The handle of my tardy pen is made of the wood of trees,
And I know the way that their boughs will rock in the lap of the lazy breeze,
Till blossom and leaf are half-asleep and the sceptre is the Sun's,
And every river and every road to the Land of the Dreamer runs.
The nib of my pen is made of steel, and out of the jealous earth
The ore was freed by the miner's pick, to make for a later birth;
And I think of the brown and naked arms and the strong stroke cleanly sent
Across the vein of an ironstone rock in the heart of a continent.
And the thought of the freed, the potent, things must bring ever an ache for you,
As the gleam of a stretch of shadowy grass with a sun-splash breaking through
Will beat at the door of my restless mind, and carry my will away
From all that I somehow fail to write, to all that I fain would say.
If you brought me a quill of a dottrel's wing, a sheet of the ti-tree bark,
A vine leaf filled with the brimming juice where the vines hang stripped and stark,
The things would cry of the green wood gods that are yet unspoiled by men,
I might tell you all that you wait to hear, in the dip of that fairy pen!
First published in The Bulletin, 7 March 1918
