On A Political Prisoner

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1. Song For The Severed Head In 'The King Of The Great Clock Tower&#039 Saddle and ride, I heard a man say, Out of Ben Bulben and Knocknarea, What says the Clock in the Great Clock Tower? All those tragic characters ride But turn from Rosses’ crawling tide, The meet’s upon the mountain-side. A slow low note and an iron bell. What brought them there so far from their […]...
2. Through The Metodja To Abd-El-Kadr 1842 I As I ride, as I ride, With a full heart for my guide, So its tide rocks my side, As I ride, as I ride, That, as I were double-eyed, He, in whom our Tribes confide, Is descried, ways untried As I ride, as I ride. II As I ride, as I ride […]...
3. The Prisoner of Chillon I My hair is gray, but not with years, Nor grew it white In a single night, As men’s have grown from sudden fears: My limbs are bow’d, though not with toil, But rusted with a vile repose, For they have been a dungeon’s spoil, And mine has been the fate of those To whom […]...
4. The Prisoner I lash and writhe against my prison bars, And watch with sullen eyes the gaping crowd. . Give me my freedom and the burning stars, The hollow sky, and crags of moonlit cloud! Once I might range across the trackless plain, And roar with joy, until the desert air And wide horizons echoed it amain: […]...
5. The Never-Never Country By homestead, hut, and shearing-shed, By railroad, coach, and track By lonely graves of our brave dead, Up-Country and Out-Back: To where ‘neath glorious the clustered stars The dreamy plains expand My home lies wide a thousand miles In the Never-Never Land. It lies beyond the farming belt, Wide wastes of scrub and plain, A […]...
6. Willard Fluke My wife lost her health, And dwindled until she weighed scarce ninety pounds. Then that woman, whom the men Styled Cleopatra, came along. And we we married ones All broke our vows, myself among the rest. Years passed and one by one Death claimed them all in some hideous form, And I was borne along […]...
7. Political Precept All that thou doest is right; but, friend, don’t carry this precept On too far, be content, all that is right to effect. It is enough to true zeal, if what is existing be perfect; False zeal always would find finished perfection at once....
8. Political nonsense I was saddened just to hear the bitter rancour In his voice, a sour hostility aloof of commonsense, And ranks who sat in audience held captive to his Ranting must have felt it too. Was this the one Who said he’d lead us to a promised land? How Could a man of honour make the […]...
9. My Prisoner We was in a crump-‘ole, ‘im and me; Fightin’ wiv our bayonets was we; Fightin’ ‘ard as ‘ell we was, Fightin’ fierce as fire because It was ‘im or me as must be downed; ‘E was twice as big as me; I was ‘arf the weight of ‘e; We was like a terryer and a […]...
10. The Travelling Post Office The roving breezes come and go, the reed-beds sweep and sway, The sleepy river murmers low, and loiters on its way, It is the land of lots o’time along the Castlereagh. . . .. . . . . The old man’s son had left the farm, he found it full and slow, He drifted to […]...
11. Night Is On The Downland Night is on the downland, on the lonely moorland, On the hills where the wind goes over sheep-bitten turf, Where the bent grass beats upon the unplowed poorland And the pine-woods roar like the surf. Here the Roman lived on the wind-barren lonely, Dark now and haunted by the moorland fowl; None comes here now […]...
12. Last Word To Childhood Ice-cold fear has slowly decreased As my bones have grown, my height increased. Though I shiver in snow of dreams, I shall never Freeze again in a noonday terror. I shall never break, my sinews crumble As God-the-headmaster’s fingers fumble At the other side of unopening doors Which I watch for a hundred thousand years. […]...
13. Over The Range Little bush maiden, wondering-eyed, Playing alone in the creek-bed dry, In the small green flat on every side Walled in by the Moonbi ranges high; Tell me the tale of your lonely life ‘Mid the great grey forests that know no change. “I never have left my home,” she said, “I have never been over […]...
