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MARY RIVERS
Path beside the silver waters, flashing in October's sun -
Walk, by green and golden margins where the sister
streamlets run -
Twenty shining springs have vanished, full of flower, and leaf, and bird,
Since the step of Mary Rivers in your lawny dell was heard!
Twenty white-haired Junes have left us - grey with frost and bleak with gale -
Since the hand of her we loved so plucked the
blossoms in your dale.
Twenty summers, twenty autumns, from the grand old hills have passed,
With their robes of royal colour, since we saw the
darling last.
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Morning comes - the
blessed morning! and the slow song of the sea,
Like a psalm from
radiant altars, floats across a rose-red lea;
Then the fair, strong
noondayblossoms, and the
reaper seeks the cool
Valley of the moss and
myrtle, and the glimmering water-pool.
Noonday flames and evening follows; and the
lordly mountains rest
Heads arrayed with tenfold splendour on the rich heart of the West.
Evening walks with moon and music where the higher life has been;
But the face of Mary Rivers there will nevermore be seen.
Ah! when autumn dells are dewy, and the wave is very still,
And that grey ghost called the Twilight passes from the distant hill -
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Even in the
hallowednightfall, when the fathers sit and dream,
And the splendid rose of heaven sees a sister in the
stream -
Often do I watch the waters gleaming in a
starry bay,
Thinking of a bygone beauty, and a season far away;
Musing on the grace that left us in a time of singing rain,
On the lady who will never walk
amongst these heaths again.
Four there were, but two were taken; and this
darling we deplore,
She was sweetest of the
circle - she was dearest of the four!
In the
daytime and the dewtime comes the
phantom of her face:
None will ever sit where she did - none will ever fill her place.
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With the passing of our Mary, like a
sunset out of sight,
Passed away our pure first
passion - all its life and all its light!
All that made the world a dreamland - all the glory and the glow
Of the fine, fresh, morning feeling vanished twenty years ago.
Girl, whose strange, unearthly beauty haunts us ever in our sleep,
Many griefs have worn our hearts out - we are now too tired to weep!
Time has tried us, years have changed us; but the
sweetness shed by you
Falls upon our spirits daily, like
divine,
immortal dew.
Shining are our thoughts about you - of the
blossoms past recall,
You are still the rose of lustre - still the fairest of them all;
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In the sleep that brings the
garland gathered from the bygone hours,
You are still our Mary Rivers - still the queen of all the flowers.
Let me ask, where none can hear me - When you passed into the shine,
And you heard a great love
calling, did you know that it was mine?
In your life of light and music, tell me did you ever see,
Shining in a holy silence, what was as a flame in me?
Ah, my
darling! no one saw it. Purer than untrodden dew
Was that first
unhappypassion buried in the grave with you.
Bird and leaf will keep the secret - wind and wood will never tell
Men the thing that I have whispered. Mary Rivers, fare you well!
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KINGSBOROUGH
A waving of hats and of hands,
The voices of thousands in one,
A shout from the ring and the stands,
And a
glitter of heads in the sun!
``They are off - they are off!'' is the roar,
As the cracks settle down to the race,
With the ``yellow and black'' to the fore,
And the Panic blood forcing the pace.
At the back of the course, and away
Where the
running-ground home again wheels,
Grubb travels in front on the bay,
With a
feather-weight hard at his heels.
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But Yeomans, you see, is about,
And the wily New Zealander waits,
Though the high-blooded flyer is out,
Whose rider and colours are Tait's.
Look! Ashworth comes on with a run
To the head of the Levity colt;
And the fleet - the
magnificent son
Of Panic is shooting his bolt.
Hurrah for the Weatherbit strain!
A Fireworks is first in the straight;
And ``A Kelpie will win it again!''
Is the roar from the ring to the gate.
The leader must have it - but no!
For see, full of
running, behind
A beautiful, wonderful foe
With the speed of the
thunder and wind!
