Grey Winter hath gone like a wearisome guest,
And, behold, for repayment
September comes in with the wind of the West,
And the Spring in her raiment.
The ways of the frost have been filled of the flowers,
While the forest discovers
Wild wings with the halo of hyaline hours
And a music of lovers.
September! the maid with the swift silver feet!
She glides and she graces
The valleys of coolness, the slopes of the heat,
With her blossomy traces.
Sweet month with a mouth that is made of a rose --
She lightens and lingers
In spots where the harp of the evening glows,
Attuned by her fingers.
The stream from its home in the hollow hill slips
In a darling old fashion;
And the day goeth down with a song on its lips,
Whose keynote is passion.
Far out in the fierce bitter front of the sea,
I stand and remember
Dead things that were brothers and sisters of thee,
Resplendent September!
The West when it blows at the fall of the noon,
And beats on the beaches,
Is filled with a tender and tremulous tune
That touches and teaches:
The stories of youth; of the burden of Time;
And the death of devotion,
Come back with the wind; and are themes of the rhyme
In the waves of the ocean.
We, having a secret to others unknown,
In the cool mountain-mosses
May whisper together, September, alone
Of our loves and our losses.
One word for her beauty and one for the grace
She gave to the hours,
And then we may kiss her and suffer her face
To sleep with the flowers.
High places that knew of the gold and the white
On the forehead of Morning,
Now darken and quake, and the steps of the Night
Are heavy with warning!
Her voice in the distance is lofty and loud,
Through the echoing gorges,
She hath hidden her eyes in a mantle of cloud
And her feet in the surges.
On the tops of the hills -- on the turreted cones --
Chief temples of thunder!--
The gale like a ghost in the middle watch moans,
Gliding over and under.
The sea flying white through the rack and the rain,
Leapeth wild at the forelands;
And the plover whose cry is like passion with pain
Complains in the moorlands.
O season of changes -- of shadow and shine --
September the splendid!
My song hath no music to mingle with thine,
And its burden is ended:
But thou, being born of the winds and the sun,
By mountain, by river;
May lighten and listen, and loiter and run,
With thy voices, for ever.
First published in
The Sydney Morning Herald, 19 September 1867;
and later in
The Leader, 27 September 1867;
The Australasian, 28 September 1867;
Leaves from Australian Forests by Henry Kendall, 1896;
Poems of Henry Kendall by Henry Kendall, 1886;
A Century of Australian Song edited by Douglas Sladen, 1888;
An Anthology of Australian Verse edited by Bertram Stevens, 1907;
The Golden Treasury of Australian Verse edited by Bertram Stevens, 1909;
The Oxford Book of Australian Verse edited by Walter Murdoch, 1918;
Selection from Australian Poets edited by Bertram Stevens, 1925;
Australian Bush Songs and Ballads edited by Will Lawson, 1944;
Rose Lorraine and Other Poems by Henry Kendall, 1945;
Selected Poems of Henry Kendall by Henry Kendall, 1957;
From the Ballads to Brennan edited by T. Inglis Moore, 1964;
The Poetical Works of Henry Kendall by Henry Kendall, 1966;
Silence Into Song: An Anthology of Australian Verse compiled by Clifford O'Brien, 1968;
A Treasury of Colonial Poetry, 1982;
Cross-Country: A Book of Australian Verse edited by John Barnes and Brian McFarlane, 1984; and
Henry Kendall: Poetry, Prose and Selected Correspondence edited by Michael Ackland, 1993.
Author reference sites: Austlit,
Australian Dictionary of Biography,
Australian Poetry LibrarySee
also.
