Κοινὰ τὰ τῶν φίλων

Give freely to the friend thou hast;
Unto thyself thou givest:

On barren soil thou canst not cast,
For by his life thou livest.

Nay, this alone doth trouble me—
That I should still be giving
Through him unto myself, when he
Is love within me living.

I fain would give to him alone,
Nor let him guess the giver;
Like dews that drop on hills unknown,
To feed a lordly river.

HARVEST

The west is purple, and a golden globe,

Sphered with new-risen moonlight, hangs between The skirts of evening's amethystine robe

And the round world bathed in the steady sheen. There bending o'er a sickle bright and keen, Rests from his long day's labour one whose eyes Are fixed upon the large and luminous skies.

An earnest man he seems, with yellow hair,

And yellow 'neath his scythe-sweep are the sheaves; Much need hath he to waste the nights with care, Lest waking he should hear from dripping eaves The plash of rain, or hail among thin leaves, Or melancholy wailings of a wind, That lays broad field and furrow waste behind:

Much need hath he the live-long day to toil,

Sweeping the golden granaries of the plain, Until he garner all the summer's spoil,

And store his gaping barns with heavy grain;

Then will he sleep, nor heed the plash of rain,
But with gay wassail and glad winter cheer
Steel a stout heart against the coming year.

[From Stella Maris]

THREE SONNETS—I

Rebuke me not! I have nor wish nor skill
To alter one hair's breadth in all this house
Of Love, rising with domes so luminous
And air-built galleries on life's topmost hill!
Only I know that fate, chance, years that kill,

Change that transmutes, have aimed their darts at us;
Envying each lovely shrine and amorous

Reared on earth's soil by man's too passionate will. Dread thou the moment when these glittering towers, These adamantine walls and gates of gems, Shall fade like forms of sun-forsaken cloud; When dulled by imperceptible chill hours, The golden spires of our Jerusalems

Shall melt to mist and vanish in night's shroud!

II

Silvery mosquito-curtains draped the bed:
A lamp stood on the table; but its light
Startled no whit the drowsy wings of night,
Nor had the mystery of darkness fled.
She slumbered not: flawless from foot to head;
Fair ivory body clothed in fairest white;
No bar between her beauty and my sight:
Silence and storm-throes on our souls were shed.
Storm in the flakes of refluent hair that fret

Those brows imperious; in the smouldering fire
Of clear blue eyes love's tear-dews never wet;
Scorn frozen on firm lips, and petulant ire
Ready to leap from that marmoreal breast.
How awful was this motionless unrest!

III

And then she rose; and rising, then she knelt;

And then she paced the floor with passionate tread;
And then she sank with that imperial head

Bowed on bare knees: her broad arms made a belt
To clasp them; dark rebellious hair was shed

In tempest o'er fixed ardent eyes which dwelt, Searching my heart's heart; yea, my manhood felt From that tense huddled form intensest dread. Nerves quaked; veins curdled; thin compulsive flame Thrilled through her crouching flesh to my couched soul Expectant; lingering minutes winged with blame

Swept over us with voiceless thunder-roll,

While the vast silence of the midnight stole,

Merging our sin, a shuddering sea of shame!

JE SUIS TROP JEUNE

Leave me awhile; I am too young to love;
My maiden fancies are enough for me:
Leave me awhile; too soon will passion move
The silent springs of my virginity.

You break my dream, wither my girlhood's flower,
With vows and kisses and soft whispered sighs;
And offer what? The homage of an hour,
The sad sweet service of adoring eyes.
And then you fly. 'Tis honor bids you go:
You think it virtue to have left me maid;
You smile "Uncropped by me her rose shall blow,
Her bridal kiss on worthier lips be laid."
But give me, stranger, give me back, I pray,
The heart's ease that was mine but yesterday!

ADAM LINDSAY GORDON

[BORN in the Azores, 1833; educated at Cheltenham and Woolwich. Went to Australia, 1853. Published Sea Spray (1867) and Bush Ballads (1870). Died by his own hand in that year.]

ADAM LINDSAY GORDON was the son of that Captain Adam Durnford Gordon who, having served well in India, became ultimately Professor of Hindustani in Cheltenham College, where the boy went for a time; he was afterwards at Woolwich, but obtained no commission. He seems to have spent much of his time with boxers and horse-trainers. In 1853 he was sent out to Australia; a poem written to his sister shows that he knew that he went in disgrace, but that his "stubborn pride" did not quail before the future. The poem Whisperings in Wattle-boughs, here printed, shows that in his exile he was often tormented by remorseful thoughts of those he had left behind. In Australia he entered the Police as a constable; he stayed in the force two years, making a name meanwhile as a steeplechase rider. After 1855 he became famous in that capacity, but in 1862 he married one Maggie Park, who had nursed him after a fall; in 1864 he inherited £7,000 and entered the South Australian Parliament, till having spent his money he retired and opened a livery stable at Ballarat. The mysterious thing about him is that during his riotous youth, and during these ten years among horses and horsemen in Australia, he picked up a good knowledge of Latin, Greek, and French literature. The next five years were divided between steeplechasing and poetry; in one day at Melbourne (1868) he won three races, and just about the same time he wrote his Song of Autumn and The Sick Stockrider. Then in an evil day he laid claim to a great estate (Esslemont) in Scotland, believing himself to be head of his branch of the Gordon family. In June, 1870, he learnt that his application had failed; he was pressed for money, and he had not recovered from the effects of a bad fall. So he sent to the press his volume of Bush Ballads and quietly shot himself. Unfortunately, too, a friend obeyed too literally the instructions in a letter from Gordon, and burnt a whole trunkful of his manuscripts, verse and prose; so that all that remains of his writing is the two small

›lumes which, in the country that he had made his own, gained id kept for him the name and fame of the Australian Poet. A ok on Adam Lindsay Gordon and his Friends has been written by r. Douglas Sladen, who has also issued the Poems in a little ›lume (Constable & Co., 1912).

Gordon's literary models were Byron and, after 1865, Swinburne; ut his extraordinary verbal memory enabled him to remember by eart whole pages of other poets, from Horace to Macaulay and rowning. Yet none can call him an imitator, except perhaps of winburne. His miscellaneous poems and songs are original, nough the feeling they express is common to many in all lands. His bush poems and his riding verses are the free and spirited utcome of his own experience, and form an unrivalled picture of he Australia of fifty years ago, and of the passions and interests hat animated the makers of a new country.

EDITOR.

THE SICK STOCKRIDER

Hold hard, Ned! Lift me down once more, and lay me in the shade Old man, you've had your work cut out to guide

Both horses, and to hold me in the saddle when I swayed,

All through the hot, slow, sleepy, silent ride.

The dawn at “Moorabinda” was a mist-rack dull and dense,
The sunrise was a sullen, sluggish lamp;

I was dozing in the gateway at Arbuthnot's bound'ry fence,

I was dreaming on the Limestone cattle camp.

We crossed the creek at Carricksford, and sharply through the haze,

And suddenly the sun shot flaming forth;

To southward lay "Katâwa," with the sandpeaks all ablaze,
And the flushed fields of Glen Lomond lay to north.

Now westward winds the bridle-path that leads to Lindisfarm, And yonder looms the double-headed Bluff;

From the far side of the first hill, when the skies are clear and calm You can see Sylvester's woolshed fair enough.