Henry Kendall

Early Poems (1859-70). Australia Vindex

Who cometh from fields of the south
 With raiment of weeping and woe,
And a cry of the heart in her mouth,
 And a step that is muffled and slow?

Her paths are the paths of the sun;
 Her house is a beautiful light;
But she boweth her head, and is one
 With the daughters of dolour and night.

She is fairer than flowers of love;
 She is fiercer than wind-driven flame;
And God from His thunders above
 Hath smitten the soul of her shame.

She saith to the bloody one curst
 With the fever of evil, she saith
"My sorrow shall strangle thee first
 With an agony wilder than death!

"My sorrow shall hack at thy life!
 Thou shalt wrestle with wraiths of thy sin,
And sleep on a pillow of strife
 With demons without and within!"

She whispers, "He came to the land
 A lord and a lover of me—
A son of the waves with a hand
 As fearless and frank as the sea.

"On the shores of the stranger he stood
 With the sweetness of youth on his face;
Till there started a fiend from the wood,
 Who stabbed at the peace of the place!

"Because of the dastardly thing
 Thou hast done in the sight of the day,
All horrors that sicken and sting
 Shall make thee for ever their prey.

"Because of the beautiful trust
 Destroyed by a devil like thee,
Thy bed shall be low in the dust
 And my heel as a shackle shall be!

"Because" (and she mutters it deep
 Who curseth the coward in chains)
"Thou hast stricken and murdered our sleep,
 Thy sleep shall be perished with pains;

"Thy sleep shall be broken and sharp
 And filled with fierce spasms and dreams,
And shadow shall haunt thee and harp
 On hellish and horrible themes!

"I will set my right hand on thy neck
 And my foot on thy body, nor bate,
Till thy name shall become as a wreck
 And a byword for hisses and hate!"