Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Walter Murdoch (1874–1970). The Oxford Book of Australasian Verse. 1918.

173. Epilogue

WELL, when all is said and done

Best within my narrow way,

May some angel of the sun

Muse memorial o’er my clay:

“Here was beauty all betrayed

From the freedom of her state;

From her human uses stayed

On an idle rhyme to wait.

“Ah, what deep despair might move

If the beauty lit a smile,

Or the heart was warm with love

That was pondering the while.

“He has built his monument

With the winds of time at strife,

Who could have before he went

Written on the book of life.

“To the stars from which he came

Empty handed, he goes home;

He who might have wrought in flame

Only traced upon the foam.”