ACACIA CREEK

 ACACIA CREEK 

by- PATRICK SHANAHAN 

Has published a paper volume, The Exile; A Poem, (Melbourne: HT Dwight)

ACACIA CREEK.

"Remembrance sheds around her genial power, 
Calls back the vanished days to rapture given, 

When love was bliss, and beauty formed our heaven."

                                                                           -Byron   

HAUNTS of youth, the loved, the cherished, let me look on 

ye once more! 

Look on ye and feel your freshness, as I felt in days of 

yore- 

In days of youth and gladness, when my raptured spirit 

first 

Learnt the lore of wild and woodland, here amidst your 

beauties nurst; 

For my soul is sad with longing-sad with dreaming of 

those days, 

Bright with fleeting gleams of beauty, sweet with tones 

of forest lays- 

Days of unforgotten pleasure, nights replete with magic lore, 

Learnt of moonlight, and of starlight, and the freshness 

nature wore- 

Days of beauty, nights of grandeur when my spirit 

fain would pierce 

Mystic regions following fancy wildly o'er the universe-

Joys, gathered as flowers are gathered by the pilgrims 

of the woods,

Here amidst your gay recesses, here amongst your 

solitudes- 

Have sped away, and left me mourning for a past that 

threw 

The freshness of September over me and over you. 

Yonder, where the uplands, rising through the cold grey 

mists of morn, 

Look along the barren moorlands, brown and damp, and 

winter-worn, 

There, where flying sleet winds muster; there, where 

vapours, blue and strange, 

Sleep for ever in the hollows of the pine-wood by 

the grange, 

You can hear this creek's tone murmur, see it winding sad 

and slow 

Through the vestas of the woodland that leans o'er the 

dell below; 

Till it stop awhile and slumbers, like a sleepy, wayworn 

child, 

In the sedgy hollow yonder, where a rocky cairn 

is piled. 

Ah!oft there when night-time gathered all its gloom from 

forest heights,

I have sat me down to ponder, staring at the village 

lights 

Gleaming in the hazy distance-while my fancy painted 

fair 

Vision of a future greatness-lofty castles in the air! 

And I rose as one who slumbers later through the morning 

hoursm

 Grappling for the moments wasted idly plucking fancy 

flowers,

Then, when winter's tempest gathers o'er the mountain 

peaks beyond, 

And the bull frog's croak-storm boding-echoes from 

the meadow pond,

 I have watched the storm-clouds muster. and a speechless. 

rare delight, 

Thrilled my bosom as they thundered through the 

straitened ways of night!  

Often, too, in summer evenings, when the sun was 

sinking low, 

I have loitered by yon bridge-side watching shadows come 

and go

 On the wavy grass before me, when the light breeze sadlý 

played, 

Sighing like a passing spirit as it swept along the glade 

There's beauty in the seasons, in the changing works of 

God, 

Beauty in each scene of Nature howe'er terrible or 

wild, 

First formed of all Creation she is Nature's eldest 

child! 

Beauty!child of light and shadow! spirit nor of earth 

nor air, 

Prized, and yet how desecrated-spurned, yet sought for 

everywhere,

I have loved thee fondly ever, worshipped every scene 

of thine, 

Till the soul of thy existence grew to be a part of mine 

In the wilds and wastes of Nature, in the sky with 

tempest trackt,

In the roar of wind and water, in the booming cataract; 

In the dead wan leaf that lieth, faltering by the brawling 

brook 

(Torn by the hand of Autumn from Nature's universal 

book), 

In the dark and wrath of thunders, in the roaring of the 

storm 

We behold and feel the grandeur of thy far pervading 

form;  

Even though betimes we see, thee clouded with the look 

of grief- 

Yet read we not a moral lesson in the falling of the 

leaf !

In the hidden works of Nature where Night walked with 

step serene) 

O'er the lonely widths of forest where man's foot hath 

seldom been; 

In the haunts of wind and water- here and there amongst 

the woods, 

Thus, and thus I've looked upon thee, in the fulness of 

my soul, 

Thus and thus I've looked upon thee when a host of stars 

shone bright, 

And the earth beneath me slumbered in the dark embrace 

of Night! 

And, as the weary Arab faltering in the burning desert, 

turns 

His fainting soul to Mecca, thinks of home and yearning 

mourns, 

So I, who totter sadly, grieving thus unsatisfied, 

Turn me to the Creek out yonder, with a soul recurring 

pride, 

Thinking of those days-far vanished-dreaming of the 

perished past, 

Whose remembrance, like an echo, haunts me closely to

the last 

When I shared a youth of pleasure, born of bliss that 

evermore 

Flings a halo of remembrance round the bright blest days 

of yore! 

Thoughtsm like flashes from a torchlight, straying here and 

there through the gloom, 

Come to me and seems to whisper-like a voice from out 

the tomb- 

Memories of a sacred boyhood, when my soul was full 

of fire, 

And the form of Nature's beauty taught my senses to 

admire  

When my faith was stronger, and my hope in love was 

great, 

Ere my soul to sorrow yielding sunk at last beneath its 

weight.

- - - - - - -

Ah! but now when darkness gathers, and I sit beside the 

hearth 

Lacking all the soul of boyhood, wanting all its bliss and 

mirth, 

Saddening memories crowd upon me like some spirit's 

sigh of pain, 

Breathed in the windy moments 'mid the pauses of the 

rain!

And I fain would soar in spirit to some far-off scene of 

joy, 

That touched me with its beauty, or thrilled my senses 

when a boy;

And for ever feel the freshness which I shared again this 

week 

As I roamed alone at even out along Acacia Creek.   

References:

1. AUSTRALIAN POETS  1788-1888 

BEING A SELECTION OF POEMS UPON ALL SUBJECTS WRITTEN IN AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND DURING THE FIRST CENTURY OF THE BRITISH COLONIZATION WITH BRIEF NOTES ON THEIR AUTHORS AND AN INTRODUCTION BY PATCHETT MARTIN 1 

Breck Wheelton DOUGLAS BW SLADEN BA OXON BA LL B MELBOURNE AUSTRALIA AUTHOR OF AUSTRALIAN LYRICS A POETRY OF EXILES ETC ETC 

い しく NEW YORK CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY 104 & 106 FOURTH AVENUE 1890