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!

Henry Kendall

Henry Kendall was an Australian poet born on April 18, 1839, known for his lyrical and descriptive poetry reflecting the natural world and the colonial experience of Australia. He faced personal and financial difficulties throughout his life, which deeply influenced his works. His poetry collections include 'Leaves from Australian Forests' and 'Songs from the Mountains'. Kendall passed away on August 1, 1882, leaving a lasting impact on Australian literature.

Henry Kendall

The Wild Kangaroo

Henry Kendall, Simple Poetry

Rover

Henry Kendall, Simple Poetry

The Warrigal

Henry Kendall, Simple Poetry

Euterpe

Henry Kendall, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Kiama Revisited

We stood by the window and hearkened
To the voice of the runnels sea-driven,
While, northward, the mountain-heads darkened,
Girt round with the clamours of heaven.
One peak with the storm at his portal
Loomed out to the left of his brothers:
Sustained, and sublime, and immortal,
A king, and the lord of the others!
Beneath him a cry from the surges
Rang shrill, like a clarion calling;
And about him, the wind of the gorges
Went falling, and rising, and falling.
But I, as the roofs of the thunder
Were cloven with manifold fires,
Turned back from the wail and the wonder,
And dreamed of old days and desires.
A song that was made, I remembered
A song that was made in the gloaming
Of suns which are sunken and numbered
With times that my heart hath no h...

Henry Kendall

On a Street

I dread that street its haggard face
I have not seen for eight long years;
A mothers curse is on the place,
(Theres blood, my reader, in her tears).
No child of man shall ever track,
Through filthy dust, the singers feet
A fierce old memory drags me back;
I hate its name I dread that street.

Upon the lap of green, sweet lands,
Whose months are like your English Mays,
I try to hide in Lethes sands
The bitter, old Bohemian days.
But sorrow speaks in singing leaf,
And trouble talketh in the tide;
The skirts of a stupendous grief
Are trailing ever at my side.

I will not say who suffered there,
Tis best the name aloof to keep,
Because the world is very fair
Its light should sing the dark to sleep.
But, let me whisper, in that st...

Henry Kendall

On the Paroo

As when the strong stream of a wintering sea
Rolls round our coast, with bodeful breaks of storm,
And swift salt rain, and bitter wind that saith
Wild things and woeful of the White South Land
Alone with God and silence in the cold
As when this cometh, men from dripping doors
Look forth, and shudder for the mariners
Abroad, so we for absent brothers looked
In days of drought, and when the flying floods
Swept boundless; roaring down the bald, black plains
Beyond the farthest spur of western hills.

For where the Barwon cuts a rotten land,
Or lies unshaken, like a great blind creek,
Between hot mouldering banks, it came to this,
All in a time of short and thirsty sighs,
That thirty rainless months had left the pools
And grass as dry as ashes: then it was

Henry Kendall

In Hyde Park

They come from the highways of labour,
From labour and leisure they come;
But not to the sound of the tabor,
And not to the beating of drum.

By thousands the people assemble
With faces of shadow and flame,
And spirits that sicken and tremble
Because of their sorrow and shame!

Their voice is the voice of a nation;
But lo, it is muffled and mute,
For the sword of a strong tribulation
Hath stricken their peace to the root.

The beautiful tokens of pity
Have utterly fled from their eyes,
For the demon who darkened the city
Is curst in the breaking of sighs.

Their thoughts are as one; and together
They band in their terrible ire,
Like legions of wind in fierce weather
Whose footsteps are thunder and fire.

But for eve...

Henry Kendall

Astarte

Across the dripping ridges,
O, look, luxurious night!
She comes, the bright-haired beauty,
My luminous delight!
My luminous delight!
So hush, ye shores, your roar,
That my soul may sleep, forgetting
Dead Loves wild Nevermore!

Astarte, Syrian sister,
Your face is wet with tears;
I think you know the secret
One heart hath held for years!
One heart hath held for years!
But hide your hapless love,
And my sweet my Syrian sister,
Dead Loves wild Nevermore!

Ah, Helen Hope in heaven,
My queen of long ago,
Ive swooned with adoration,
But could not tell you so,
Or dared not tell you so,
My radiant queen of yore!
And youve passed away and left me
Dead Loves wild Nevermore!

Astarte knoweth, darling,
Of ey...

Henry Kendall

Ghost Glen

Shut your ears, stranger, or turn from Ghost Glen now,
For the paths are grown over, untrodden by men now;
Shut your ears, stranger, saith the grey mother, crooning
Her sorcery runic, when sets the half-moon in.

To-night the north-easter goes travelling slowly,
But it never stoops down to that hollow unholy;
To-night it rolls loud on the ridges red-litten,
But it cannot abide in that forest, sin-smitten.

For over the pitfall the moon-dew is thawing,
And, with never a body, two shadows stand sawing
The wraiths of two sawyers (step under and under),
Who did a foul murder and were blackened with thunder!

Whenever the storm-wind comes driven and driving,
Through the blood-spattered timber you may see the saw striving
You may see the saw heaving, and fall...

Henry Kendall