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A flashing of whips, and a cry,
And Ashworth sits down on his horse,
With Kingsborough's head at his thigh
And the ``field'' scattered over the course!
In a clamour of calls and acclaim
The pair race away from the ``ruck:''
The horse to the last of it game -
A
marvel of
muscle and pluck!
But the foot of the Sappho is there,
And Kingston's invincible strength;
And the numbers go up in the air -
The colt is the first by a length!
The first, and the favourite too!
The
terror that came from his stall,
With the spirit of fire and of dew,
To show the road home to them all;
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From the back of the field to the straight
He has come, as is ever his wont,
And carried his welter-like weight,
Like a
tradesman, right through to the front.
Nor wonder at cheering a wit,
For this is the popular horse,
That never was
beaten when ``fit''
By any four hoofs on the course;
To starter for Leger or Cup,
Has he ever shown
feather of fear
When
saddle and rider were up
And the case to be argued was clear?
No! rather the questionless pluck
Of the blood unaccustomed to yield,
Preferred to spread-eagle the ruck,
And make a long tail of the ``field''.
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Bear
witness, ye lovers of sport,
To races of which he can boast,
When flyer by flyer was caught,
And
beaten by lengths on the post!
Lo! this is the beautiful bay -
Of many, the
marvellous one
Who showed us last season the way
That a Leger should always be won.
There was something to look at and learn,
Ye
shrewd irreproachable ``touts'',
When the Panic colt tired at the turn,
And the thing was all over - but shouts!
Aye, that was the ``spin'', when the twain
Came locked by the bend of the course,
The Zealander pulling his rein,
And the
veteran hard on his horse!
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When Ashworth was ``riding'' 'twas late
For his friends to
applaud on the stands,
And the Sappho colt entered the straight
With the race of the year in his hands.
Just look at his withers, his thighs!
And the way that he carries his head!
Has Richmond more wonderful eyes,
Or Melbourne that spring in his tread?
The grand, the
intelligent glance
From a spirit that fathoms and feels,
Makes the heart of a horse-lover dance
Till the warm-blooded life in him reels.
What care have I ever to know
His owner by sight or by name?
The horse that I glory in so
Is still the
magnificent same.
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I own I am proud of the pluck
Of the
sportsman that never was bought;
But the nag that spread-eagled the ruck
Is bound to be first in my thought.
For who that has
masculine flame,
Or who that is
thorough at all,
Can help feeling joy in the fame
Of this king of the kings of the stall?
What odds if
assumption has sealed
His soulless
hereafter abode,
So long as he shows to his ``field''
The gleam of his hoofs, and the road?
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BEYOND KERGUELEN
Down in the South, by the waste without sail on it,
Far from the zone of the
blossom and tree,
Lieth, with winter and
whirlwind and wail on it,
Ghost of a land by the ghost of a sea.
Weird is the mist from the
summit to base of it;
Sun of its heaven is wizened and grey;
Phantom of life is the light on the face of it -
Never is night on it, never is day!
Here is the shore without flower or bird on it;
Here is no litany sweet of the springs -
Only the
haughty, harsh
thunder is heard on it,
Only the storm, with the roar in its wings!
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Shadow of moon is the moon in the sky of it -
Wan as the face of a
wizard, and far!
Never there shines from the
firmament high of it
Grace of the
planet or glory of star.
All the year round, in the place of white days on it -
All the year round where there never is night -
Lies a great
sinister, bitter, blind haze on it:
Growth that is neither of darkness nor light!
Wild is the cry of the sea in the caves by it -
Sea that is
smitten by spears of the snow;
Desolate songs are the songs of the waves by it -
Down in the south, where the ships never go.
Storm from the Pole is the
singer that sings to it
Hymns of the land at the
planet's grey verge.
Thunder discloses dark, wonderful things to it -
Thunder and rain, and the dolorous surge.
Hills with no hope of a wing or a leaf on them,
Scarred with the chronicles written by flame,
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Stare, through the gloom of inscrutable grief on them,