While The Billy BoilsSearchMyrtle by the mountain rills!Dark-plumed monarch stern and scowling,You that hear the thunder growlingAnd the black sou’-wester howling’Mong the wild Tasmanian hills.Myrtle by the western springs!Harp whose chords have ne’er been smitten,Land whose songs have ne’er been written,Where no tooth of scorn has bittenTo the inner heart of things.
Myrtle, myrtle, watching yet,Where old Montezuma racesDown the waterworn rock-faces,Singing songs to lonely placesSet in ways of wind and wet!Myrtle, myrtle stern and stark,Where they turned them from the questing,When their sun of life was westing —Still your dark boughs soothe their resting,Moaning, moaning in the dark.
Myrtle, myrtle lying low,With the moss about you creeping,With the torrent round you leaping,And the grand old mountain keepingVigil as the seasons go,Still to me your music comesSet in chords august, specific,When a storm-voice, weird, terrific,Beats across the waste PacificLike the roll of muffled drums.
Guardian of far peaks untrodBy fierce cloven-hoofed excessesAnd Humanity’s distresses,Where no clamour for redress is,And the hills look up to God,Pillars of a larger sky,Immemorial altars foldenDeep in aisles of green and golden,Whose white taper-stars are holdenBy supernal hands on high!
On the wings of evenfallSoft as clouds their sky-ways wending,Or white angel-hosts descendingWith the gift of peace unendingWhen the dark is over all,Like the sough of Southern seasComes to me the drowsy droningOf the wizard priests, intoning,When the Western wind is moaning —Moaning in the myrtle trees.