Toby

Hey, Toby, Toby, Toby!Dead?
The silence is a flood
That closes, choking, overhead,
And chills the living blood.

The leaping friend, whose jolly bark
Was greeting every night,
No more to thrill the summer dark
With welcome of delight?

Beside his grave I bend the knee,
And O, my eyes are dim.
He hunted for the dog in me:
I found the man in him.

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

Swags Up!

John Le Gay Brereton, Simple Poetry

Twenty-One

John Le Gay Brereton, Simple Poetry

Spring

John Le Gay Brereton, Simple Poetry

Lali

John Le Gay Brereton, Simple Poetry

English

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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.
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The Robe Of Grass

Here lies the woven garb he wore
Of grass he gathered by the shore
Whereon the phantom waves still fret and foam
And sigh along the visionary sand.
Where is he now? you cry. What desolate land
Gleams round him in dull mockery of home?

You knew him by the robe he cast
About him, grey and worn at last.
It fades, you murmur, changes, lives and dies.
Why has he vanished? Whither is he fled?
And is there any light among the dead?
Can any dream come singing where he lies?

Ah peace! lift up your clouded eyes,
Nor where this curious relic lies
Grope in the blown dust for the print of feet.
Dim, twittering, ghastly sounds are these; but he
Laughs now as ever, still aloof and free,
Eager and wild and passionate and fleet.

Because he h...

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To A Bull-Dog

    (W. H. S., Capt. [Acting Major] R.F.A.; killed April 12, 1917)

    We sha'n't see Willy any more, Mamie,
    He won't be coming any more:
    He came back once and again and again,
    But he won't get leave any more.

    We looked from the window and there was his cab,
    And we ran downstairs like a streak,
    And he said "Hullo, you bad dog," and you crouched to the floor,
    Paralysed to hear him speak,

    And then let fly at his face and his chest
    Till I had to hold you down,
    While he took off his cap and his gloves and his coat.
    And his bag and his thonged Sam Browne.

    We went upstairs to the studio,
    The three of us, just as of old,
    And you lay down and I sat and talked to him
    As round the...

John Collings Squire, Sir

The Friend

Through the dark wood
    There came to me a friend,
Bringing in his cold hands
    Two words - 'The End.'

His face was fair
    As fading autumn flowers,
And the lost joy
    Of unforgotten hours.

His voice was sweet
    As rain upon a grave;
'Be brave,' he smiled.
    And yet again - 'be brave.'

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A Dog's Death

    The loose earth falls in the grave like a peaceful regular breathing;
    Too like, for I was deceived a moment by the sound:
    It has covered the heap of bracken that the gardener laid above him;
    Quiet the spade swings: there we have now his mound.

    A patch of fresh earth on the floor of the wood's renewing chamber:
    All around is grass and moss and the hyacinth's dark green sprouts:
    And oaks are above that were old when his fiftieth sire was a puppy:
    And far away in the garden I hear the children's shouts.

    Their joy is remote as a dream.    It is strange how we buy our sorrow
    For the touch of perishing things, idly, with open eyes;
    How we give our hearts to brutes that will die in a few seasons,
    Nor trouble what we do when we do it...

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Winter Nightfall

    The old yellow stucco
    Of the time of the Regent
    Is flaking and peeling:
    The rows of square windows
    In the straight yellow building
    Are empty and still;
    And the dusty dark evergreens
    Guarding the wicket
    Are draped with wet cobwebs,
    And above this poor wilderness
    Toneless and sombre
    Is the flat of the hill.

    They said that a colonel
    Who long ago died here
    Was the last one to live here:
    An old retired colonel,
    Some Fraser or Murray,
    I don't know his name;
    Death came here and summoned him,
    And the shells of him vanished
    Beyond all speculation;
    And silence resumed here,
    Silence and emptiness,
    And nobody came.

    Was it ...

John Collings Squire, Sir