Stay, ship from Thames with fettered sails
in Sydney Cove, this ebb of tide;
your gear untangled from the gales,
imprisoned at your anchor ride.

The portly gentleman who are
the pillars of the land come down
and greet the Newcomes voyaged far
to make a name in Sydney town.

The Recoats, too with shouldered arms,
marshal pale wretches from the hold,
who, cramped in tempest and in calms
have learned to do as they are told.

Flash phaetons fill the streets to-day;
inn-tables rock to sailor fists;

You who live secure
In your warm houses
Who return at evening to find
Hot food and friendly faces:

Consider whether this is a man,
Who labours in the mud
Who knows no peace
Who fights for a crust of bread
Who dies at a yes or a no.
Consider whether this is a woman,
Without hair or name
With no more strength to remember
Eyes empty and womb cold
As a frog in winter.

Consider that this has been:
I commend these words to you.
Engrave them on your hearts

798

She staked her Feathers—Gained an Arc—
Debated—Rose again—
This time—beyond the estimate
Of Envy, or of Men—

And now, among Circumference—
Her steady Boat be seen—
At home—among the Billows—As
The Bough where she was born—

991

She sped as Petals of a Rose
Offended by the Wind—
A frail Aristocrat of Time
Indemnity to find—
Leaving on nature—a Default
As Cricket or as Bee—
But Andes in the Bosoms where
She had begun to lie—

She said I should be patient
I would succeed in what I like doing
And I am saying
I am already starting to flourish
I am starting to rise from
A mental oppression invisible but real
To excel and date my dreams…

She said that I should be patient
I would succeed in what I like doing
And I am saying
I am already starting to flourish
I am starting to rise from
A mental warfare every single day
To stopped me creating my own reality

She said that I should be patient
I would succeed in what I like doing

732

She rose to His Requirement—dropt
The Playthings of Her Life
To take the honorable Work
Of Woman, and of Wife—

If ought She missed in Her new Day,
Of Amplitude, or Awe—
Or first Prospective—Or the Gold
In using, wear away,

It lay unmentioned—as the Sea
Develop Pearl, and Weed,
But only to Himself—be known
The Fathoms they abide—

557

She hideth Her the last—
And is the first, to rise—
Her Night doth hardly recompense
The Closing of Her eyes—

She doth Her Purple Work—
And putteth Her away
In low Apartments in the Sod -
As worthily as We.

To imitate her life
As impotent would be
As make of Our imperfect Mints,
The Julep—of the Bee—

She who ever had remained in the depth of my being,
in the twilight of gleams and of glimpses;
she who never opened her veils in the morning light,
will be my last gift to thee, my God, folded in my final song.

Words have wooed yet failed to win her;
persuasion has stretched to her its eager arms in vain.

I have roamed from country to country keeping her in the core of my heart,
and around her have risen and fallen the growth and decay of my life.

Over my thoughts and actions, my slumbers and dreams,

1

the legend is whispered
in the women's tent
how the moon when she rises
full
follows some men into themselves
and changes them there
the season is short
but dreadful shapeshifters
they wear strange hands
they walk through the houses
at night their daughters
do not know them

2

who is there to protect her
from the hands of the father
not the windows which see and
say nothing not the moon
that awful eye not the woman
she will become with her
scarred tongue who who who the owl

My black hills have never seen the sun rising,
Eternally they look north towards Armagh.
Lot's wife would not be salt if she had been
Incurious as my black hills that are happy
When dawn whitens Glassdrummond chapel.

My hills hoard the bright shillings of March
While the sun searches in every pocket.
They are my Alps and I have climbed the Matterhorn
With a sheaf of hay for three perishing calves
In the field under the Big Forth of Rocksavage.

The sleety winds fondle the rushy beards of Shancoduff