Narrara Creek
(Written in the shadow of 1872.)
From the rainy hill-heads, where, in starts and in spasms,Leaps wild the white torrent from chasms to chasms—From the home of bold echoes, whose voices of wonderFly out of blind caverns struck black by high thunder—Through gorges august, in whose nether recessesIs heard the far psalm of unseen wildernesses—Like a dominant spirit, a strong-handed sharerOf spoil with the tempest, comes down the Narrara.
Yea, where the great sword of the hurricane cleavethThe forested fells that the dark never leaveth—By fierce-featured crags, in whose evil abyssesThe clammy snake coils, and the flat adder hisses—Past lordly rock temples, where Silence is rivenBy the anthems supreme of the four winds of heaven—It speeds, with the cry of the streams of the fountainsIt chained to its sides, and dragged down from the mountains!
But when it goes forth from the slopes with a sally—Being strengthened with tribute from many a valley—It broadens and brightens, and thereupon marchesAbove the stream sapphires and under green arches,With the rhythm of majesty—careless of cumber—Its might in repose and its fierceness in slumber—Till it beams on the plains, where the wind is a bearerOf words from the sea to the stately Narrara!
Narrara! grand son of the haughty hill torrent,Too late in my day have I looked at thy current—Too late in my life to discern and inheritThe soul of thy beauty, the joy of thy spirit!With the years of the youth and the hairs of the hoary,I sit like a shadow outside of thy glory;Nor look with the morning-like feelings, O river,That illumined the boy in the days gone for ever!
Ah! sad are the sounds of old ballads which borrowOne-half of their grief from the listener’s sorrow;And sad are the eyes of the pilgrim who tracesThe ruins of Time in revisited places;But sadder than all is the sense of his lossesThat cometh to one when a sudden age crossesAnd cripples his manhood. So, stricken by fate, IFelt older at thirty than some do at eighty.
Because I believe in the beautiful story,The poem of Greece in the days of her glory—That the high-seated Lord of the woods and the watersHas peopled His world with His deified daughters—That flowerful forests and waterways streamingAre gracious with goddesses glowing and gleaming—I pray that thy singing divinity, fairerThan wonderful women, may listen, Narrara!
O spirit of sea-going currents!—thou, beingThe child of immortals, all-knowing, all-seeing—Thou hast at thy heart the dark truth that I borrowFor the song that I sing thee, no fanciful sorrow;In the sight of thine eyes is the history writtenOf Love smitten down as the strong leaf is smitten;And before thee there goeth a phantom beseechingFor faculties forfeited—hopes beyond reaching.
. . . . .
Thou knowest, O sister of deities blazingWith splendour ineffable, beauty amazing,What life the gods gave me—what largess I tasted—The youth thrown away, and the faculties wasted.I might, as thou seest, have stood in high places,Instead of in pits where the brand of disgrace is,A byword for scoffers—a butt and a caution,With the grave of poor Burns and Maginn for my portion.
But the heart of the Father Supreme is offended,And my life in the light of His favour is ended;And, whipped by inflexible devils, I shiver,With a hollow “Too late” in my hearing for ever;But thou—being sinless, exalted, supernal,The daughter of diademed gods, the eternal—Shalt shine in thy waters when time and existenceHave dwindled, like stars, in unspeakable distance.
But the face of thy river—the torrented powerThat smites at the rock while it fosters the flower—Shall gleam in my dreams with the summer-look splendid,And the beauty of woodlands and waterfalls blended;And often I’ll think of far-forested noises,And the emphasis deep of grand sea-going voices,And turn to Narrara the eyes of a lover,When the sorrowful days of my singing are over.