arn the laurels I have woven for his head!"
And the lady, Nature, listened; and she took her loyal son
From the banks of moss and myrtle--led him to the Shining One!
Filled his lordly soul with gladness--told him of a spacious zone
Eye of man had never looked at, human foot had never known.
Then the angel, Science, beckoned, and he knelt and whispered low--
"I will follow where you lead me"--two-and-thirty years ago.

On the tracts of thirst and furnace--on the dumb, blind, burning plain,
Where the red earth gapes for moisture, and the wan leaves hiss for rain,
In a land of dry, fierce thunder, did he ever pause and dream
Of the cool green German valley and the singing German stream?
When the sun was as a menace, glaring from a sky of brass,
Did he ever rest, in visions, on a lap of German grass?
Past the waste of thorny terrors, did he reach a sphere of rills,
In a region yet untravelled, ringed by fair untrodden hills?
Was the spot where last he rested pleasant as an old-world lea?
Did the sweet winds come and lull him with the music of the sea?

Let us dream so--let us hope so! Haply in a cool green glade,
Far beyond the zone of furnace, Leichhardt's sacred shell was laid!
Haply in some leafy valley, underneath blue, gracious skies,
In the sound of mountain water, the heroic traveller lies!
Down a dell of dewy myrtle, where the light is soft and green,
And a month like English April sits, an immemorial queen,
Let us think that he is resting--think that by a radiant grave
Ever come the songs of forest, and the voices of the wave!
_Thus_ we want our sons to find him--find him under floral bowers,
Sleeping by the trees he loved so, covered with his darling flowers!

After Many Years

The song that once I dreamed about,
The tender, touching thing,
As radiant as the rose without--
The love of wind and wing--
The perfect verses, to the tune
Of woodland music set,
As beautiful as afternoon,
Remain unwritten yet.

It is too late to write them now--
The ancient fire is cold;
No ardent lights illume the brow,
As in the days of old.
I cannot dream the dream again;
But when the happy birds
Are singing in the sunny rain,
I think I hear its words.

I think I hear the echo still
Of long-forgotten tones,
When evening winds are on the hill
And sunset fires the c