Who does not love on Winter eves to walk
By leafy path and cool secluded way,
Where not one loiterer remains to talk
Nor lyre-bird stays to play
With noisy murmur, when the leaf and stalk,
Each in communion grey,
Tap no regretful legend to the past,
Sing no distressful lay, nor shadow cast,
Nor sighing make for Autumn flown so fast?
I do. I love the silence of the hills,
And the deep peace made browner by repose,
And the seed rustling underfoot that thrills
My blood until it glows
With mellow memories that haunt the rills
Running where Childhood blows
Her bubbles of reflection, still as cool
As when we blew then with her after school,
With reeds for pipes, beside the swimming-pool.
Who does not love on Winter eves to walk
Down gullies steep and valleys full of rest,
Where neither man nor Nature seems to balk
The ease within the breast
While the oak flowers like powdered golden chalk
Scatter for earth's old nest?
Who does not love these pleasures to command
When the trees sleep like brothers hand-in-hand,
He has not known my love nor my dear land.
First published in The Sydney Mail, 26 July 1922
