Dedicated to Louis Becke You are now in London town, Louis Becke, Keeping up your old renown, Writing yarns of women brown,

IN my garden, O Beloved! Many pleasant trees are growing, Peach, and apricot, and apple, Myrtle, lilac, and laburnum. Fair are they, but midst them lone…

He sat beneath the curling vines That round the gay verandah twined… His forehead seamed with sorrow’s… An old man with a weary mind. His young wife, with a rosy face

Choose who will the wiser part— I have held her heart to heart; And have felt her heart-strings st… And her soul’s still singing heard For one golden-haloed hour

O DAY, the crown and crest of al… Thou comest not to us amid the sno… But midmost of the reign of the re… Our hearts have not yet lost the a… That filled our fathers’ simple he…

The awful seers of old who wrote,… Like drops of blood, great thought… Of ages burn, as eyes of lions lig… Deep jungle-dusks; who smote with… The soul of man on its most secret…

O THE Queen may keep her golden Crown and sceptre of command! I would give them both twice over To be King of Babyland. Sure, it is a wondrous country

An Apple caused man’s fall, as so… But that old Snake, malevolently… A deadlier snare set when he left… His tongue of honey and mesmeric e…

What shall a man remember In days when he is old, And Life is a dying ember, And Fame a story told? Power—that came to leave him?

Unto the Person kind there came A young girl bearing her fruit of… She fell and it had to pay the pri… Innocent Lamb of Sacrifice! Lovingly then the Person smiled,

LO, upon the carpet, where Throned upon a heap of slain Blue-eyed dolls of beauty rare (Ah, they pleaded all in vain!) Sits the Infant Tamerlane!

Soul of the leaping flame; Heart of the scarlet fire, Spirit that hath for name Only the name - Desire! Subtle art thou and strong;

Stand up, my young Australian, In the brave light of the sun, And hear how Freedom’s battle Was in the old days lost - and won… The blood burns in my veins, boy,

ALL silent is the room, There is no stir of breath, Save mine, as in the gloom I sit alone with Death. Short life it had, the sweet,

Love is the sunlight of the soul, That, shining on the silken-tressÃ… Of her we love, around it seems to… A golden angel-aureole. And all her ways seem sweeter ways