The Return of Imray.

Before my spring I garnered autumn’s gain,
Out of her time my field was white with grain,
The year gave up her secrets, to my woe. 
Forced and deflowered each sick season lay
In mystery of increase and decay;
I saw the sunset ere men see the day,
Who am too wise in all I should not know.

    Without Benefit of Clergy.

KIM

Unto whose use the pregnant suns are poised,
With idiot moons and stars retracting stars? 
Creep thou between—­thy coming’s all unnoised. 
Heaven hath her high, as Earth her baser, wars. 
Heir to these tumults, this affright, that fray
(By Adam’s, fathers’, own, sin bound alway);
Peer up, draw out thy horoscope and say
Which planet mends thy threadbare fate, or mars.

MANY INVENTIONS

And if ye doubt the tale I tell,
Steer through the South Pacific swell;
Go where the branching coral hives
Unending strife of endless lives,
Where, leagued about the ’wildered boat,
The rainbow jellies fill and float;
And, lilting where the laver lingers,
The starfish trips on all her fingers;
Where, ’neath his myriad spines ashock,
The sea-egg ripples down the rock;
An orange wonder daily guessed,
From darkness where the cuttles rest,
Moored o’er the darker deeps that hide
The blind white sea-snake and his bride
Who, drowsing, nose the long-lost ships
Let down through darkness to their lips.

    A Matter of Fact.

There’s a convict more in the Central Jail,
Behind the old mud wall;
There’s a lifter less on the Border trail,
And the Queen’s peace over all,
Dear boys,
The Queen’s peace over all!

For we must bear our leader’s blame,
On us the shame will fall,
If we lift our hand from a fettered land
And the Queen’s peace over all,
Dear boys,
The Queen’s peace over all!

    The Lost Legion.

’Less you want your toes trod off you’d better get back at once,
For the bullocks are walking two by two,
The byles are walking two by two,
And the elephants bring the guns. 
Ho!  Yuss! 
Great—­big—­long—­black—­forty-pounder guns: 
Jiggery-jolty to and fro,
Each as big as a launch in tow—­
Blind—­dumb—­broad-breeched—­beggars o’ battering-guns.

    My Lord the Elephant.

All the world over, nursing their scars,
Sit the old fighting-men broke in the wars—­
Sit the old fighting men, surly and grim
Mocking the lilt of the conquerors’ hymn.

Dust of the battle o’erwhelmed them and hid. 
Fame never found them for aught that they did. 
Wounded and spent to the lazar they drew,
Lining the road where the Legions roll through.

Sons of the Laurel who press to your meed,
(Worthy God’s pity most—­ye who succeed!)
Ere you go triumphing, crowned, to the stars,
Pity poor fighting men, broke in the wars!