Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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

30. The Earth Breath

FROM the cool and dark-lipped furrows

Breathes a dim delight

Through the woodland’s purple plumage

To the diamond night.

Aureoles of joy encircle

Every blade of grass

Where the dew-fed creatures silent

And enraptured pass.

And the restless ploughman pauses,

Turns and, wondering,

Deep beneath his rustic habit

Finds himself a king;

For a fiery moment looking

With the eyes of God

Over fields a slave at morning

Bowed him to the sod.

Blind and dense with revelation

Every moment flies,

And unto the Mighty Mother,

Gay, eternal, rise

All the hopes we hold, the gladness,

Dreams of things to be.

One of all thy generations,

Mother, hails to thee.

Hail, and hail, and hail for ever,

Though I turn again

From thy joy unto the human

Vestiture of pain.

I, thy child who went forth radiant

In the golden prime,

Find thee still the mother-hearted

Through my night in time;

Find in thee the old enchantment

There behind the veil

Where the gods, my brothers, linger.

Hail, forever, hail!