Puslapio vaizdai
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But not because of its magnificence

Dear is the Casuarina to my soul : Beneath it we have played; though years may roll,

O sweet companions, loved with love intense,

For your sakes, shall the tree be ever dear.

Blent with your images, it shall arise In memory, till the hot tears blind mine eyes!

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What is that dirge-like murmur that I May Love defend thee from Oblivion's hear

curse.

William Sharp

THE LAST ABORIGINAL

I SEE him sit, wild-eyed, alone,
Amidst gaunt, spectral, moonlit gums;
He waits for death: not once a moan

From out his rigid fixed lips comes;
His lank hair falls adown a face

Haggard as any wave-worn stone,
And in his eyes I dimly trace
The memory of a vanished race.

The lofty ancient gum-trees stand,

Each gray and ghostly in the moon,

The giants of an old strange land

That was exultant in its noon When all our Europe was o'erturned

With deluge and with shifting sand, With earthquakes that the hills inurned And central fires that fused and burned.

The moon moves slowly through the vast And solemn skies; the night is still, Save when a warrigal springs past

With dismal howl, or when the shrill Scream of a parrot rings which feels A twining serpent's fangs fixed fast,

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Life is the shade that clouds her thought,
As Death's the eclipse of man's.

Time seems but as a bitter thing
Remembered from of yore:

Yet ah (she thinks) her song she'll sing
When Time's long reign is o'er.

Erstwhiles she bends alow to hear
What the swift water sings,
The torrent running darkly clear
With secrets of all things.

And then she smiles a strange sad smile And lets her harp lie long;

The death-waves oft may rise the while,
She greets them with no song.

Few ever cross that dreary moor,
Few see that flower-crowned head;
But whoso knows that wild song's lure
Knoweth that he is dead.

FROM "SOSPIRI DI ROMA"

SUSURRO

BREATH o' the grass,
Ripple of wandering wind,
Murmur of tremulous leaves :
A moonbeam moving white
Like a ghost across the plain :
A shadow on the road:
And high up, high,

From the cypress-bough,
A long sweet melancholy note.
Silence.

And the topmost spray
Of the cypress-bough is still
As a wavelet in a pool :
The road lies duskily bare :

The plain is a misty gloom :
Still are the tremulous leaves;
Scarce a last ripple of wind,
Scarce a breath i' the grass.
Hush the tired wind sleeps:
Is it the wind's breath, or
Breath o' the grass?

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