To

A handmaid to the genius of thy song
Is sweet, fair Scholarship. Tis she supplies
The fiery spirit of the passioned eyes
With subtle syllables, whose notes belong
To some chief source of perfect melodies;
And glancing through a laurelled, lordly throng
Of shining singers, lo! my vision flies
To William Shakespeare! He it is whose strong,
Full, flute-like music haunts thy stately verse.
A worthy Levite of his court thou art!
One sent among us to defeat the curse
That binds us to the Actual. Yea, thy part,
Oh, lute-voiced lover! is to lull the heart
Of love repelled, its darkness to disperse.

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

Ogyges

Henry Kendall, Simple Poetry

Under the Figtree

Henry Kendall, Simple Poetry

Song of the Shingle-Splitters

Henry Kendall, Simple Poetry

Campaspe

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.

Euterpe

Child of Light, the bright, the bird-like! wilt thou float and float to me,
Facing winds and sleets and waters, flying glimpses of the sea?
Down amongst the hills of tempest, where the elves of tumult roam
Blown wet shadows of the summits, dim sonorous sprites of foam?
Here and here my days are wasted, shorn of leaf and stript of fruit:
Vexed because of speech half spoken, maiden with the marvellous lute!
Vexed because of songs half-shapen, smit with fire and mixed with pain:
Part of thee, and part of Sorrow, like a sunset pale with rain.
Child of Light, the bright, the bird-like! wilt thou float and float to me
Facing winds and sleets and waters, flying glimpses of the sea?

All night long, in fluent pauses, falling far, but full, but fine,
Faultless friend of flowers and founta...

Henry Kendall

A Living Poet

He knows the sweet vexation in the strife
Of Love with Time, this bard who fain would stray
To fairer place beyond the storms of life,
With astral faces near him day by day.
In deep-mossed dells the mellow waters flow
Which best he loves; for there the echoes, rife
With rich suggestions of his long ago,
Astarte, pass with thee! And, far away,
Dear southern seasons haunt the dreamy eye:
Spring, flower-zoned, and Summer, warbling low
In tasselled corn, alternate come and go,
While gypsy Autumn, splashed from heel to thigh
With vine-blood, treads the leaves; and, halting nigh,
Wild Winter bends across a beard of snow.

Henry Kendall

The Voice in the Wild Oak

(Written in the shadow of 1872.)


Twelve years ago, when I could face
High heavens dome with different eyes
In days full-flowered with hours of grace,
And nights not sad with sighs
I wrote a song in which I strove
To shadow forth thy strain of woe,
Dark widowed sister of the grove!
Twelve wasted years ago.

But youth was then too young to find
Those high authentic syllables,
Whose voice is like the wintering wind
By sunless mountain fells;
Nor had I sinned and suffered then
To that superlative degree
That I would rather seek, than men,
Wild fellowship with thee!

But he who hears this autumn day
Thy more than deep autumnal rhyme,
Is one whose hair was shot with grey
By Grief instead of Time.
He has no need, like m...

Henry Kendall

André Le Chapelain.

(Clerk of Love, 1170.)

His Plaint To Venus Of The Coming Years.

"Plus ne suis ce que j'ay esté
Et ne le sçaurois jamais estre;
Mon beau printemps et mon esté
Ont fait le saut par la fenestre."


Queen Venus, round whose feet,
To tend thy sacred fire,
With service bitter-sweet
Nor youths nor maidens tire;--
Goddess, whose bounties be
Large as the un-oared sea;--

Mother, whose eldest born
First stirred his stammering tongue,
In the world's youngest morn,
When the first daisies sprung:--
Whose last, when Time shall die,
In the same grave shall lie:--

Hear thou one suppliant more!
Must I, thy Bard, grow old,
Bent, with the temples frore,
Not jocund be nor bold,
To tune for folk in May
Ballad and ...

Henry Austin Dobson

To Henry Halloran

You know I left my forest home full loth,
And those weird ways I knew so well and long,
Dishevelled with their sloping sidelong growth
Of twisted thorn and kurrajong.

It seems to me, my friend (and this wild thought
Of all wild thoughts, doth chiefly make me bleed),
That in those hills and valleys wonder-fraught,
I loved and lost a noble creed.

A splendid creed! But let me even turn
And hide myself from what Ive seen, and try
To fathom certain truths you know, and learn
The Beauty shining in your sky:

Remembering you in ardent autumn nights,
And Stenhouse near you, like a fine stray guest
Of other days, with all his lore of lights
So manifold and manifest!

Then hold me firm. I cannot choose but long
For that which lies and burns b...

Henry Kendall

To the Spirit of Music

I

The cool grass blowing in a breeze
Of April valleys sooms and sways;
On slopes that dip to quiet seas
Through far, faint drifts of yellowing haze.
I lie like one who, in a dream
Of sounds and splendid coloured things,
Seems lifted into life supreme
And has a sense of waxing wings.
For through a great arch-light which floods
And breaks and spreads and swims along
High royal-robed autumnal woods,
I hear a glorious sunset song.
But, ah, Euterpe! I that pause
And listen to the strain divine
Can never learn its words, because
I am no son of thine.

How sweet is wandering where the west
Is full of thee, what time the morn
Looks from his halls of rosy rest
Across green miles of gleaming corn!

How sweet are dreams in shady n...

Henry Kendall