[Editor: This poem by Philip Durham Lorimer was published in Songs and Verses by Philip Durham Lorimer: An Australian Bush Poet, 1901.]
Life
’Tis a coming and a going through of still-increasing sorrow ;
’Tis a losing and a gaining of a melancholy power ;
’Tis a breathing ever longing for the leaden-footed morrow,
Though the morrow never breaks upon the disappointing hour.
’Tis a shadow and a shading o’er of joy that Fate will banish,
Like the glimmer of the twilight still it ever us deceives ;
With the beauty of the blossom it is sure to straightway vanish,
Like the fading hues of summer from the Autumn-tinted leaves.
Life is vainly followed in a rainbow-coloured empty bubble,
While the soul, dependent, hangeth on the drawing of a breath ;
’Tis a changing oft to sadness; sin’s satiety and trouble,
And to some among us mortals good is only found in Death!
Cootamundra, October 2, 1895.
Source:
E. A. Petherick (editor). Songs and Verses by Philip Durham Lorimer: An Australian Bush Poet, William Clowes and Sons, London, 1901, pages 150-151
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