_O the stirring of the spring, The calling of the dove! Why does he lie so cold, so cold, when I am here to love?_
Her long strange eyes were narrowed to threads of shining green, She touched the broken spear-point the wound’s red lips between, She touched it with her careless foot, and yet he did not stir, Dull fool that lay with open eyes and would not look at her!
She turned away in anger and raised her arms on high, Her straight white arms that questioned the pure pale sky, The thousand slender tree-stems soon hid the way she went As they who hold a secret and therewith are content. The dead man smiled in silence; a strange thought in me said, _If I had heard her speak at all then I too should be dead: Her voice--what would her voice be?_--and then I fled, afraid, The spell was loosed that bound me to the evil glade.
_O the flowers in the grass, The wood-dove in the tree; From magic and from sudden death, Good Lord deliver me!_
This is not easy to understand For you that come from a distant land Where all the colours are low in pitch-- Deep purples, emeralds deep and rich, Where autumn’s flaming and summer’s green-- Here is a beauty you have not seen.
All is pitched in a higher key, Lilac, topaz, and ivory, Palest jade-green and pale clear blue Like aquamarines that the sun shines through, Golds and silvers, we have at will-- Silver and gold on each plain and hill, Silver-green of the myall leaves, Tawny gold of the garnered sheaves, Silver rivers that silent slide, Golden sands by the water-side, Golden wattle, and golden broom, Silver stars of the rosewood bloom; Amber sunshine, and smoke-blue shade: Opal colours that glow and fade; On the gold of the upland grass Blue cloud-shadows that swiftly pass; Wood-smoke blown in an azure mist; Hills of tenuous amethyst....
Oft the colours are pitched so high The deepest note is the cobalt sky; We have to wait till the sunset comes For shades that feel like the beat of drums Or like organ notes in their rise and fall-- Purple and orange and cardinal, Or the peacock-green that turns soft and slow To peacock-blue as the great stars show....
Sugar-gum boles flushed to peach-blow pink; Blue-gums, tall at the clearing’s brink; Ivory pillars, their smooth fine slope Dappled with delicate heliotrope; Grey of the twisted mulga-roots; Golden-bronze of the budding shoots; Tints of the lichens that cling and spread, Nile-green, primrose, and palest red....