Quare Fatigasti

Two years ago I was thinking
On the changes that years bring forth;
Now I stand where I then stood drinking
The gust and the salt sea froth;
And the shuddering wave strikes, linking
With the waves subsiding and sinking,
And clots the coast herbage, shrinking,
With the hue of the white cere-cloth.

Is there aught worth losing or keeping?
The bitters or sweets men quaff?
The sowing or the doubtful reaping?
The harvest of grain or chaff?
Or squandering days or heaping,
Or waking seasons or sleeping,
The laughter that dries the weeping,
Or the weeping that drowns the laugh?

For joys wax dim and woes deaden,
We forget the sorrowful biers,
And the garlands glad that have fled in
The merciful march of years;
And the sunny skies, and the leaden,
And the faces that pale or redden,
And the smiles that lovers are wed in
Who are born and buried in tears.

And the myrtle bloom turns hoary,
And the blush of the rose decays,
And sodden with sweat and gory
Are the hard won laurels and bays;
We are neither joyous nor sorry
When time has ended our story,
And blotted out grief and glory,
And pain, and pleasure, and praise.

Weigh justly, throw good and bad in
The scales, will the balance veer
With the joys or the sorrows had in
The sum of a lifes career?
In the end, spite of dreams that sadden
The sad or the sanguine madden,
There is nothing to grieve or gladden,
There is nothing to hope or fear.

Thou hast gone astray, quoth the preacher,
In the gall of thy bitterness,
Thou hast taught me in vain, oh, teacher!
I neither blame thee nor bless;
If bitter is sure and sweet sure,
These vanish with form and feature,
Can the creature fathom the creature,
Whose Creator is fathomless?

Is this dry land sure? Is the sea sure?
Is there aught that shall long remain,
Pain, or peril, or pleasure,
Pleasure, or peril, or pain?
Shall we labour or take our leisure,
And who shall inherit treasure,
If the measure with which we measure
Is meted to us again?

I am slow in learning and swift in
Forgetting, and I have grown
So weary with long sand sifting;
Twards the mist where the breakers moan
The rudderless bark is drifting,
Through the shoals and the quicksands shifting,
In the end shall the night-rack lifting,
Discover the shores unknown?

Adam Lindsay Gordon

Adam Lindsay Gordon was an Australian poet, jockey, and politician. Born in the Azores to Scottish parents, he moved to Australia in 1853. Known for his bush ballads and lyrical poetry, Gordon's works often reflect his passions for horse racing and the Australian landscape. His notable works include "The Sick Stockrider" and "Bush Ballads and Galloping Rhymes." Unfortunately, he struggled with depression and financial troubles, leading to his untimely death at the age of 36.

Adam Lindsay Gordon

The Sick Stockrider

Adam Lindsay Gordon, Simple Poetry

Thoras Song - (Ashtaroth)

Adam Lindsay Gordon, Simple Poetry

The Race

Adam Lindsay Gordon, Simple Poetry

Exeunt

Adam Lindsay Gordon, Simple Poetry

English

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The troubles of life are many,
The pleasures of life are few;
When we sat in the sunlight, Annie,
I dreamt that the skies were blue,
When we sat in the sunlight, Annie,
I dreamt that the earth was green;
There is little colour, if any,
Neath the sunlight now to be seen.

Then the rays of the sunset glinted
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On an emerald sward, rose-tinted,
And spangled, and gemmd; and now
The rays of the sunset redden
With a sullen and lurid frown,
From the skies that are dark and leaden,
To earth that is dusk and brown.

To right and to left extended
The uplands are blank and drear,
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Ex Fumo Dare Lucem - Twixt The Cup And The Lip

Prologue

Calm and clear! the bright day is declining,
The crystal expanse of the bay,
Like a shield of pure metal, lies shining
Twixt headlands of purple and grey,
While the little waves leap in the sunset,
And strike with a miniature shock,
In sportive and infantine onset,
The base of the iron-stone rock.

Calm and clear! the sea-breezes are laden
With a fragrance, a freshness, a power,
With a song like the song of a maiden,
With a scent like the scent of a flower;
And a whisper, half-weird, half-prophetic,
Comes home with the sigh of the surf;
But I pause, for your fancies poetic
Never rise from the level of Turf.

Fellow-bungler of mine, fellow-sinner,
In public performances past,
In trials whence touts take their wi...

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Cito Pede Preterit Aetas - A Philosophical Dissertation

Gillians dead, God rest her bier,
How I loved her many years syne;
Marions married, but I sit here,
Alive and merry at three-score year,
Dipping my nose in Gascoigne wine.
- Wambas Song, Thackeray.


A mellower light doth Sol afford,
His meridian glare has passd,
And the trees on the broad and sloping sward
Their lengthning shadows cast.
Time flies. The current will be no joke,
If swollen by recent rain,
To cross in the dark, so Ill have a smoke,
And then Ill be off again.

Whats up, old horse? Your ears you prick,
And your eager eyeballs glisten;
Tis the wild dogs note in the tea-tree thick,
By the river, to which you listen.
With head erect and tail flung out,
For a gallop you seem to beg,
But I feel th...

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The Swimmer

With short, sharp, violent lights made vivid,
To southward far as the sight can roam,
Only the swirl of the surges livid,
The seas that climb and the surfs that comb.
Only the crag and the cliff to norward,
And the rocks receding, and reefs flung forward,
And waifs wreckd seaward and wasted shoreward
On shallows sheeted with flaming foam.

A grim, grey coast and a seaboard ghastly,
And shores trod seldom by feet of men,
Where the batterd hull and the broken mast lie,
They have lain embedded these long years ten.
Love! when we wanderd here together,
Hand in hand through the sparkling weather,
From the heights and hollows of fern and heather,
God surely loved us a little then.

The skies were fairer and shores were firmer,
The blue sea over th...

Adam Lindsay Gordon

The Race

On the hill they are crowding together,
In the stand they are crushing for room,
Like midge-flies they swarm on the heather,
They gather like bees on the broom;
They flutter like moths round a candle,
Stale similes, granted, what then?
I've got a stale subject to handle,
A very stale stump of a pen.


Hark! the shuffle of feet that are many,
Of voices the many-tongued clang,
"Has he had a bad night?" "Has he any
Friends left?"    How I hate your turf slang;
'Tis stale to begin with, not witty,
But dull, and inclined to be coarse,
But bad men can't use (more's the pity)
Good words when they slate a good horse.


Heu! heu! quantus equis (that's Latin
For "bellows to mend" with the weeds),
They're off! lights and shades! silk and sat...

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Doubtful Dreams

Aye, snows are rife in December,
And sheaves are in August yet,
And you would have me remember,
And I would rather forget;
In the bloom of the May-day weather,
In the blight of October chill,
We were dreamers of old together,
As of old, are you dreaming still?

For nothing on earth is sadder
Than the dream that cheated the grasp,
The flower that turned to the adder,
The fruit that changed to the asp;
When the day-spring in darkness closes,
As the sunset fades from the hills,
With the fragrance of perishd roses,
With the music of parchd-up rills.

When the sands on the sea-shore nourish
Red clover and yellow corn;
When figs on the thistle flourish,
And grapes grow thick on the thorn;
When the dead branch, blighted and blasted,

Adam Lindsay Gordon