14. The Prisoner Upspoke the culprit at the bar, Conducting his own case: ‘Your Lordship, I have gone to far, But grant me of your grace. As I was passing by a shop I saw my arm go out, And though I begged of it to stop, It stole beyond a doubt. ‘But why should my whole body […]...
15. The Prisoner I count the dismal time by months and years Since last I felt the green sward under foot, And the great breath of all things summer- Met mine upon my lips. Now earth appears As strange to me as dreams of distant spheres Or thoughts of Heaven we weep at. Nature’s lute Sounds on, behind […]...
16. Prisoner ‘Prisoner, tell me, who was it that bound you?’ ‘It was my master,’ said the prisoner. ‘I thought I could outdo everybody in the world in wealth and power, And I amassed in my own treasure-house the money due to my king. When sleep overcame me I lay upon the bed that was for my […]...
17. The Prisoner Still let my tyrants know, I am not doomed to wear Year after year in gloom and desolate despair; A messenger of Hope comes every night to me, And offers for short life, eternal liberty. He comes with western winds, with evening’s wandering airs, With that clear dusk of heaven that brings the thickest stars: […]...
18. The Prisoner of Zenda At the end a “The Prisoner of Zenda,” The King being out of danger, Stewart Granger (As Rudolph Rassendyll) Must swallow a bitter pill By renouncing his co-star, Deborah Kerr. It would be poor behavia In him and in Princess Flavia Were they to put their own Concerns before those of the Throne. Deborah Kerr […]...
19. Under Ben Bulben I Swear by what the sages spoke Round the Mareotic Lake That the Witch of Atlas knew, Spoke and set the cocks a-crow. Swear by those horsemen, by those women Complexion and form prove superhuman, That pale, long-visaged company That air in immortality Completeness of their passions won; Now they ride the wintry dawn Where […]...
20. Prisoner, The – (A Fragment) In the dungeon-crypts, idly did I stray, Reckless of the lives wasting there away; “Draw the ponderous bars! open, Warder stern!” He dared not say me nay – the hinges harshly turn. “Our guests are darkly lodged,” I whisper’d, gazing through The vault, whose grated eye showed heaven more grey than blue; (This was when […]...
21. Towards Break Of Day Was it the double of my dream The woman that by me lay Dreamed, or did we halve a dream Under the first cold gleam of day? I thought: “There is a waterfall Upon Ben Bulben side That all my childhood counted dear; Were I to travel far and wide I could not find a […]...
22. A Prisoner in a Dungeon Deep A prisoner in a dungeon deep Sat musing silently; His head was rested on his hand, His elbow on his knee. Turned he his thoughts to future times Or are they backward cast? For freedom is he pining now Or mourning for the past? No, he has lived so long enthralled Alone in dungeon gloom […]...
23. The Man Rock A man is a rock in a garden of chairs and waits For a longtime to be over. It is easier for a rock in a garden than a man Inside his mother. He decided to be a rock when He got outside. A rock asks only what is a rock. A rock waits to […]...
24. Portrait (For S. A.)TO write one book in five years Or five books in one year, To be the painter and the thing painted, … where are we, bo? Wait-get his number. The barber shop handling is here And the tweeds, the cheviot, the Scotch Mist, And the flame orange scarf. Yet there is more-he sleeps […]...
25. Some Like Poetry Write it. Write. In ordinary ink On ordinary paper: they were given no food, They all died of hunger. “All. How many? It’s a big meadow. How much grass For each one?” Write: I don’t know. History counts its skeletons in round numbers. A thousand and one remains a thousand, As though the one had […]...
26. The Song of the Beasts (Sung, on one night, in the cities, in the darkness.) Come away! Come away! Ye are sober and dull through the common day, But now it is night! It is shameful night, and God is asleep! (Have you not felt the quick fires that creep Through the hungry flesh, and the lust of delight, And […]...
27. A Bushman's Song I’M travellin’ down the Castlereagh, and I’m a station hand, I’m handy with the ropin’ pole, I’m handy with the brand, And I can ride a rowdy colt, or swing the axe all day, But there’s no demand for a station-hand along the Castlereagh. + So it’s shift, boys, shift, for there isn’t the slightest […]...
