Poems (Storrie)/Through the Smoke of Bushfires
Through the Smoke of Bushfires.
I saw the long grey wreaths of smoke arise And lie along the margin of the skies, And float athwart the blue of heaven and fall Across my vision like a mourner's pall.
I saw the seas and lands half hid in haze, The city steeples and the forest ways, And the broad bosom of the summer sea Veiled like an Eastern maid in mystery.
No little glen but had its dim recess Where shadows lurked in soft impassiveness, No rocky headland but was pressed and kissed Into oblivion by the swathing mist.
Till, all the world was as a dreamland shown, And then I knew and marked it for my own, The land my spirit loves, the land of dreams, For which the heart for ever homesick seems.
The land with no horizons, where are laid No ordered sequences of shine and shade, No stiff processions of inveterate hours Where dawns merge into days and buds to flowers.
Oh! land of dreams where all the maybes bloomAnd breathe their faint, impalpable perfume,Where gallant thoughts walk gaily, unafraid,Where on unbroken heartstrings there are played
Those long-lost chords, those sweet, unuttered notesThat always have evaded human throats.A land where even those who have no wings may flyWhere love knows all, yet never knows to die,
Where there comes forth an answer, when the soulInterrogates its origin and goal.As an exiled reindeer to the sea, or a white gull to the foam,My spirit turns oh! land of dreams, to thee, her only home.