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Narrara Creek

by Henry Kendall

From the rainy hill-heads, where, in starts and in spasms,

Leaps wild the white torrent from chasms to chasms

From the home of bold echoes, whose voices of wonder

Fly out of blind caverns struck black by high thunder

Through gorges august, in whose nether recesses

Is heard the far psalm of unseen wildernesses

Like a dominant spirit, a strong-handed sharer

Of spoil with the tempest, comes down the Narrara.

Yea, where the great sword of the hurricane cleaveth

The forested fells that the dark never leaveth

By fierce-featured crags, in whose evil abysses

The clammy snake coils, and the flat adder hisses

Past lordly rock temples, where Silence is riven

By the anthems supreme of the four winds of heaven

It speeds, with the cry of the streams of the fountains

It chained to its sides, and dragged down from the mountains!

But when it goes forth from the slopes with a sally

Being strengthened with tribute from many a valley

It broadens and brightens, and thereupon marches

Above the stream sapphires and under green arches,

With the rhythm of majesty careless of cumber

Its might in repose and its fierceness in slumber

Till it beams on the plains, where the wind is a bearer

Of words from the sea to the stately Narrara!

Narrara! grand son of the haughty hill torrent,

Too late in my day have I looked at thy current

Too late in my life to discern and inherit

The soul of thy beauty, the joy of thy spirit!

With the years of the youth and the hairs of the hoary,

I sit like a shadow outside of thy glory;

Nor look with the morning-like feelings, O river,

That illumined the boy in the days gone for ever!

Ah! sad are the sounds of old ballads which borrow

One-half of their grief from the listener's sorrow;

And sad are the eyes of the pilgrim who traces

The ruins of Time in revisited places;

But sadder than all is the sense of his losses

That cometh to one when a sudden age crosses

And cripples his manhood. So, stricken by fate, I

Felt older at thirty than some do at eighty.

Because I believe in the beautiful story,

The poem of Greece in the days of her glory

That the high-seated Lord of the woods and the waters

Has peopled His world with His deified daughters

That flowerful forests and waterways streaming

Are gracious with goddesses glowing and gleaming

I pray that thy singing divinity, fairer

Than wonderful women, may listen, Narrara!

O spirit of sea-going currents! thou, being

The child of immortals, all-knowing, all-seeing

Thou hast at thy heart the dark truth that I borrow

For the song that I sing thee, no fanciful sorrow;

In the sight of thine eyes is the history written

Of Love smitten down as the strong leaf is smitten;

And before thee there goeth a phantom beseeching

For faculties forfeited hopes beyond reaching.

. . . . .

Thou knowest, O sister of deities blazing

With splendour ineffable, beauty amazing,

What life the gods gave me what largess I tasted

The youth thrown away, and the faculties wasted.

I might, as thou seest, have stood in high places,

Instead of in pits where the brand of disgrace is,

A byword for scoffers a butt and a caution,

With the grave of poor Burns and Maginn for my portion.

But the heart of the Father Supreme is offended,

And my life in the light of His favour is ended;

And, whipped by inflexible devils, I shiver,

With a hollow 'Too late' in my hearing for ever;

But thou being sinless, exalted, supernal,

The daughter of diademed gods, the eternal

Shalt shine in thy waters when time and existence

Have dwindled, like stars, in unspeakable distance.

But the face of thy river the torrented power

That smites at the rock while it fosters the flower

Shall gleam in my dreams with the summer-look splendid,

And the beauty of woodlands and waterfalls blended;

And often I'll think of far-forested noises,

And the emphasis deep of grand sea-going voices,

And turn to Narrara the eyes of a lover,

When the sorrowful days of my singing are over.