28. Dream Song 7: 'The Prisoner of Shark Island' with Paul Muni Henry is old, old; for Henry remembers Mr Deeds’ tuba, & the Cameo, & the race in Ben Hur, —The Lost World, with sound, & The Man from Blankey’s, which he did not dig, Nor did he understand one caption of, Bewildered Henry, while the Big Ones laughed. Now Henry is unmistakably a Big One. […]...
29. CONSTRUCTIONS/RECONSTRUCTIONS I Living in a land Where only the dying correspond I am borne on the wings of love II I cannot join in a poem The interstices of clouds I watched a lapwing Hover in the air Glide in an arc Veer from the sheer cliff III Who shall I meet On this journey to […]...
30. The Arrow I thought of your beauty, and this arrow, Made out of a wild thought, is in my marrow. There’s no man may look upon her, no man, As when newly grown to be a woman, Tall and noble but with face and bosom Delicate in colour as apple blossom. This beauty’s kinder, yet for a […]...
31. By my Window have I for Scenery By my Window have I for Scenery Just a Sea with a Stem If the Bird and the Farmer deem it a “Pine” The Opinion will serve for them It has no Port, nor a “Line” but the Jays That split their route to the Sky Or a Squirrel, whose giddy Peninsula May be easier […]...
32. The Shearers No church-bell rings them from the Track, No pulpit lights theirblindness ‘Tis hardship, drought, and homelessness That teach those Bushmen kindness: The mateship born, in barren lands, Of toil and thirst and danger, The camp-fare for the wanderer set, The first place to the stranger. They do the best they can to-day Take no thought […]...
33. Riders in the Stand There’s some that ride the Robbo style, and bump at every stride; While others sit a long way back, to get a longer ride. There’s some that ride as sailors do, with legs, and arms, and teeth; And some that ride the horse’s neck, and some ride underneath. But all the finest horsemen out the […]...
34. The Geebung Polo Club It was somewhere up the country, in a land of rock and scrub, That they formed an institution called the Geebung Polo Club. They were long and wiry natives from the rugged mountain side, And the horse was never saddled that the Geebungs couldn’t ride; But their style of playing polo was irregular and rash […]...
35. Song from Judith 3 BALKIS was in her marble town, And shadow over the world came down. Whiteness of walls, towers and piers, That all day dazzled eyes to tears, Turned from being white-golden flame, And like the deep-sea blue became. Balkis into her garden went; Her spirit was in discontent Like a torch in restless air. Joylessly she […]...
36. An Epitaph Here lies a most beautiful lady, Light of step and heart was she; I think she was the most beautiful lady That ever was in the West Country. But beauty vanishes, beauty passes; However rare rare it be; And when I crumble, who will remember This lady of the West Country....
37. To Germany You are blind like us. Your hurt no man designed, And no man claimed the conquest of your land. But gropers both through fields of thought confined We stumble and we do not understand. You only saw your future bigly planned, And we, the tapering paths of our own mind, And in each others dearest […]...
38. Listen, Lord: A Prayer O Lord, we come this morning Knee-bowed and body-bent Before Thy throne of grace. O Lord this morning Bow our hearts beneath our knees, And our knees in some lonesome valley. We come this morning Like empty pitchers to a full fountain, With no merits of our own. O Lord open up a window of […]...
39. Douglass Ah, Douglass, we have fall’n on evil days, Such days as thou, not even thou didst know, When thee, the eyes of that harsh long ago Saw, salient, at the cross of devious ways, And all the country heard thee with amaze. Not ended then, the passionate ebb and flow, The awful tide that battled […]...
40. Three Songs To The One Burden I The Roaring Tinker if you like, But Mannion is my name, And I beat up the common sort And think it is no shame. The common breeds the common, A lout begets a lout, So when I take on half a score I knock their heads about. From mountain to mountain ride the fierce […]...