purple

PALLAS, attending to the Muse's song,
Approv'd the just resentment of their wrong;
And thus reflects: While tamely I commend
Those who their injur'd deities defend,
My own divinity affronted stands,
And calls aloud for justice at my hands;
Then takes the hint, asham'd to lag behind,
And on Arachne' bends her vengeful mind;
One at the loom so excellently skill'd,

HERE, while the Thracian bard's enchanting strain
Sooths beasts, and woods, and all the listn'ing
plain,
The female Bacchanals, devoutly mad,
In shaggy skins, like savage creatures, clad,
Warbling in air perceiv'd his lovely lay,
And from a rising ground beheld him play.
When one, the wildest, with dishevel'd hair,
That loosely stream'd, and ruffled in the air;

NOW shone the morning star in bright array,
To vanquish night, and usher in the day:
The wind veers southward, and moist clouds arise,
That blot with shades the blue meridian skies.
Cephalus feels with joy the kindly gales,
His new allies unfurl the swelling sails;
Steady their course, they cleave the yielding main,
And, with a wish, th' intended harbour gain.

Men of all the lands Australian from the Gulf to Derwent River,
From the Heads of Sydney Harbour to the waters of the West,
There’s a spirit loudly calling where the saplings dip and quiver,
Where the city crowds are thronging, and the range uplifts its crest!
Do ye feel the holy fervour of a new-born exultation?
For the task the Lord has set us is a trust of noblest pride—
We are named to march unblooded to the winning of a nation,
And to crown her with a glory that may evermore abide.

Meintjes Kopje! Meintjes Kopje!
Do the purple daisies grow
On your rugged slopes in spring-time
As they did in years ago,

When I walked with one who loved me,
In the days when love was young;
When our eyes held glinted laughter
And our sighs were songs unsung?

But the laughter fell and faded,
And the wonder-song is still,
And the track goes all untrodden
Past the pool and up the hill.

Meintjes Kopje! Meintjes Kopje!
Other years your flowers restore,

The little pansies by the road have turned
Away their purple faces and their gold,
And evening has taken all the bees from the thyme,
And all the scent is shed away by the cold.

Against the hard and pale blue evening sky
The mountain's new-dropped summer snow is clear
Glistening in steadfast stillness: like transcendent
Clean pain sending on us a chill down here.

Chirst on the Cross! -- his beautiful young man's body
Has fallen dead upon the nails, and hangs
White and loose at last, with all the pain

Come queen of months in company
Wi all thy merry minstrelsy
The restless cuckoo absent long
And twittering swallows chimney song
And hedge row crickets notes that run
From every bank that fronts the sun
And swathy bees about the grass
That stops wi every bloom they pass
And every minute every hour
Keep teazing weeds that wear a flower
And toil and childhoods humming joys
For there is music in the noise
The village childern mad for sport
In school times leisure ever short

268

Me, change! Me, alter!
Then I will, when on the Everlasting Hill
A Smaller Purple grows—
At sunset, or a lesser glow
Flickers upon Cordillera—
At Day's superior close!

Purple,
Purple,
Twilight
Sky light.

Purple as a king's cape
Purple as a grape.

Purple for the evening
When daylight is leaving.

Soft and purry,
Gentle and furry,
Velvet evening-time.

Purple,
Purple.
Sky light
Goodbye light.

Dusky
Musky
Into night.

IF the woodland and the heath,
And the hedgerows thick with may,
And the weed-flowers underneath,
And the clambering honey-sheath,
And the mosses green and grey,

And the flecks of sun and shade
Lying light upon the grass,
And the ripple in the glade,
And the songs that float and fade,
And the joys that come and pass,

If the dog-rose choir of bees
Whirling golden in the sun,
And the sweetness of the breeze,
And the joists of mighty trees,