1851
A Mid-summer Noon in the Australian Forest
Not a bird disturbs the air!
There is quiet everywhere;
Over plains and over woods
What a mighty stillness broods!
All the birds and insects keep
Where the coolest shadows sleep;
Even the busy ants are found
Resting in their pebbled mound;
Even the locust clingeth now
In silence to the barky bough:
And over hills and over plains
Quiet, vast and slumbrous, reigns.
Only there’s a drowsy humming
From yon warm lagoon slow coming:
’Tis the dragon-hornet – see!
All bedaubed resplendently,
With yellow on a tawny ground –
Each rich spot nor square nor round,
Rudely heart-shaped, as it were
The blurred and hasty impress there,
Of a vermeil-crusted seal
Dusted o’er with golden meal.
Only there’s a droning where
Yon bright beetle shines in air,
Tracks it in its gleaming flight
With a slanting beam of light,
Rising in the sunshine higher,
Till its shards flame out like fire.
Every other thing is still,
Save the ever-wakeful rill,
Whose cool murmur only throws
A cooler comfort round repose;
Or some ripple in the sea
Of leafy boughs, where, lazily,
Tired summer, in her bower
Turning with the noontide hour,
Heaves a slumbrous breath, ere she
Once more slumbers peacefully.
Oh ’tis easeful here to lie
Hidden from noon’s scorching eye,
In this grassy cool recess
Musing thus of quietness.
The Oxford Book of Australian Verse, Walter Murdoch (ed.),
Oxford University Press, London, 1918