Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Walter Murdoch (1874–1970). The Oxford Book of Australasian Verse. 1918.

62. The Free

THEY bathed in the fire-flooded fountains:

Life girdled them round and about:

They slept in the clefts of the mountains:

The stars called them forth with a shout.

They prayed, but their worship was only

The wonder at nights and at days,

As still as the lips of the lonely

Though burning with dumbness of praise.

No sadness of earth ever captured

Their spirits who bowed at the shrine:

They fled to the Lonely enraptured

And hid in the darkness divine.

As children at twilight may gather,

They met at the doorway of death

The smile of the dark hidden Father,

The Mother with magical breath.

Untold of in song or in story,

In days long forgotten of men,

Their eyes were yet blind with a glory

Time will not remember again.