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| WHERE the dreaming Tiber wanders by the haunted Appian Way, | |
| Lo! the nightingale is uttering a sorrow-burdened lay! | |
| While the olive trees are shaking, and the cypress boughs are stirred: | |
| Palpitates the moon’s white bosom to the sorrow of the bird, | |
| Sobbing, sobbing, sobbing; yet a sweeter song I know: | 5 |
| ’Tis the magpie’s windblown music where the Gippsland rivers flow. | |
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| Oh, I love to be by Bindi, where the fragrant pastures are, | |
| And the Tambo to his bosom takes the trembling Evening Star— | |
| Just to hear the magpie’s warble in the blue-gums on the hill, | |
| When the frail green flower of twilight in the sky is lingering still, | 10 |
| Calling, calling, calling to the abdicating day: | |
| Oh, they fill my heart with music as I loiter on my way. | |
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| Oh, the windy morn of Matlock, when the last snow-wreath had gone, | |
| And the blackwoods robed by tardy Spring with starlike beauty shone; | |
| When the lory showed his crimson to the golden blossom spread, | 15 |
| And the Goulburn’s grey-green mirror showed the loving colours wed: | |
| Chiming, chiming, chiming in the pauses of the gale, | |
| How the magpies’ notes came ringing down the mountain, o’er the vale. | |
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| Oh, the noon beside the ocean, when the spring tide, landward set, | |
| Cast ashore the loosened silver from the waves of violet, | 20 |
| As the seagod sang a lovesong and the sheoak answer made, | |
| Came the magpie’s carol wafted down the piny colonnade, | |
| Trolling, trolling, trolling in a nuptial melody, | |
| As it floated from the moaning pine to charm the singing sea. | |
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| And the dark hour in the city, when my love had silent flown, | 25 |
| Nesting in some far-off valley, to the seraphs only known, | |
| When the violet had no odour and the rose no purple bloom, | |
| And the grey-winged vulture, Sorrow, came rustling through the gloom, | |
| Crooning, crooning, crooning on the swaying garden bough: | |
| Oh, the song of hope you uttered then my heart is trilling now. | 30 |
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| Voice of happy shepherd chanting by a stream in Arcady, | |
| Seems thy song this blue-eyed morning over lilac borne to me; | |
| In his arms again Joy takes me, Hope with dimpling cheek appears, | |
| And my life seems one long lovely vale where grow the rosy years: | |
| Lilting, lilting, lilting; when I slumber at the last | 35 |
| Let your music in the joyous wind be ever wandering past. | |
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