Page:Not understood - and other poems (IA notunderstoodoth00braciala).pdf/68

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66
Not Understood

REQUIEM.
Adam Lindsay Gordon

COME, ye winds, and chant sad dirges,
  Where the restless billows roam,
And the sand-banks kiss the verges
  Of the ever-shifting foam.

Sweep along the Ocean slowly,
  For a Bard is resting near,
And his harp is lying lowly
  In the shadow of his bier.

Sobbing through the ti-tree bushes,
  Low and tender, loud and wild.
Melancholy music gushes—
  Pensive Nature mourns her child.

He her secrets could unravel,
  He had read her mystic page;
Oft with her his soul would travel,
  Bursting from its earthly cage.

He rode on the tempest’s pinions,
  When the sheets of molten gold
Flashed across her broad dominions,
  And the drums of heaven rolled.

He smiled with her in her gladness,
  He wept with her in her gloom—
Until Sorrow, linked with Madness,
  Tore the curtain off the tomb.