Walter Murdoch (1874–1970). The Oxford Book of Australasian Verse. 1918.
By Arthur Adams137 . A Pair of Lovers in the Street
A
I dare not mock: with reverence meet
My unforgetting heart I cheat.
At the barred door to beat in vain,
And find their dalliance such fierce pain!
See, dreaming through their worlds of bliss,
This Dante and his Beatrice!
For which God made the plasm and sun;
His patient labouring is done.
And lonely worlds were spawned and died.
Chaos for them in birth-throes cried.
This crescent wave was slowly born
That thunders on the beach of morn.
The web of splendour, silken-thin,
The nebulae were set to spin!
Love led the way. Can aught destroy
The task that was the stars’ employ?
Than Lucifer at Heaven’s door
Entreating pardon for his war.
They have God’s special task essayed,
And new worlds for their gladness made.
Makes earth too mean a place to live in,
And broken toys His Hell and Heaven.
Hangs fearful. Space through her abyss
Shudders if they this hour should miss.
The stars would be a raining rout,
And time in anguish flicker out.
A stealthy slippered Thing would run,
Quenching cold tapers one by one.
Like a great clock, beats steadily
For these mazed fools—but not for me!
They hold within their clinging hands;
The stars march on at their commands.
New universes tirelessly—
Aeons of unguessed ecstasy!
Vain hands about God’s mercy-seat,
And, still remembering, still entreat.
The rack turns grimly when I meet
A pair of lovers on the street.