Kretschmann

Love may trace his echoing footsteps, yet we never more shall meet
Rugged Kretschmann, the musician, plodding down a Sydney street,
Never see the low broad figure, massive head and shaggy mane
And the quiet furrowed features, never hear his voice again.

But from many a home there rises many a note that lingering rings
Ever since his cunning fingers touched and drew it from the strings;
All our land is full of noises; happy phantom fields of scent,
Bright with sunlit blossoms, echo birdlike music where he went.

He was old and grey and weary, death and he were long at grips,
Evil whispers hissed behind him, German to the finger-tips,
Wars wild fury snarled about him, so he gently stepped aside,
Loving us and loving Germans, heavy-hearted, and he died.

Crusted shells, by ocean battered, taken from the barren shore
Bear within their hearts a murmur of the seas eternal roar;
Who shall say what vital music, all unheard by duller ears,
Swept the soul of good old Kretschmann to his home amid the spheres?

Harmony was all his being, and he held the music sweet
Welling up in baby voices, beaten out by tiny feet;
Still with playthings in his pockets, rest and solace may he know,
Welcomed gladly to the kingdom where the little children go.

John Le Gay Brereton

John Le Gay Brereton was an Australian poet, critic, and professor of English who was born on September 2, 1871, and died on February 2, 1933. He is best known for his association with the Bulletin school of Australian poetry and for promoting Australian literature. Brereton's contributions to poetry and literary criticism made him a significant figure in early 20th-century Australian literature. His academic career also included a long tenure at the University of Sydney.

John Le Gay Brereton

Unborn

John Le Gay Brereton, Simple Poetry

David

John Le Gay Brereton, Simple Poetry

The Domain

John Le Gay Brereton, Simple Poetry

ANZAC

John Le Gay Brereton, 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.

The Late W. V. Wild, Esq.

Sad faces came round, and I dreamily said
Though the harp of my country now slumbers,
Some hand will pass oer it, in love for the dead,
And attune it to sorrowful numbers!
But the hopes that I clung to are withering things,
For the days have gone by with a cloud on their wings,
And the touch of a bard is unknown to the strings
Oh, why art thou silent, Australia?

The leaves of the autumn are scattering fast,
The willows look barren and lonely;
But I dream a sad dream of my friend of the past,
And his form I can dwell upon only!
In the strength of his youth I can see him go by.
There is health on the cheek, and a fire in the eye
Oh, who would have thought that such beauty could die!
Ah, mourn for thy noblest, Australia!

A strange shadow broods oe...

Henry Kendall

Death

He, born of my girlhood, is dead, while my life is yet young in my heart
Ere the breasts where his baby lips fed have forgotten their softness, we part.
We part. He was mine, he was here, though he travelled by land and by sea,
My son who could trample on fear, my babe who was moulded in me.
As I sat in the darkness, it seemed I could still feel his touch on my head;
He came in the night as I dreamed, and he knelt at the side of my bed;
He murmured the words I had taught when his lips were the lips of a child,
Ere the strength of his arm had been bought and the love that upheld him defiled;
Then my faltering spirit grew bold, and my heart had forgotten its drouth,
And I crooned little songs as of old, till I woke at his kiss on my mouth.
Now waking and sleeping are pain. Nevermore will he ...

John Le Gay Brereton

Leichhardt

Lordly harp, by lordly master wakened from majestic sleep,
Yet shall speak and yet shall sing the words which make the fathers weep!
Voice surpassing human voices high, unearthly harmony
Yet shall tell the tale of hero, in exalted years to be!
In the ranges, by the rivers, on the uplands, down the dells,
Where the sound of wind and wave is, where the mountain anthem swells,
Yet shall float the song of lustre, sweet with tears and fair with flame,
Shining with a theme of beauty, holy with our Leichhardts name!
Name of him who faced for science thirsty tracts of bitter glow,
Lurid lands that no one knows of two-and-thirty years ago.

Born by hills of hard grey weather, far beyond the northern seas,
German mountains were his sponsors, and his mates were German trees;
Grandeur ...

Henry Kendall

Memorial Verses - April 1850

Goethe in Weimar sleeps, and Greece,
Long since, saw Byron's struggle cease.
But one such death remain'd to come;
The last poetic voice is dumb
We stand to-day by Wordsworth's tomb.

When Byron's eyes were shut in death,
We bow'd our head and held our breath.
He taught us little; but our soul
Had felt him like the thunder's roll.
With shivering heart the strife we saw
Of passion with eternal law;
And yet with reverential awe
We watch'd the fount of fiery life
Which served for that Titanic strife.

When Goethe's death was told, we said:
Sunk, then, is Europe's sagest head.
Physician of the iron age,
Goethe has done his pilgrimage.
He took the suffering human race,
He read each wound, each weakness clear;
And struck his finger on th...

Matthew Arnold

The Terrace At Berne

Ten years! and to my waking eye
Once more the roofs of Berne appear;
The rocky banks, the terrace high,
The stream, and do I linger here?

The clouds are on the Oberland,
The Jungfrau snows look faint and far;
But bright are those green fields at hand,
And through those fields comes down the Aar,

And from the blue twin lakes it comes,
Flows by the town, the church-yard fair,
And neath the garden-walk it hums,
The house and is my Marguerite there?

Ah, shall I see thee, while a flush
Of startled pleasure floods thy brow,
Quick through the oleanders brush,
And clap thy hands, and cry: Tis thou!

Or hast thou long since wanderd back,
Daughter of France! to France, thy home;
And flitted down the flowery track
Where feet like ...

Matthew Arnold

Epilogue To Schiller's "Song Of The Bell."

To this city joy reveal it!

Peace as its first signal peal it!

(Song of the Bell concluding lines.)

And so it proved! The nation felt, ere long,

That peaceful signal, and, with blessings fraught,
A new-born joy appear'd; in gladsome song

To hail the youthful princely pair we sought;
While in a living, ever-swelling throng

Mingled the crowds from ev'ry region brought,
And on the stage, in festal pomp array'd
The HOMAGE OF THE ARTS * we saw displayed.

(* The title of a lyric piece composed by Schiller in honour of
the marriage of the hereditary Prince of Weimar to the Princess
Maria of Russia, and performed in 1804.)

When, lo! a fearful midnight sound I hear,

That with a dull and mournful echo rings.
And can ...

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe