Poem by Henry Kendall

Songs from the Mountains (1880). Names Upon a Stone

(Inscribed to G. L. Fagan, Esq.)

Across bleak widths of broken sea
 A fierce north-easter breaks,
And makes a thunder on the lea—
 A whiteness of the lakes.
Here, while beyond the rainy stream
 The wild winds sobbing blow,
I see the river of my dream
 Four wasted years ago.

Narrara of the waterfalls,
 The darling of the hills,
Whose home is under mountain walls
 By many-luted rills!
Her bright green nooks and channels cool
 I never more may see;
But, ah! the Past was beautiful—
 The sights that used to be.

There was a rock-pool in a glen
 Beyond Narrara's sands;
The mountains shut it in from men
 In flowerful fairy lands;
But once we found its dwelling-place—
 The lovely and the lone—
And, in a dream, I stooped to trace
 Our names upon a stone.

Above us, where the star-like moss
 Shone on the wet, green wall
That spanned the straitened stream across,
 We saw the waterfall—
A silver singer far away,
 By folded hills and hoar;
Its voice is in the woods to-day—
 A voice I hear no more.

I wonder if the leaves that screen
 The rock-pool of the past
Are yet as soft and cool and green
 As when we saw them last!
I wonder if that tender thing,
 The moss, has overgrown
The letters by the limpid spring—
 Our names upon the stone!

Across the face of scenes we know
 There may have come a change—
The places seen four years ago
 Perhaps would now look strange.
To you, indeed, they cannot be
 What haply once they were:
A friend beloved by you and me
 No more will greet us there.

Because I know the filial grief
 That shrinks beneath the touch—
The noble love whose words are brief—
 I will not say too much;
But often when the night-winds strike
 Across the sighing rills,
I think of him whose life was like
 The rock-pool's in the hills.

A beauty like the light of song
 Is in my dreams, that show
The grand old man who lived so long
 As spotless as the snow.
A fitting garland for the dead
 I cannot compass yet;
But many things he did and said
 I never will forget.

In dells where once we used to rove
 The slow, sad water grieves;
And ever comes from glimmering grove
 The liturgy of leaves.
But time and toil have marked my face,
 My heart has older grown
Since, in the woods, I stooped to trace
 Our names upon the stone.

1. Early Poems (1859-70). In Memoriam—Nicol Drysdale Stenhouse
2. Other Poems (1871-82). How the Melbourne Cup was Won
3. Early Poems (1859-70). Cui Bono?
4. Other Poems (1871-82). Aboriginal Death-Song
5. Other Poems (1871-82). Sydney Exhibition Cantata

Print

1278 Views

Last Poems

To Russian version