On Australian Hills

Earth, outward tuning on her path in space

This pensive southern face,

Swathing its smile and shine

In that soft veil that day and darkness twine,

The silver-threaded twilight thin and fine,

With April dews impearled,

Looms like another and diviner world.

Here April brings her garnered harvest-sheaf,

Her withered autumn leaf,

Tintings of bronze and brass;

Her full-plumed reeds, her mushroom in the grass,

Her furrowed fields, where plough and sower pass,

Her laden apple bough.

All are transfigured and transmuted now.

The eastward ranges, so unearthly blue,

Bloom with their richest hue;

Slowly each rose-flushed crest

Deepens to violet where the shadows rest,

Darkens and darkens to the paling west;

The waning sun-fires die;

The first star swims in the pellucid sky.

Soundless to listening ear, on grass and flowers,

The footfall of the hours;

Formless and void to sight

The evolutions of invading night,

The creeping onslaught and the gradual flight,

Until the field is won,

And we look forth to see that day is done.

Then, from their grave of darkness, wood and lawn

Wake to a second dawn.

From unseen wells below

The pearly moon-tides rise and overflow,

Till vale and peak and wide air-spaces glow

In the transfiguring stream,

And earth and life are but a heavenly dream.

And now we hear the fairy-echoes fall

Where distant curlews call,

And how the silence thrills

With the night-voices of the glens and hills,

Rustling in reeds and tinkling in the rills,

Bubbling in creek and pool

Where frogs are wooing in the shallows cool.

And more than these, in this delicious time,

The melody sublime

That inward spirit hears-

The faint and far-off music of the spheres,

Immortal harmonies, too fine for ears

Dulled in the dusty ways,

Deaf with the din of the laborious days.

Whereto, responsive as the vibrant wire

Of some aeolian lyre

Fanned by celestial wings,

The summoned soul in mystic concord brings

The deep notes latent in its trembling strings,

Joining the choir divine

Of all the worlds that in the ether shine.

O sacred hour! O sweet night, calm and fair!

Thou dost rebuke despair;

Thou dost assuage the pain

Of passionate spirit and distempered brain,

And with thy balms, distilled like gentle rain,

Dost heal the fret and smart

And nerve the courage of this coward’s heart.

And lift me up, a Moses on the Mount

To the pure source and fount

Of law transcending law,

Of life that hallows life. I know no more

Of life’s great Giver than I knew before,

But these His creatures tell

That He is living, and that all is well.

Oh, to be there to-night!

To see that rose of sunset flame and fade

On ghostly mountain height,

The soft dusk gathering each leaf and blade

From the departing light,

Each tree-fern feather of the wildwood glade.

From arid streets to pass

Down those green aisles where golden wattles bloom,

Over the fragrant grass,

And smell the eucalyptus in a gloom

That is as clear as glass,

The dew-fresh scents of bracken and of broom . . .

These city clamours mute,

To hear the woodland necromancers play

Each his enchanted lute;

That dear bird-laugh, so exquisitely gay,

The magpie’s silver flute

In vesper carol to the dying day.

To hear the live wind blow,

The delicate stir and whisper of the trees

As light breaths come and go,

The brooklet murmuring to the vagrant breeze,

The bull-frog twanging low

His deep-toned mandolin to chime with these.

And then the whispering rills,

The hushed lone wheel, or hoof, or axeman’s tool;

The brooding dark that stills

The sweet Pan-piping of the grove and pool;

The dimly glimmering hills;

The sleeping night, so heavenly clean and cool.

Oh, for that mother-breast

That takes the broken spirit for repair,

The worn-out brain for rest-

That healing silence, that untainted air,

That Peace of God . . . . . . Blest, blest

The very memory that I once was there.

The thought that someday yet,

In flesh, not dreams, I may return again,

And at those altars, set

In the pure skies, above the smoky plain,

Remember and forget

The joy of living and its price of pain . . . . . .

That sullied earth reserves

Such spacious refuge virgin and apart,

That wasting life preserves

Such sweet retreat for the distracted heart,

Such fount of strength for nerves

Torn in the ruthless struggle of the mart . . . . . .

That Government divine

O’er all this reek of blunders and of woes

Keeps an unravaged shrine

Not here, not there, but in the souls of those

Who neither weep nor whine,

But trust the guidance of the One Who Knows.

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A few random poems:

External links

Bat’s Poetry Page – more poetry by Fledermaus

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Batty Writing – the bat’s idle chatter, thoughts, ideas and observations, all original, all fresh

Poems in English 

• On The High Price Of Fish by William Cowper by William Cowper
• On the Grasshopper (From The Greek) by William Cowper by William Cowper
• On The Death Of The Bishop Of Ely. Anno Aet. 17. (Translated From Milton) by William Cowper by William Cowper
• On The Death Of Mrs. Throckmorton’s Bullfinch by William Cowper by William Cowper
• On The Death Of Damon. (Translated From Milton) by William Cowper by William Cowper
• On The Benefit Received By His Majesty From Sea-Bathing, In The Year 1789 by William Cowper by William Cowper
• On The Author Of Letters On Literature by William Cowper by William Cowper
• On The Astrologers (From The Greek) by William Cowper by William Cowper
• On Receiving Heyne’s Virgil From Mr. Hayley by William Cowper by William Cowper
• On Receiving Hayley’s Picture by William Cowper by William Cowper
• On Receipt Of My Mother’s Picture by William Cowper by William Cowper
• On Pedigree. From Epicharmus by William Cowper by William Cowper
• On Pallas Bathing, From A Hymn Of Callimachus by William Cowper by William Cowper
• On One Ignorant And Arrogant (Translated From Owen) by William Cowper by William Cowper
• On Observing Some Names Of Little Note Recorded In The Biographia Britannica by William Cowper by William Cowper
• On Niobe (From The Greek) by William Cowper by William Cowper
• On Mrs. Montague’s Feather Hangings by William Cowper by William Cowper
• On Miltiades by William Cowper by William Cowper
• On Late Acquired Wealth (From The Greek) by William Cowper by William Cowper
• On Invalids (From The Greek) by William Cowper by William Cowper

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