While The Billy BoilsSearchMoon islands out in the shimmering splendourOf the moon’s white pathway of silver fire;Moon shadows touching a dream-world tender —O Ta-Mahinna! O heart’s desire!Were you only a dream with a dream’s surrender,A moon-spun glory that must expire?
A fate-flung phantom out in the distance,A rose in the greyness of life’s grey chart,Shall I wrestle with fiends in a fool’s resistance?O Ta-Mahinna! my restless heartCraves thee again with a fierce insistence,And we are drifting — apart! — apart!
O Ta-Mahinna! Shall Time’s dividingQuench the white lustre of moons gone by?Is there no land of a great abidingFor the beacons that beckoned from lip and eye,Love’s lost stars out in the darkness hidingBeyond the gates of the grave’s good-bye?
No lotus land where the gods are tendingThe lone lost stars of our exile drear?No glad green twilight of peace descendingFrom Love’s own land of the Always Near,Where we’ll gather the blossoms of joy unending,With the faith of the children that know not fear?
In the radiant lap of a land unsmittenBy death and darkness and dreams that die,Where no soul walks in the darkness, bittenWith the listless langour that makes no cry,Shall they live in the essence of things unwritten,When the hills are dust and the seas are dry?
Who shall say — while the dead are sleeping,And fettered souls in their prisons fret —If this be the end of our time of weeping?We dream it may be, and yet! — and yet —If one should waken with pulses leapingFor glad remembrance — and one forget?
Ever the hunter of lives is calling —Calling for sacrifice fair and fresh,Where the strong souls wrestle their bondage galling,And the weaklings languish in bond and mesh;Shall he ever have ruth for life’s red rain falling —For the strong soul cleaving the quivering flesh?
Nay! — It is written! — the pale years, fleeingLike a train of ghosts to the far away,Bear all our treasures beyond our seeing,And the earth-heart yawns for the senseless clayThat has lived and laboured and spent its beingLike the swift, sweet breath of a summer day.
Ah Ta-Mahinna! My heart is yearningFor life’s full measure — and life is o’er,And I am hungered and sick with learningThe weary wisdom of world-old lore.This is the end! God! — the slow sands turning —And then the darkness — for evermore.