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Trim Oak! why cast thy garments sere,
That fall as gently as a tear
   Upon earth's saddened face?
Has one short season made them old
By turning green to green and gold,
   And robbed them of their grace?

Dame Nature, wisely, has decreed
One dress a year shall be the meed
   For the English Forest Queen,
In which to play propriety,
And has decreed the shade shall be
   A changing sort of green.

Art thou so lost to love of dress
That, with a girlish fretfulness ---
   But lacking girlish fear ---
Thou°lt shed thy tarnished mantle, and,
Without a blush or tremor, stand
   Stark naked half the year?

Why thus outstretch thy undraped arms,
And bare to wanton winds thy charms
   That eyes should never see?
Erstwhile commended for thy dress,
I call thee in thy nakedness,
   Immmodest symmetry.

Rough Eucalypt! I turn to thee,
The typical Australian tree,
   Who, though thou dost not wear
The queenly Oak's superior grace ---
And hast, perchance, a freckled face --
   Art clothed throughout the year.

Unlike the fashionable Oak,
Thou dost not take thy verdant cloak
   And fling it to the breeze,
When Autumn, with her chilly hand,
Has soiled it, and consent to stand
   For half a year to freeze.

Thy grey-green form is lithe and long,
Thy heart is iron, thy limbs are strong,
   And never made to be
The puppets of life's storm and stress;
And well befits thy common dress,
   A serviceable tree.

Because thou dost not live for show
Where north winds scorch, and south gales blow,
   And dost not doff thy dress,
I have for thee a friendship ripe,
Though, truth to tell, thou art a type
   Of modest ugliness.

First published in Melbourne Punch, 9 March 1905

Author reference site: Austlit.

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With low-hung clouds, the sun is draped,
   The bush, with wreckage thick is strewn,
The hour-glass falls, the course is shaped,
   The morn hastes on to afternoon;
The gumleaf falls, the she-oak sighs,
   Love to a shadow'd cavelet flies!

The foliage eaves are whisper-stirr'd,
   The lavish blooms mosaic the grass,
Upon the wind a cry is heard,
   Borne from the burgeon'd mountain pass;
The gumleaf falls, the she-oak sighs,
   Love-pours the sorrow from her eyes!

The world is stern, its features rude,
   Its lips are thin, its bosom cold,
Love's mouth is full and rosy-hued,
   Her breasts are firm with bliss untold!
The gumleaf falls, the she-oak sighs,
   The day is sped, love droops and dies!

The trees are hush'd, the night is dark,
   Impressive silence girds around,
And through the boughs one star to mark
   The vestal sphere my love has found!
The gumleaf falls, the she-oak sighs,
   Love sends a message from the skies!

First published in The Australian Town and Country Journal, 2 March 1901

Author: William Montague Whitney was born in 1866.  Other than this nothing is known about this author.

Author reference site: Austlit

A Grecian line of beauty dwells
   Within the slender olive tree;
Its grace a dryad's form excels,
   So lithe and silvery and free.
The rhythmic murmur of the wind,
   Stirs music from the argent leaves;
Whilst the wild birds, undisciplined,
   Have built their nests beneath the eaves.
Neath such a tree Ulysses slept,
   Artemis sped at break of day;
The timid Daphne hid and wept,
   Within its sheltering branches gray.
Alone by day, when moonlight shines,
   To light the dark of night's domain;
Comes, with his forehead crowned with vines,
   The old god Pan, to pipes' refrain.
Then on the carpet of green moss,
   They dance in joy from night till morn;
And nymphs and satyrs lightly toss
   Ripe olives from the branches torn!  

First published in The Sydney Morning Herald, 23 November 1935;
and later in
Australian Violets by Ivy Moore, 1937.

Author reference sites: Austlit

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Your trunk was flecked with mosses green and grey,  
   Splendid against the turquoise blue of skies,  
While 'mid the branches errant winds would play,
   And feathered throats lilt sweetest rhapsodies.
The settlers planned your death but yesterday,
   Soon by meek oxen to be borne away.

Serene you stand, and powerless to appeal
   As the sharp axes, flashing in the sun,
Cleave with a singing rhythm until you reel;      
   The work of execution has begun.  
A tearing, grinding sound . . as crashing fall
   Your limbs, and leaves lie o'er you like a pall.

Twelve oxen wait to bear you down the range,
   Their plodding hooves will land you miles below;
How slowly beautiful you grew, while strange
   Weird rites were held by totems, none may know,
Save pixie shapes which danced in moonlit zones,
   And you, who heard Daramulu's deep tones.  

To some boudoir, with its distinctive air,
   Your silken grainings may lend added charm,
And softly mirror beauty's profile fair,
   Who dreams of love with dimpled chin in palm ....
But will she think of you as once you stood,
   Magnificent, a doyen of the wood?  

Only, a tree: emblem of some brave man,
   With proud head lifted, though in mortal pain,
Who, doomed, calm, and dispassionately, can
   Meet dissolution with a cold disdain ....
Down ranks of sentinels which whisper low,
   You, with twelve brown-eyed oxen, slowly go.

First published in The Brisbane Courier, 12 September 1925;
and later in
The Queenslander, 26 September 1925.

Author reference sites: Austlit, Australian Dictionary of Biography

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Note: Daramulu (or "Daramulum") is a part of the mythology of several Aboriginal cultures of South-East Australia.  He lives in the trees of the bush. 

Wantons ye are to madden so the bees
   Drunk with your dripping sweetness through long hours
Of shimmering honey-gold! There are no flowers
Dappling the green of any sort of trees
Can match your blaze of scarlet ecstasies.
   Wantons ye are, indeed, whom Nature dowers
With greater wealth than heaped Old Persia's bowers
Or ripened for remote Hesperides.

