Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Walter Murdoch (1874–1970). The Oxford Book of Australasian Verse. 1918.

126. Weariness

WHERE are now the dreams divine,

Fires that lit the dawning soul,

As the ruddy colours shine

Through an opal aureole?

Moving in a joyous trance,

We were like the forest glooms

Rumorous of old romance,

Fraught with unimagined dooms.

Titans we or morning stars,

So we seemed in days of old,

Mingling in the giant wars

Fought afar in deeps of gold.

God, an elder brother dear,

Filled with kindly light our thought:

Many a radiant form was near

Whom our hearts remember not.

Would they know us now? I think

Old companions of the prime

From our garments well might shrink,

Muddied with the lees of Time.

Fade the heaven-assailing moods:

Slave to petty tasks I pine

For the quiet of the woods,

And the sunlight seems divine.

And I yearn to lay my head

Where the grass is green and sweet,

Mother, all the dreams are fled

From the tired child at thy feet.