[Editor: This poem by John Shaw Neilson was published in Heart of Spring (1919), Ballad and Lyrical Poems (1923), and Collected Poems of John Shaw Neilson (1934).]
The Dream is Deep
Sing me the song that never dies,
Of little Love blinded and bold,
Blossoms unblemished and blue skies
And the green going into gold.
All the uproarious pipes we played!
Frenzy and Folly, Fire and Joy:
Carols we caught up for a maid
And ballads boisterous for a boy.
I hear the blended bells and bands,
The fiddlers fiddling on the green,
The clapping of a thousand hands,
The trembling of the tambourine.
O, happy hours! run kindly slow:
Black lies the Night, nauseous and grim:
Who knoweth what a man may know
“Not all he hath shall die with him.”
The man God made he dreameth deep
Down in his heart. High in the air
His heaven lies. How shall he sleep?
He had a dream — the dream was fair.
Source:
Shaw Neilson, Heart of Spring, Sydney: The Bookfellow, 1919, page 93
Also published in:
John Shaw Neilson, Ballad and Lyrical Poems, Sydney: The Bookfellow in Australia, 1923, page 111
John Shaw Neilson (edited by R. H. Croll), Collected Poems of John Shaw Neilson, Melbourne: Lothian Book Publishing Company, 1934, page 82
Editor’s notes:
dreameth = (archaic) dreams
hath = (archaic) has
knoweth = (archaic) knows
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