Spring surely must be near.  High over head
   The kind blue heavens bend to timbers tall;
And here, this morning, is the picture spread
   That I have learned to love the best of all.
      I hear Flame Robin call
His early love-song.  Winter's might is sped;
And young crows now begin to fleck with red
      This great green, living wall.
 
Picture of promise, that I count the best
   Of many a fair familiar Bushland scene;
Lifting o'er all, the far mount's sunlit crest
   Looks down where silver wattles lightly screen
      Blue smoke, that peeps between
Their tall tops, from some settler's hidden nest --
Looks down on golden wattles closely pressed
      To blackwood's luscious green.
 
Before the dovecote, mirrored in the pond,
   A veil diaphanous of drifting mist
Makes many a nimbus for grey gums beyond
   Whose gaunt, grey limbs a mountain sun has kissed
      To palest amethyst.
Now, stepping very daintily, with fond,
Soft cooings, fantails on the lawn respond,
      To Spring, the amorist.
 
From the deep forest, on the clean crisp air,
   The bushman's axe-blows echo sharply clear;
A soft cloud's tattered fleece drifts idly where
   Glows azure hope.  Impatient to appear
      Springs now full many a spear
Of marching daffodils.  Shorn of cold care,
The joyous bush birds vie with flutings rare.
      Spring surely must be near.

"Den"
Herald, 25 July 1933, p6