Come, soul, and bury the dead old year;
Time was when she was fair,
Though now her body be shrunk and sere,
Gone the gold of her hair.
In the cathedral of memory
Set up escutcheon meet,
And with her sisters --- the years gone by ---
Give her embalming sweet.
A warm tear over her ashes drop --
True wife was she to you;
She bore you many a darling hope,
And blessings not a few.
First published in The Queenslander, 7 January 1882; and again in the same newspaper on 23 December 1882.
Author: Douglas Brooke Wheelton Sladen (1856-1947) was born in London and studied at Trinity College Oxford before arriving in Australia in 1879. Following his BA from Oxford he took a law degree at the University of Melbourne before settling in Sydney after being appointed the first lecturer in modern history at the University of Sydney. He returned to England in 1884 but maintained an interest in Australian poetry, especially that of Adam Lindsay Gordon.
Author reference sites: Austlit, Australian Dictionary of Biography
See also.
Time was when she was fair,
Though now her body be shrunk and sere,
Gone the gold of her hair.
In the cathedral of memory
Set up escutcheon meet,
And with her sisters --- the years gone by ---
Give her embalming sweet.
A warm tear over her ashes drop --
True wife was she to you;
She bore you many a darling hope,
And blessings not a few.
First published in The Queenslander, 7 January 1882; and again in the same newspaper on 23 December 1882.
Author: Douglas Brooke Wheelton Sladen (1856-1947) was born in London and studied at Trinity College Oxford before arriving in Australia in 1879. Following his BA from Oxford he took a law degree at the University of Melbourne before settling in Sydney after being appointed the first lecturer in modern history at the University of Sydney. He returned to England in 1884 but maintained an interest in Australian poetry, especially that of Adam Lindsay Gordon.
Author reference sites: Austlit, Australian Dictionary of Biography
See also.
