| Walter Murdoch (1874–1970). The Oxford Book of Australasian Verse. 1918. |
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| 112. The Pangs that guard the Gates of Joy |
| | | By Christopher J. Brennan |
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| THE PANGS that guard the gates of joy, | |
| the naked sword that will be kist, | |
| how distant seem’d they to the boy, | |
| white flashes in the rosy mist! | |
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| Ah, not where tender play was screen’d | 5 |
| in the light heart of leafy mirth | |
| of that obdurate might we ween’d | |
| that shakes the sure repose of earth. | |
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| And sudden, ’twixt a sun and sun, | |
| the veil of dreaming is withdrawn: | 10 |
| lo, our disrupt dominion | |
| and mountains solemn in the dawn; | |
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| hard paths that chase the dayspring’s white, | |
| and glooms that hold the nether heat: | |
| oh, strange the world upheaved from night, | 15 |
| oh, dread the life before our feet! | |
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