And the goldentinted fern leaves, how they rustled underneath :

And the honeysuckle osiers, how they crashed!

We led the hunt throughout, Ned, on the chestnut and the gray,

And the troopers were three hundred yards behind,

While we emptied our six-shooters on the bush-rangers at bay,

In the creek with stunted box-trees for a blind!

There you grappled with the leader, man to man, and horse to horse,

And you rolled together when the chestnut rear'd.

He blazed away and missed you in that shallow water-course

A narrow shave - his powder singed your beard!

Where the wild flowers woo the sun, Where the balmy breezes blow, Where the butterfly takes wing, Where the aspens, drooping, grow, Where the young birds chirp and sing

I am weary, let me go.

I have striven hard and long
In the world's unequal fight,
Always to resist the wrong,

Always to maintain the right.
Always with a stubborn heart,

Taking, giving blow for blow; Brother, I have played my part, And am weary, let me go.

Stern the world and bitter cold, Irksome, painful to endure; Everywhere a love of gold, Nowhere pity for the poor. Everywhere mistrust, disguise, Pride, hypocrisy, and show; Draw the curtain, close mine eyes, I am weary, let me go.

Other chance when I am gone

May restore the battle-call,
Bravely lead the good cause on
Fighting in the which I fall.
God may quicken some true soul
Here to take my place below
In the heroes' muster roll-
I am weary, let me go.

Shield and buckler, hang them up,
Drape the standards on the wall,
I have drained the mortal cup
To the finish, dregs and all;
When our work is done, 't is best,
Brother, best that we should go—
I am weary, let me rest,

I am weary, lay me low.

THE DOMINION OF AUSTRALIA

(A FORECAST)

SHE is not yet, but he whose ear Thrills to that finer atmosphere

Where footfalls of appointed things,
Reverberant of days to be,
Are heard in forecast echoings,

Like wave-beats from a viewless seaHears in the voiceful tremors of the sky Auroral heralds whispering" She is nigh."

She is not yet; but he whose sight Foreknows the advent of the light, Whose soul to morning radiance turns Ere night her curtain hath withdrawn, And in its quivering folds discerns

The mute monitions of the dawn, With urgent sense strained onward to de

scry

Her distant tokens, starts to find her nigh.

Not yet her day. How long "not yet?"
There comes the flush of violet !
And heavenward faces, all aflame

With sanguine imminence of morn,
Wait but the sun-kiss to proclaim

The Day of the Dominion born. Prelusive baptism!-ere the natal hour Named with the name and prophecy of

power.

Already here to hearts intense
A spirit force, transcending sense,
In heights unscaled, in deeps unstirred,
Beneath the calm, above the storm,
She waits the incorporating word

To bid her tremble into form:
Already, like divining-rods, men's souls
Bend down to where the unseen river rolls;

For even as, from sight concealed,
By never flush of dawn revealed,
Nor e'er illumed by golden noon,

Nor sunset-streaked with crimson bar, Nor silver-spanned by wake of moon, Nor visited of any star,

Beneath these lands a river waits to bless (So men divine) our utmost wilderness,

Rolls dark, but yet shall know our skies,
Soon as the wisdom of the wise
Conspires with nature to disclose

The blessing prisoned and unseen,
Till round our lessening wastes there glows
A perfect zone of broadening green,
Till all our land Australia Felix called,
Become one Continent-Isle of Emerald;

So flows beneath our good and ill
A viewless stream of common will,
A gathering force, a present might,

That from its silent depths of gloom
At Wisdom's voice shall leap to light,

And hide our barren fields in bloom, Till, all our sundering lines with love o'ergrown,

Our bounds shall be the girdling seas alone.

TO A MOUNTAIN

To thee, O father of the stately peaks, Above me in the loftier light—to thee, Imperial brother of those awful hills, Whose feet are set in splendid spheres of flame,

Whose heads are where the gods are, and whose sides

Of strength are belted round with all the

zones

Of all the world, I dedicate these songs. And if, within the compass of this book, There lives and glows one verse in which there beats

The pulse of wind and torrent - if one line

Is here that like a running water sounds, And seems an echo from the lands of leaf, Be sure that line is thine. Here, in this home,

Away from men and books and all the schools,

I take thee for my Teacher. In thy voice Of deathless majesty, I, kneeling, hear God's grand authentic gospel! Year by