f nineteen years
Reeled and fell, with English rivers singing softly in his ears,
English grasses started round him--then the grace of Sussex lea
Came and touched him with the beauty of a green land by the sea!
Old-world faces thronged about him--old-world voices spoke to him;
But his speech was like a whisper, and his eyes were very dim.
In a dream of golden evening, beaming on a quiet strand,
Lay the stranger till a bright One came and took him by the hand.
England vanished; died the voices; but he heard a holier tone,
And an angel that we know not led him to the lands unknown!

. . . . .

Six there were, but three were taken! Three were left to struggle still;
But against the red horizon flamed a horn of brindled hill!
But beyond the northern skyline, past a wall of steep austere,
Lay the land of light and coolness in an April-coloured year!
"Courage, brothers!" cried the leader. "On the slope of yonder peak
There are tracts of herb and shadow, and the channels of the creek!"
So they made one last great effort--
haled their beasts through brake and briar,
Set their feet on spurs of furnace, grappled spikes and crags of fire,
Fought the stubborn mountain forces, smote down naked, natural powers,
Till they gazed from thrones of Morning on a sphere of streams and flowers.

Out behind them was the desert, glaring like a sea of brass!
Here before them were the valleys, fair with moonlight-coloured grass!
At their backs were haggard waste-lands, bickering in a wicked blaze!
In their faces beamed the waters, marching down melodious ways!
Touching was the cool, soft lustre over laps of lawn and lea;
And majestic was the great road Morning made across the sea.
On the sacred day of Christmas, after seven months of grief,
Rested three of six who started, on a bank of moss and leaf--
Rested by a running river, in a hushed, a holy week;
And they named the stream that saved them--
named it fitly--"Christmas Creek".

Orara

--
* Orara: A tributary of the river Clarence.
--

The strong sob of the chafing stream
That seaward fights its way
Down crags of glitter, dells of gleam,
Is in the hills to-day.

But far and faint, a grey-winged form
Hangs where the wild lights wane--
The phantom of a bygone storm,
A ghost of wind and rain.

The soft white feet of afte