Walter Murdoch (1874–1970). The Oxford Book of Australasian Verse. 1918.
By Ethel Turner145 . A Christ-Child Day in Australia
A
Hangs high above my head.
Vague thunder sullenly goes by
With dragging, muffled tread.
And at its bitter breath,
Ten thousand trembling flower-souls pass,
With fragrant sighs, to death.
And sweetly blown for days.
Dead air in silent sheets has hung,
Smooth wavering sheets of haze.
Hide hushed in haunts of trees.
Nature no longer walks abroad,
But crouches on her knees.
Above her barren breast,
And I forget her yester grace
And the clustering mouths she blessed.
Almost it is mine own.
Its fibres to my fibres knit,
Its bone into my bone.
Yet something in my blood
Calls sharp for breath of ice and snow
Across the wide, salt flood.
Cries, with imperious tears,
And mem’ries that have never died
Leap wildly o’er the years:
Of England’s frost-sharp air,
The ice along her waterways,
Her snowfields stretching fair,
Her bird with breast aglow,
On the white land a crimson mark,
—Ah England, England’s snow!
A wayward bride, half won,
Her dowry careless flung like sand,
Her royal flax unspun.
Her subjects faint and reel,
Does she but melt, stoop to entrance,
They kiss her hem and kneel.
Has gently touched my hair.
Then with a throb I rise and stand,
—A Queen!—why should she spare!
Some ebb-tide swells to flood.
Ah, England—just once more to feel
Thy winter in my blood!