No winter thy fertile slope hardens,
O new Florence, set in the South!
All lands give their flowers to thy gardens,
That glow to thy bright harbour's mouth;
The waratah and England's red roses
With stately magnolias entwine,
Gay sunflowers fill sea-scented closes,
All sweet with woodbine.
Thy harbour's fair flower-crowned islands
See flags of all countries unfurled,
Thou smilest from green, sunlit highlands
To open thine arms to the world!
Dark East's and fair West's emulations
Resound from each hill-shadowed quay,
And over the songs of all nations,
The voice of the sea.
Francis William Lauderdale Adams.
Something
It is something in this darker dream demented
to have wrestled with its pleasure and its pain:
it is something to have sinned, and have repented:
it is something to have failed, and tried again!
It is something to have loved the brightest Beauty
with no hope of aught but silence for your vow:
it is something to have tried to do your duty:
it is something to be trying, trying now!
And, in the silent solemn hours,
when your soul floats down the far faint flood of time --
to think of Earth's lovers who are ours,
of her saviours saving, suffering, sublime:
And that you with THESE may be her lover,
with THESE may save and suffer for her sake --
IT IS JOY TO HAVE LIVED, SO TO DISCOVER
YOU'VE A LIFE YOU CAN GIVE AND SHE CAN TAKE!
Gordon's Grave
All the heat and the glow and the hush
of the summer afternoon;
the scent of the sweet-briar bush
over bowing grass-blades and broom;
the birds that flit and pass;
singing the song he knows,
the grass-hopper in the grass;
the voice of the she-oak boughs.
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