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COLONIAL POETS

(INDIA AUSTRALASIA

DOMINION OF CANADA)

INDIA

See TORU DUTt, Rudyard KiPLING, in the preceding division of this Anthology. See also, in the second division, SIR EDWIN ARNOLD, SIR ALFRED LYALL, poets of English birth, and sometime resident in India

AUSTRALASIA

(See also: A. DOMETT, R. H. HORNE, W. SHARP, D. W. B. SLADEN)

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Only there's a drowsy humming
From yon warm lagoon slow-coming :
'Tis the dragon-hornet - see!
All bedaubed resplendently
Yellow on a tawny ground-
Each rich spot not square nor round,
Rudely heart-shaped, as it were
The blurred and hasty impress there
Of a vermeil-crusted seal
Dusted o'er with golden meal.
Only there's a droning where
Yon bright beetle shines in air,
Tracks it in its gleaming flight
With a slanting beam of light
Rising in the sunshine higher,
Till its shards flame out like fire.

Every other thing is still,
Save the ever-wakeful rill,
Whose cool murmur only throws
Cooler comfort round repose;
Or some ripple in the sea,
Of leafy boughs, where, lazily,
Tired summer, in her bower
Turning with the noontide hour,
Heaves a slumbrous breath ere she
Once more slumbers peacefully.

Oh, 't is easeful here to lie
Hidden from noon's scorching eye,
In this grassy cool recess
Musing thus of quietness.

AN ABORIGINAL MOTHER'S

LAMENT

STILL farther would I fly, my child, To make thee safer yet

From the unsparing white man,

With his dread hand murder-wet!

I'll bear thee on as I have borne

With stealthy steps wind-fleet,
But the dark night shrouds the forest,
And thorns are in my feet.

O moan not! I would give this braid—
Thy father's gift to me
But for a single palmful

Of water now for thee.

Ah, spring not to his name -no more
To glad us may he come

He is smouldering into ashes
Beneath the blasted gum;
All charred and blasted by the fire
The white man kindled there,
And fed with our slaughtered kindred
Till heaven-high went its glare!

And but for thee, I would their fire
Had eaten me as fast!

Hark! Hark! I hear his death-cry
Yet lengthening up the blast!

But no-when his bound hands had signed
The way that we should fly,

On the roaring pyre flung bleeding -
I saw thy father die!

No more shall his loud tomahawk
Be plied to win our cheer,
Or the shining fish pools darken

Beneath his shadowing spear;
The fading tracks of his fleet foot
Shall guide not as before,
And the mountain-spirits mimic
His hunting call no more!

O moan not! I would give this braid
Thy father's gift to me -
For but a single palmful

Of water now for thee.

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That the creek that divided my station in

two

Showed that Nature designed that two fees should be due.

Mr. Riddle assured me 't was paid but for show,

But he kept it and spent it, that's all that I know.

The commissioner fined me because I forgot

To return an old ewe that was ill of the rot,

And a poor wry-necked lamb that we kept for a pet;

And he said it was treason such things to forget.

The commissioner pounded my cattle be

cause

They had mumbled the scrub with their famishing jaws

On the part of the run he had taken away, And he sold them by auction the costs to defray.

The border police they were out all the day

To look for some thieves who had ransacked my dray;

But the thieves they continued in quiet and peace,

For they'd robbed it themselves, had the border police!

When the white thieves had left me the

black thieves appeared,

My shepherds they waddied, my cattle they speared;

But from fear of my license I said not a word,

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