Other Poems (1871-82). Sydney Harbour
Where Hornby, like a mighty fallen star, Burns through the darkness with a splendid ring Of tenfold light, and where the awful face Of Sydney's northern headland stares all night O'er dark, determined waters from the east, From year to year a wild, Titanic voice Of fierce aggressive sea shoots up and makes,— When storm sails high through drifts of driving sleet, And in the days when limpid waters glass December's sunny hair and forest face,— A roaring down by immemorial caves, A thunder in the everlasting hills. But calm and lucid as an English lake, Beloved by beams and wooed by wind and wing, Shut in from tempest-trampled wastes of wave, And sheltered from white wraths of surge by walls— Grand ramparts founded by the hand of God, The lordly Harbour gleams. Yea, like a shield Of marvellous gold dropped in his fiery flight By some lost angel in the elder days, When Satan faced and fought Omnipotence, It shines amongst fair, flowering hills, and flows By dells of glimmering greenness manifold. And all day long, when soft-eyed Spring comes round With gracious gifts of bird and leaf and grass— And through the noon, when sumptuous Summer sleeps By yellowing runnels under beetling cliffs, This royal water blossoms far and wide With ships from all the corners of the world. And while sweet Autumn with her gipsy face Stands in the gardens, splashed from heel to thigh With spinning vine-blood—yea, and when the mild, Wan face of our Australian Winter looks Across the congregated southern fens, Then low, melodious, shell-like songs are heard Beneath proud hulls and pompous clouds of sail, By yellow beaches under lisping leaves And hidden nooks to Youth and Beauty dear, And where the ear may catch the counter-voice Of Ocean travelling over far, blue tracts. Moreover, when the moon is gazing down Upon her lovely reflex in the wave, (What time she, sitting in the zenith, makes A silver silence over stirless woods), Then, where its echoes start at sudden bells, And where its waters gleam with flying lights, The haven lies, in all its beauty clad, More lovely even than the golden lakes The poet saw, while dreaming splendid dreams Which showed his soul the far Hesperides.
Henry Kendall’s other poems:
