An Exile’s Farewell
by Adam Lindsay Gordon
The ocean heaves around us still
With long and measured swell,
The autumn gales our canvas fill,
Our ship rides smooth and well.
The broad Atlantic’s bed of foam
Still breaks against our prow;
I shed no tears at quitting home,
Nor will I shed them now!
Against the bulwarks on the poop
I lean, and watch the sun
Behind the red horizon stoop —
His race is nearly run.
Those waves will never quench his light,
O’er which they seem to close,
To-morrow he will rise as bright
As he this morning rose.
How brightly gleams the orb of day
Across the trackless sea!
How lightly dance the waves that play
Like dolphins in our lee!
The restless waters seem to say,
In smothered tones to me,
How many thousand miles away
My native land must be!
Speak, Ocean! is my Home the same
Now all is new to me? —
The tropic sky’s resplendent flame,
The vast expanse of sea?
Does all around her, yet unchanged,
The well-known aspect wear?
Oh! can the leagues that I have ranged
Have made no difference there?
How vivid Recollection’s hand
Recalls the scene once more!
I see the same tall poplars stand
Beside the garden door;
I see the bird-cage hanging still;
And where my sister set
The flowers in the window-sill —
Can they be living yet?
Let woman’s nature cherish grief,
I rarely heave a sigh
Before emotion takes relief
In listless apathy;
While from my pipe the vapours curl
Towards the evening sky,
And ‘neath my feet the billows whirl
In dull monotony!
The sky still wears the crimson streak
Of Sol’s departing ray,
Some briny drops are on my cheek,
‘Tis but the salt sea spray!
Then let our barque the ocean roam,
Our keel the billows plough;
I shed no tears at quitting home,
Nor will I shed them now!

A few random poems:
- Fiction Tips – The Snare of Coincidence
- Photograph of My Father in His Twenty-Second Year by Raymond Carver
- A Patch of Old Snow by Robert Frost
- A Man Young And Old: IV. The Death Of The Hare by William Butler Yeats
- Lover’s Gifts XIII: Last Night in the Garden by Rabindranath Tagore
- Nay Not To Night
- Solar Eclipse by Siegfried Sassoon
- Ancestors by Siegfried Sassoon
- When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes (Sonnet 29) by William Shakespeare
- Song of the Open Road. by Walt Whitman
- Владимир Высоцкий – Наброски песен к несостоявшемуся спектаклю по сказкам Шергина
- Fireflies in the Garden by Robert Frost
- Robert Burns: Lord Gregory:
- Eclogue:–The Best Man In The Vield by William Barnes
- Кондратий Рылеев – О милый друг, как внятен голос твой
External links
Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus
Talking Writing Monster’s Page –
Batty Writing – the bat’s idle chatter, thoughts, ideas and observations, all original, all fresh
Poems in English
- Ten Years After by Graham Rowlands
- Telescopes In The Square by Graham Rowlands
- South Africa by Ronald G. Auguste
- Shattered Dreams. Broken Promises. by Russell James
- Savour Your Life by Ronald G. Auguste
- Rosslyn To The Prime Minister by Graham Rowlands
- Writing to Onegin by Ruth Padel
- Icicles round a Tree in Dumfriesshire by Ruth Padel
- Conqueror by Russell Hughes Ragsdale
- Conversation 4: On Place by Rosmarie Waldrop
- To A Young Lady. On Her Recovery From A Fever by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- Written In Early Youth. The Time,–An Autumnal Evening by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- Fire, Famine, And Slaughter : A War Eclogue by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- Fancy In Nubibus, Or The Poet In The Clouds by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- Epitaph On An Infant. by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- What would I do without this world by Samuel Beckett
- Cascando by Samuel Beckett
- To a Commencement of Scoundrels by Samuel Hazo
- The Nearness That Is All by Samuel Hazo
- The Middle of the World by Samuel Hazo
More external links (open in a new tab):
Doska or the Board – write anything
Search engines:
Yandex – the best search engine for searches in Russian (and the best overall image search engine, in any language, anywhere)
Qwant – the best search engine for searches in French, German as well as Romance and Germanic languages.
Ecosia – a search engine that supposedly… plants trees
Duckduckgo – the real alternative and a search engine that actually works. Without much censorship or partisan politics.
Yahoo– yes, it’s still around, amazingly, miraculously, incredibly, but now it seems to be powered by Bing.
Parallel Translations of Poetry
The Poetry Repository – an online library of poems, poetry, verse and poetic works
Adam Lindsay Gordon (1833 – 1870) was an Australian or British-Australian poet, horseman, police officer and politician. He is considered to be one of the first national Australian poets.