Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

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

38. A New World

I WHO had sought afar from earth

The faery land to meet,

Now find content within its girth

And wonder nigh my feet.

To-day a nearer love I choose

And seek no distant sphere;

For aureoled by faery dews

The dear brown breasts appear.

With rainbow radiance come and go

The airy breaths of day;

And eve is all a pearly glow

With moonlit winds a-play.

The lips of twilight burn my brow,

The arms of night caress:

Glimmer her white eyes drooping now

With grave old tenderness.

I close mine eyes from dream to be

The diamond-rayed again,

As in the ancient hours ere we

Forgot ourselves to men.

And all I thought of heaven before

I find in earth below:

A sunlight in the hidden core

To dim the noonday glow.

And with the earth my heart is glad,

I move as one of old;

With mists of silver I am clad

And bright with burning gold.