Where did your little ghosts slip out
From underneath the lid?
A dainty wraith in heliotrope
And cream and white, to mount the cope
No more in petals hid.
Did you, along the upper air,
Hang poised, to help the rainbow there?
Or were you lost in some pink cloud,
Some sunset-ravelled edge of night,
This cardboard box had made your shroud,
Your dry stalks lap you all about.
The hands that picked you could not know
That I should come to find you so!
Travelling towards the Queensland side,
What racing, through the rattling hours!
Amongst the mail-bags on the train,
Sliding down grades, to rise again,
A weary journey for the flowers!
Until at last, cooped close inside,
Their courage left them and they died!
But o' from the wadded rolls
The careful swaddling clothes they wear,
I know a float of scented souls
Fared forth to find the starlit air,
By some black tor that cut the sky
And watched the shrieking train go by!
Where did your little ghosts slip out?
Withered, you lie along my hand;
Was it somewhere in New South Wales,
Or by New England's daisied dales,
Or in your own Victorian land?
Homing, the breathless hours thro'
To some green garden that you knew?
First published in The Australasian, 5 August 1922
