Page:Songs from the Southern Seas and Other Poems (1873).djvu/157



N the evergreen shade of an Austral wood,
 * Where the long branches laced above,
 * Through which all day it seemed
 * The sweet sunbeams down-gleamed
 * Like the rays of a young mother's love,

When she hides her glad face with her hands and peeps
 * At the youngling that crows on her knee:
 * 'Neath such ray-shivered shade,
 * In a banksia glade,
 * Was this flower first shown to me.

A rich pansy it was, with a small white lip
 * And a wonderful purple hood;
 * And your eye caught the sheen
 * Of its leaves, parrot-green,
 * Down the dim gothic aisles of the wood.

And its foliage rich on the moistureless sand