shadow, the sweet sense of slumber denies,
If even I marvel at kindness, and fret,
And start while the tears are all wet in mine eyes?

Oh, darling of mine, standing here with the Past,
Trampled under our feet in the bitterest ways,
Is this speech like a ghost that it keeps us aghast
On the track of the thorns and in alien days?

When I know of you, love, how you break with our pain,
And sob for the sorrow of sorrowful dreams,
Like a stranger who stands in the wind and the rain
And watches and wails by impassable streams:

Like a stranger who droops on a brink and deplores,
With famishing hands and frost in the feet,
For the laughter alive on the opposite shores
With the fervour of fire and the wind of the wheat.

In Hyde Park

--
* [This and the next poem were written for "Prince Alfred's Wreath",
published in Sydney in 1868. While in Sydney, the Prince was shot at
by a fanatic and slightly injured.]
--

They come from the highways of labour,
From labour and leisure they come;
But not to the sound of the tabor,
And not to the beating of drum.

By thousands the people assemble
With faces of shadow and flame,
And spirits that sicken and tremble
Because of their sorrow and shame!

Their voice is the voice of a nation;
But lo, it is muffled and mute,
For the sword of a strong tribulation
Hath stricken their peace to the root.

The beautiful tokens of pity
Have utterly fled from their eyes,
For the demon who darkened the city
Is curst in the breaking of sighs.

Their thoughts are as one; and together
They band in their terrible ire,
Like legions of wind in fierce weather
Whose footsteps are thunder and fire.

But for ever, like springs of sweet water
That sings in the grass-hidden leas
As soft as the voice of a daughter,
There cometh a whisper from these.

There cometh from shame and dejection,
From wrath and the blackness thereof,
A word at whose heart is affection
With a sighing whose meaning is love.

In the land of distress and of danger,
With their foreheads in sackcloth and dust,
They weep for the wounds of the Stranger
And mourn o'er the ashes of trust!

They weep for the Prince, and the Mother
Whose years have been smitten of grief--
For the son and the lord and the brother,
And the