Then fell a softer mood,and Memory paused With faithful Love,amidst the sainted shrines Of Youth and Passion in the valleys past Of dear delights which never grow again.
And if the stranger (who had left behind Far anxious homesteads in a wave-swept isle To face a fierce sea-circle day by day,And hear at night the dark Atlantic's moan)Now took a hope and planned a swift return,With wealth and health and with a youth unspent,To those sweet ones that stayed with Want at home,Say who shall blame him -though the years are long,And Life is hard,and waiting makes the heart grow old?
Thus passed the time,until the moon serene Stood over high dominion like a dream Of Peace:within the white-transfigured woods;And o'er the vast dew-dripping wilderness Of slopes illumined with her silent fires.
Then far beyond the home of pale red leaves And silver sluices,and the shining stems Of runnel-blooms,the dreamy wanderer saw,The wilder for the vision of the Moon,Stark desolations and a waste of plain All smit by flame and broken with the storms:
Black ghosts of trees,and sapless trunks that stood Harsh hollow channels of the fiery noise Which ran from bole to bole a year before,And grew with ruin,and was like,indeed,The roar of mighty winds with wintering streams That foam about the limits of the land,And mix their swiftness with the flying seas.
Now,when the man had turned his face about To take his rest,behold the gem-like eyes Of ambushed wild things stared from bole and brake With dumb amaze and faint-recurring glance,And fear anon that drove them down the brush;While from his den the dingo,like a scout In sheltered ways,crept out and cowered near To sniff the tokens of the stranger's feast And marvel at the shadows of the flame.
Thereafter grew the wind;and chafing depths In distant waters sent a troubled cry Across the slumb'rous Forest;and the chill Of coming rain was on the sleeper's brow,When,flat as reptiles hutted in the scrub,A deadly crescent crawled to where he lay -A band of fierce fantastic savages That,starting naked round the faded fire,With sudden spears and swift terrific yells,Came bounding wildly at the white man's head,And faced him,staring like a dream of Hell!
Here let me pass!I would not stay to tell Of hopeless struggles under crushing blows;Of how the surging fiends with thickening strokes Howled round the stranger till they drained his strength;How Love and Life stood face to face with Hate And Death;and then how Death was left alone With Night and Silence in the sobbing rains.
So,after many moons,the searchers found The body mouldering in the mouldering dell Amidst the fungi and the bleaching leaves,And buried it;and raised a stony mound Which took the mosses:Then the place became The haunt of fearful legends and the lair Of bats and adders.
There he lies and sleeps From year to year:in soft Australian nights;And through the furnaced noons;and in the times.Of wind and wet!yet never mourner comes To drop upon that grave the Christian's tear Or pluck the foul dank weeds of death away.
But while the English Autumn filled her lap With faded gold,and while the reapers cooled Their flame-red faces in the clover grass,They looked for him at home;and when the frost Had made a silence in the mourning lanes And cooped the farmers by December fires,They looked for him at home:and through the days Which brought about the million-coloured Spring,With moon-like splendours in the garden plots,They looked for him at home:while Summer danced,A shining singer,through the tasselled corn,They looked for him at home.From sun to sun They waited.Season after season went,And Memory wept upon the lonely moors,And Hope grew voiceless,and the watchers passed,Like shadows,one by one away.
And he Whose fate was hidden under forest leaves,And in the darkness of untrodden dells Became a marvel.Often by the hearths In winter nights,and when the wind was wild Outside the casements,children heard the tale.Of how he left their native vales behind (Where he had been a child himself)to shape New fortunes for his father's fallen house;Of how he struggled -how his name became,By fine devotion and unselfish zeal,A name of beauty in a selfish land;And then of how the aching hours went by,With patient listeners praying for the step Which never crossed the floor again.So passed The tale to children;but the bitter end Remained a wonder,like the unknown grave,Alone with God and Silence in the hills.