In time to come (they say) shall trees no more
   Foam up in sudden beauty, nor the furze
With yellow flecks of it be scattered o'er.
   Nor bees nor moths be Cupid's messengers.
How in that day would tender souls be hurled
Back to this era from a blossomless world!

First published in The Bulletin, 29 June 1922

Author: Louis Lavater (1867-1953) was born in St Kilda, Victoria, and entered the University of Melbourne to study medicine. He did not finish his degree deciding instead to follow his love of music.  He was active in Melbourne literary circles and, while he did not write a lot of  poetry, his work was appreciated by those who knew him.  He died in St Kilda in 1953.

Author reference sites: Austlit, Australian Dictionary of Biography

Oh! ashen comrades of the years too brief,
   Grim, shrivelled skeletons, ungainly things,
Like beggars now ye stand, in silent grief,
   Where, but a decade since, ye reigned as kings.

I fled the haunts of men, with ye to be,
   In days when I had mirth, and ye were strong,
But, though superb in mighty majesty,
   Not for your might I loved ye, but your song.

When she, the sunlight of my wayward days,
   Went forth with me, to bid my heart rejoice,
She, with her lute, from you caught such rare lays
   As never raptured minstrel tongue could voice.

And when we told our loves -- ah, me! the tale --
   And lingered long adown the shady lea,
Ye bent your plumes, and over hill and dale
   Proclaimed our secret in a symphony.

With plighted troth when once again we strolled
   To seek the solace of your kindly bowers,
No organ diapason ever rolled
   A wedding march that faintly echoed ours.

And when, aweary of this war for breath
   Too soon she grew, and wrung my only tear,
Ye sang in whispers, in the teeth of death,
   The only requiem I loved to hear.

And now that night is menacing my day,
   Your matchless nocturne, madrigal and glee,
Your crested heads, that kept the storm at bay,
   In memory alone can live with me;

For all your withered tongues are cold and mute
   As riven chords in hearts of adamant,
And, like my vanished love with broken lute,
   To me a dirge of silence now ye chant,

To tell, perchance, to soothe the after years,
   Dead trees, dead loves and songless birds may be --
As we would know but for our deafened ears --
   The deeper tones of Nature's harmony.

First published in Melbourne Punch, 19 May 1904

Author reference site: Austlit.

See also.

The clear, crisp air of morning like a silver tocsin rang
   A note that told of fierce but bloodless fight,
And stirred me to a melody that laggard never sang
   When a stripling slew a giant in his might.

Crash! came the monster, but his fall woke no applauding cheers,
   For, silently, the mighty deed was done,
But "Laborare est orare" echoed down the years,
   And spurred the stripling to the task begun.

For, fronting him, an army of a thousand giants stood,
   And tossed their thousand plumes against the sky,
But he swore a vow to wife and child that, all alone he would
   Lay low that horde of forest kings or die.

And morn by morn, with whetted axe, he faced the shrinking foe
   With steady eye, and fearless, measured tread,
And day by day the battle raged, but crushing was his blow,
   For every night a forest king lay dead.

The clear, crisp air of morning like a silver tocsin rang,
   When all the shattered giants lay up-piled,
But, louder than a tocsin, all the rescued meadows sang
   The vict'ry won for home and wife and child.

The God that lent to honest toil its ever peerless charm,
   Who loves the dauntless heart and reeking brow,
Saw a heap of forest giants vanquished by a stripling's arm,
   And marked as "done" a Heav'n-recorded vow.

Thrice noble is a noble deed when done in solitude,
   And Fame the secret never need reveal,
When Heaven sits in judgment on our actions in the nude,
   And stamps them with her everlasting seal.

Pale! gleaming star of Austerlitz; fade! guerdon of the Nile,
   And all the toys that gilded warfare brings.
Beside that crown of victory, wreathed of a wifely smile,
   That decked the man who slew a race of kings.

I'm weary of the paeans, to the glory of the sword,
   That round the woe-struck universe now ring,
But as long as Muse or manhood shall arouse a slumb'ring chord,
   The triumphs of the axe I'll ever sing.

First published in Melbourne Punch, 13 April 1905

Author: nothing is known about the author of this poem

Author reference site: Austlit.

See also.

"Would anyone really enjoy living where trees were non-existent?" asks the Chairman of the Victorian Forests Commission in a speech explaining why the community owes a great debt to its forests.

I honour all trees well; but, best of all,
I love those scarred old veterans, proud and tall,
      Gazing from eminences, kingly wise,
      Across great sweeps of changing earth and skies;
Gazing with seeming scorn upon the race
Of midgets who despoil this forest place --
      The restless race of men who, with edged tools,
      With fire, have come to serve the end of fools.

Well these patricians know their own high worth;
Well know their task in serving Mother Earth:
      Beckoning rain-clouds sailing overhead
      That earth may drink and living things be fed,
Clutching with myriad roots the precious soil
The sun or sudden flood else would despoil,
      Bending to tempests, spreading to the sky,
      Remote, untamed, unconquered till they die.

I know them in the rose light of the dawn,
Sharp-etched upon the hill-tops, boldly drawn
      Against the light. I know them at high noon,
      Their gleaming arms held up, as for the boon
Of life they offer thanks; know them at night
When, out against the moon's enriching light,
      Some bold phalanger launches from their tops
      And, like a falling leaf, swings down and drops.

And still come stupid men with axe and fire
Scattering death to serve some brief desire.
      "More than our lives are forfeit," says the tree,
      "For as we go, so man's prosperity
Goes with us, till this once green, gracious hill
Shall thirst in vain, when you have wrought your fill."
      I love, I honour all those forest kings;
      They are such wise, such proudly scornful things.

First published in The Herald, 31 January 1935

Author reference sites: C.J. Dennis, Austlit, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Australian Poetry Library

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