'ere were a knockout for Tilda,