[Editor: This poem by Louisa Lawson was published in “The Lonely Crossing” and Other Poems (1905).]
Buried Love.
The sigh of the wind in the soft belahs,
Is in tune with my thoughts to-night;
That dwell as I stray ’neath the steel bright stars
On a love that was pure and white.
And I start and thrill as I backward move,
For a face to me close I see;
Oh, surely the pow’r of a deathless love
Must be bringing you back to me!
For the thrill of that dear old love is sweet,
And it sinks to my heart’s sad core;
As fresh as it did ere a soul’s defeat
O’erwhelmed it in days of yore.
You said I was cold when we said “good-bye,”
And you thought that your words were true.
I tell you now, with my face to the sky,
That I loved far better than you.
But the love we buried deep out of sight
On the day that we said “good-bye,”
Must go back again whence it came, to-night,
And its ghost in the grave must lie.
For the march of time, and the hand of fate,
And the growth of the great and free,
Have built up a wall and have barred a gate
Now and ever ’twixt you and me.
For you love to look on the lotus feast,
And drift in a westering way;
But I’ve set my face to the pregnant east
Where I watch for a broad new day.
Source:
Louisa Lawson, “The Lonely Crossing” and Other Poems, Sydney: Dawn Office, [1905], pp. 65-66
Editor’s notes:
belah = (also spelt “belar”) a casuarina tree (Casuarina glauca) native to the east coast of Australia, also known as a bull oak
ere = (archaic) before (from the Middle English “er”, itself from the Old English “aer”, meaning early or soon)
’neath = (vernacular) beneath
o’erwhelmed = (archaic) overwhelmed
pow’r = (vernacular) power
’twixt = (vernacular) a contraction of “betwixt” (i.e. between) (may be spelt with or without an apostrophe: ’twixt, twixt)
yore = in the past, long ago (as used in the phrase “days of yore”)
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