"AUSTRALIS."

[A nom-de-plume of Patrick Moloney, a well-known Melbourne doctor. His "Sonnets-Ad Innuptam" were published at intervals in the Australasian, under the signature of "Australis," and republished all together under his own name in An Easter Omelette, an annual edited by Patchett Martin.]

SONNETS-AD INNUPTAM.

I MAKE not my division of the hours

By dials, clocks, or waking birds' acclaim,
Nor measure seasons by the reigning flowers,
The spring's green glories, or the autumn's flame;
To me thy absence winter is, and night,

Thy presence spring, and the meridian day.
From thee I draw my darkness and my light,

Now swart eclipse, now more than heavenly ray. Thy coming warmeth all my soul like fire,

And through my heart-strings melodies do run, As poets fabled the Memnonian lyre

Hymned acclamation to the rising sun. My heart hums music in thy influence set, So winds put harps Æolian on the fret.

The rude rebuffs of bay-besieging winds

But make the anchored ships towards them turn,

So thy unkindness unto me but finds

My love towards thee with keener ardour burn; As myrrh incised bleeds odoriferous gum,

I am become a poet through my wrong,

For through the sad-mouthed heart-wounds in me come
These earthly echoes of celestial song.

My thoughts as birds make flutter in my heart,
Poor muffled choristers! whose sad refrain

Gives sorrow sleep, and bids that woe depart
Whose heavy burthen weighs upon my strain.
Imprisoned larks pipe sweeter than when free,
And I, enslaved, have learnt to sing for thee.

Thy throne is ringed by amorous cavaliers,
And all the air is heavy with the sound
Of tiptoe compliment, whilst anxious fears
Strike dumb the lesser satellites around.
One clasps thy hand, another squires thy chair,
Some bask in light shed from the eyes of thee,
Some taste the perfumes shaken from thy hair,
Some watch afar their worshipped deity.
All have their orbits, and due distance keep,
As round the sun concentric planets move;
Smiles light yon lord, whilst I, at distance, weep
In the sad twilight of uncertain love.

'Thwart thee, my sun, how many a mincer slips,
Whose constant transits make for me eclipse.

Know that the age of Pyrrha is long passed,
And though thy form is eternised in stone,
The sculptor's doings cannot Time outlast,
Nor beauty live save but in blood and bone;
Though new Pygmalions should again arise
Idolatrous of images like thee,

Time the iconoclast e'en stone destroys,
As steadfast rocks are splintered by the sea.
Though shouldst indeed a hamadryad be,
Inhabiting some knotted oak alone,

And so revive the worship of the Tree

Which, by succession, outlives barren stone.

Though thus transformed still worshippers would woo, As Daphne-laurels poets yet pursue.

Why dost thou like a Roman vestal make
The whole long year unmarriageable May,
And, like the phoenix, no companion take
To share the wasteful burthen of decay?
See this rich climate, where the airs that blow
Are heavenly suspirings, and the skies
Steep day from head to heel in summer glow,
And moons make mellow mornings as they rise;
As brides white-veiled that come to marry earth,
Now each mist-morning sweet July attires,
Now moon-night mists are not of earthly birth,

But silver smoke blown down from heavenly fires. Skies kiss the earth, clouds join the land and sea, All Nature marries, only thou art free.

O what an eve was that which ushered in

The night that crowned the wish I cherished long!
Heaven's curtains oped to see the night begin,
And infant winds broke lightly into song;
Methought the hours in softly swelling sound.
Wailed funeral dirges for the dying light;
I seemed to stand upon a neutral ground,

Between the confines of the day and night;
For o'er the east Night stretched her sable rod,
And ranked her stars in glittering array,
While in the west the golden twilight trod
With crimson sandals on the verge of day.
Bright bars of cloud formed in the glowing even
A Jacob-ladder joining earth and heaven.

O sweet Queen-city of the golden South,
Piercing the evening with thy starlit spires,
Thou wert a witness when I kissed the mouth
Of her whose eyes outblazed the skiey fires.

I saw the parallels of thy long streets
With lamps like angels shining all a-row,
While overhead the empyrean seats

Of gods were steeped in paradisic glow.
The Pleiades with rarer fires were tipt,
Hesper sat throned upon his jewelled chair,
The belted giant's triple stars were dipt

In all the splendour of Olympian air.

On high to bless, the Southern Cross did shine, Like that which blazed o'er conquering Constantine.

L. AVIS.

[A nom-de-plume of C. Watkins, living in the province of Otago, New Zealand.]

O TE-KAPUKA.

(THE BROAD LEAVES.)

In a quiet spot just near the sea these old Kapukas stand,
The Rangiteras of the bush, the princes of the land;
The Pakeha axe was still unknown-would they had
never met!-

The "Slaughter of the Innocents" was not accomplished yet.

These fathers of the native bush threw up their giant arms In living chains of many vines, firm bondage in their charms.

No mortal fingers ever made such lovely bonds as they— Green and pale gold, and trembling white, in a thousand links they lay.

While birds of song and colour came to them day and night,

A trinity of nature kept them always fair and bright;

Nature was queen and governess in the land of greenstone

then,

And spoke a truer language in fewer words of men.

The Pakeha has changed all that he has justified the

name

A type of mere destructiveness, with neither sense nor shame;

The triple grace of mighty strength, of beauty and sweet

song

Has crowned the old Kapukas, though now they suffer

wrong.

Crippled and shorn and many dead, their vines all rust

away,

In dead and dying thousands upon the ground they lay; One feels a great and keen regret-one who has ever known

The ancient glories of the bush when its life was all its own.

ARTHUR J. BAKER.

[After suffering every kind of catastrophe, by flood and field, in the Old World and the New, in 1860 organised the Adelaide Fire Brigade. Well known in the hunting-field in South Australia; has published a slim volume of reminiscences and poems.]

IF WE SHOULD MEET.

If we should meet-God grant we may !-
If we should meet again,

As flowerets kissed by summer ray

Are sweeter after rain,

Absence shall make our joy more sweet,

If we should meet-when we shall meet.