Recently in Emotional Expression Category

Song by Zora Cross

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I have known paradise --
   Success kissed me
Under the blue skies,
   Heart-happily.

I have seen fairyland--
   A child called me
Into its play-band,
   Mouth-merrily.

I have felt grief nigh,
   Deep as the sea --
Love smiled, but passed by
   Unknowingly.

First published in The Australian Woman's Mirror, 6 September 1927

Sad Hour by Myra Morris

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My mind is like an empty sea, 
   As pale as ash, bereft of foam,
When every gull has winged away,
   And every ship has laboured home. 

O surging tides of hope, sweep in! 
   Rise up, rise up, O singing wind,
And blow some shining shape across
   The wan grey reaches of my mind.

First published in The Australasian, 7 July 1934

Author reference sites: AustlitAustralian Dictionary of Biography

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Secret Things by Myra Morris

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Sometimes before the moon has climbed the hill,
   I take a candle in my hand and go
Into a fragrant garden lying still  
   With sleep, and part the leaves and steal with slow
Soft steps, for fear the shy green things should hear
      Me come and my strange presence know,
      And cease their tender blossoming.
Where wave the drowsy, shapeless boughs I creep,
   (Pushing with seeking arms the pulsing air),
And flash my candle where pale lilies sleep.
   But how their naked whiteness shames me there!
I blow the yellow flame in sudden fear,
      A thrill that I all unaware
      Have stumbled on some secret thing.

Sometimes I slip from out the giddy roar
   Of city streets into the mystic gloom 
Of some cathedral, whose mosaic floor
   All flecked with rosy light like the soft bloom
Of sunset, flings the sound of tapping feet
      To vaulted roof; and loud the boom
      Of organ-music gathering
In volume like a swelling wave sings loud,
   And sweeps about me drowning me with cries,
Till past the fluted pillars' rows, a bowed,
   Uncovered head starts up where heavy lies
The dark. I feel unuttered prayers that beat
      The Throne--and veil these straying eyes
      That linger on some secret thing.

Sometimes when night leans waiting in the west,
   And wanton day, disporting ere she goes,
Flings flaming necklets o'er her neck and breast,
   And plucks the petals of the last-born rose,
I halt outside some open cottage door,
      Where twining honeysuckle blows, 
      And hear a lowly mother sing
Unto her sleeping child. I hear a chaunt
   Of deathless love, all wild with brooding fears;
She looks into the years that cannot daunt
   Her faith, though she see naught save salty tears
And pain and strivings vain for him she bore.
      She sings and smiles! I close my ears, 
      That hearken to some secret thing.

First published in The Australasian, 22 June 1918

Author reference sites: AustlitAustralian Dictionary of Biography

See also.

Fear by Mabel Forrest

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Like some bruised hand the purple sky strikes down,          
Pressing to the wet earth, and from the moor    
And crawling, sluggish runnels comes a mist 
Like the thick breath of fever-smitten things  
That lie half-unconscious, yet afraid to move, 
Lest movement bring activities of pain.

No star - a diamond on a giant hand,
To show it once was decked with consequence--    
Only the purple clouds like swollen veins 
That cannot ease to the relief of rain,
And threaten merely stirless tree and hedge,   
And the blank windows of an unlit house
That sentinels a garden, where the fence 
Has rotted over memories of a rose     
And mouldered bones of scentless eglantine; 
Where dead leaves cling as if they feared to break        
The brooding silence with their rustling fall; 
A rick of hay that now is blackened straw, 
Wherein no shivering mouse would care to creep;  
A broken halter hanging on a rail, 
Spotted with yellow fungus like a plague,
As though some steed of death had tethered there:        
A door ajar, yet rigid, as if wedged  
By something flung upon the other side.

And suddenly, where Nature holds her  breath,  
And the dark boughs seem craning as a witch    
Whose skinny fingers point the victim out
(Like the small shriek the doubling rabbit gives                      
When on its trail it hears the slavering hounds,     
Betraying in its terror, where it hides 
Invisible amidst the folding grass),     
So to the monster watching of the night   
Comes the thin horror of a human cry!

First published in The Australasian, 26 May 1917

Author reference sites: AustlitAustralian Dictionary of Biography

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Disillusioned by Will M. Fleming

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The moonlight slept, the slow warm night
Was filled with wonder and delight,
The soft winds, murmured as they went   
Laden with gathered hours well spent.   
Far, far beneath the drowsy sea
Crooned love-songs sweet to you and me.

We talked of riches and of ease,
We dreamed such dreams as charm and please,
We saw the future free from care,
With Honour standing proudly there,  
While lurked the serpent in the grass
Waiting the while our dream should pass.

Again I stand as then we stood,
In front the sea, behind the wood.
The slinking moon has crept away
As though it were ashamed to stay,
And now there only comes to me
The hungry roaring of the sea.

First published in The Sydney Morning Herald, 23 January 1926

Author reference sites: Austlit, Australian Dictionary of Biography

See also.

Twilight on Caloundra Beach by Emily Bulcock

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Shut out the sea and the sky,
The lonely sea and the sky,   
Where homeless and lost am I.
Kindle the warm, red fire
In the home of my heart's desire,
With the sheltering roof above.
Encircled by human love,
Let the lamplight softly shine
On intimate things of mine --
Comforting, homely things,
Clipping the soul's wild wings!
. . . Yet shut it out as I will,
It is there -- all that vastness still.
And I know, ah, well do I know,
Through the warmth of the fireside glow,
Tho' love chase the shadow away,
I must face it alone, one day.
All my doors will burst open at last,
And my home fires be quenched in the blast,
For there's something eternal in me,
Something tameless, and spacious, and free,
That is one with the sky and the sea,
That something, long chained by the flesh,
Even Death shall not hold in its mesh.
When the day of small things is past
And the great deeps triumph at last.  

First published in The Brisbane Courier, 18 January 1930

Author reference sites: Austlit, Australian Dictionary of Biography

See also.

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