[Editor: This poem by John Shaw Neilson was published in Collected Poems of John Shaw Neilson (1934).]
Show Me the Song
It is of Love and lovers — all the old dream in me —
Weary am I of Hate and Pride and its finery:
Summer is soon behind and the Autumn stays not long:
Is it of Love that you sing, sing, sing? Show me the song!
Love is not soiled for all they would sully his pretty name:
Blood that is good and red is on every soil the same:
Love will be loud as the sunlight, quiet as the moon,
Sweet as the sigh of a little child that shall waken soon.
Is there a singer would waste his breath in singing Pride
When little Love can follow wherever a man may bide?
I would be listening, listening, out on the green,
But my heart could never come up to tell that my eyes have seen.
Weary am I of Hate that withers the heart of a man:
I can only dream in a heavy way as a peasant can:
Summer is gone so soon and the Autumn stays not long:
Is it of Love that you sing, sing, sing? Show me the song!
Source:
John Shaw Neilson (editor: R. H. Croll), Collected Poems of John Shaw Neilson, Melbourne: Lothian Publishing Company, 1934 [May 1949 reprint], pages 104-105
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