| |
| THEY are rhymes rudely strung with intent less | |
| Of sound than of words, | |
| In lands where bright blossoms are scentless, | |
| And songless bright birds; | |
| Where, with fire and fierce drought on her tresses, | 5 |
| Insatiable Summer oppresses | |
| Sere woodlands and sad wildernesses | |
| And faint flocks and herds. | |
| |
| Where in dreariest days, when all dews end, | |
| And all winds are warm, | 10 |
| Wild Winter’s large flood-gates are loosened, | |
| And floods, freed by storm, | |
| From broken-up fountain-heads, dash on | |
| Dry deserts with long pent-up passion— | |
| Here rhyme was first framed without fashion, | 15 |
| Song shaped without form. | |
| |
| Whence gathered?—The locust’s glad chirrup | |
| May furnish a stave; | |
| The ring of a rowel and stirrup, | |
| The wash of a wave; | 20 |
| The chant of the marsh-frog in rushes, | |
| That chimes through the pauses and hushes | |
| Of nightfall, the torrent that gushes, | |
| The tempests that rave. | |
| |
| In the deepening of dawn, when it dapples | 25 |
| The dusk of the sky, | |
| With streaks like the reddening of apples, | |
| The ripening of rye, | |
| To eastward, when cluster by cluster, | |
| Dim stars and dull planets that muster, | 30 |
| Wax wan in a world of white lustre | |
| That spreads far and high; | |
| |
| In the gathering of night-gloom o’erhead, in | |
| The still silent change, | |
| All fire-flushed when forest trees redden | 35 |
| On slopes of the range; | |
| When the gnarled, knotted trunks Eucalyptian | |
| Seem carved like weird columns Egyptain, | |
| With curious device, quaint inscription, | |
| And hieroglyph strange; | 40 |
| |
| In the Spring, when the wattle-gold trembles | |
| ’Twixt shadow and shine, | |
| When each dew-laden air-draught resembles | |
| A long draught of wine; | |
| When the sky-line’s blue burnished resistance | 45 |
| Makes deeper the dreamiest distance,— | |
| Some song in all hearts hath existence,— | |
| Such songs have been mine. | |
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