Page:The Poems of Henry Kendall (1920).djvu/375

 Behind her gleams the ghost of April's noon,

Before her is the far, faint dawn of June;

She lingers where the dells and dewy leas

Catch stormy sayings from the great bold seas;

Her nightly raiment is the misty fold

That zones her round with moonlight-coloured gold;

And in the day she sheds, from shining wings,

A tender heat that keeps the life in things.

like that month when, in imperial space,

The high, strong sun stares at the white world's face;

Not like that haughty daughter of the year

Who moves, a splendour, in a splendid sphere;

But rather like a nymph of afternoon,

With cool, soft sunshine, comes Australian June.

She is the calm, sweet lady, from whose lips

No breath of living passion ever slips;

The wind that on her virgin forehead blows

Was born too late to speak of last year's rose;

She never saw a blossom, but her eyes

Of tender beauty see blue, gracious skies;

She loves the mosses, and her feet have been

In woodlands where the leaves are always green;

Her days pass on with sea-songs, and her nights

Shine, full of stars, on lands of frosty lights.

travelling winds, filled with the strong storm's soul,

Are here, with dark, strange sayings from the Pole;

Now is the time when every great cave rings

With sharp, clear echoes caught from mountain springs;

This is the season when all torrents run

Beneath no bright, glad beauty of the sun.

Here, where the trace of last year's green is lost,

Are haughty gales, and lordships of the frost.

Far down, by fields forlorn and forelands bleak,

Are wings that fly not, birds that never speak;

But in the deep hearts of the glens, unseen,

Stand grave, mute forests of eternal green;