[Editor: This poem by Charles Harpur was published in The Bushrangers; A Play in Five Acts, and Other Poems (1853). The poem was not given a title on its page in the book; however, it was listed on the Contents page as “The leaf-glancing Boughs”.]
[The Leaf-Glancing Boughs]
The leaf-glancing boughs of the o’erdoming trees
Now seem in wild dance to the pipe of the breeze
As clashing and clasping in merry despite
They mass into shadow or quiver in light,
When cut by their motion the slanting moonbeam
Falls sifted like coin on the floor of the stream
That murmurs thereby like a voice in a dream,
Save when the breeze straining in lengthen’d escape
Holds open their sprays for a steadier escape,
Then too bright fragment of Night’s ripest blue
Relieving the leaf-work come transiently through,
And broad stars seem glowing as seen amid these
Like apples of fire in the tops of the trees!
Source:
Charles Harpur, The Bushrangers; A Play in Five Acts, and Other Poems, Sydney: W. R. Piddington, 1853, page 110
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