Walter Murdoch (1874–1970). The Oxford Book of Australasian Verse. 1918.
By Jessie Mackay56 . The Grey Company
O
Of the pallid dawn!
O the ghostly faces
Ashen-like and drawn!
The Lord’s lone sentinels
Dotted down the years—
The little grey company
Before the pioneers!
Ere the time was ripe,
They awoke to scorning,
To jeering and to strife.
Dreaming of millenniums
In a world of wars,
They awoke to shudder
At a flaming Mars.
But a Huss was first—
A fountain unregarded
In the primal thirst.
Never was a Newton
Crowned and honoured well,
But first a lone Galileo
Wasted in a cell.
Looked the pioneers;—
Drank the wine of courage
All their battle years.
For their weary sowing
Through the world wide,
Green they saw the harvest
Ere the day they died.
Stood every man alone
In the chilly dawnlight:
Scarcely had they known
Ere the day they perished
That their beacon star
Was not glint of marshlight
In the shadows far.
To the truth within
Took the dart of folly,
Took the jeer of sin.
Crying, ‘Follow, follow
Back to Eden-gate!’
They trod the Polar desert,—
Met the desert fate.
And roses to the fair;
And asphodel Elysian
Let the hero wear:
But lay the maiden lilies
Upon their narrow biers—
The lone grey company
Before the pioneers!