Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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

By G. W. L. Marshall-Hall

77 . On Reading Shakespeare’s Sonnets

THY verse is like a cool and shady well

Lying a-dream within some moss-walled close

Far from the common way, where violets doze

In green-deep grass beside the sweet hare-bell.

And each wayfarer as he stoopeth there

Doth spy a face that is most like his own,

So weary and—ah me!—so woe-begone

That almost he forgetteth his deep care.

There is a royal restraint in thy sad rhyme,

Dis-calmèd calm, and passion passionless,

And mellowed is all taint of bitterness

Into the harmony of that still time

When leaves are yellowing in the sallow sun

And evening’s bloom is flush across the sky,

When haggard summer tottereth in his run

And gracious moist-eyed autumn draweth nigh.

O king! majestical in thy decline

As in thy Spring,—might such an end be mine!