Arthur Bayldon

Arthur Bayldon Poems

I think to-night I could bear it all,
   Even the arrow that cleft the core, --
Could I wait again for your swift footfall,
   And your sunny face coming in at the door.
...

The patient stars are shining large and clear;
The crescent moon hangs like a tilted bowl;
So calm, so still, that I can almost hear
...

Dear old road, wheel-worn and broken,
   Winding thro' the forest green,
Barred with shadow and with sunshine,
   Misty vistas drawn between.
...

The weary wind is slumbering on the wing:
Leaping from out meek twilight's purpling blue
Burns the proud star of eve as though it knew
It was the big king jewel quivering
...

With eastern banners flaunting in the breeze
Royal processions, sounding fife and gong
And showering jewels on the jostling throng,
March to the tramp of Marlowe's harmonies.
...

6.

Poisonous, bloated, crab-like shapes
Crawl in gangs around these capes—
Stopping here and feeding there;
...

Ere Greece soared, showering sovranties of light,
Ere Rome shook earth with her tremendous tread,
Ere yon blue-feasting sun-god burst blood-red,
Beneath thee slept thy prodigy, O Night!
...

These vessels of verse, O Great Goddess, are filled with invisible tears,
With the sobs and sweat of my spirit and her desolate brooding for years;
See, I lay them -- not on thine altar, for they are unpolished and plain,
Not rounded enough by the potter, too much burnt in the furnace of pain;
...

9.

Poisonous, bloated, crab-like shapes
Crawl in gangs around these capes-
Stopping here and feeding there,
Listening, crawling everywhere;
...

We watch your attitudes with candid eyes:
Plain men are we, not given much to prate,
Bluntly sincere, keenly compassionate
But lions in our wrath at treacheries;
...

Because, my friends I have a savage glee
In drinking to the dregs the draughts of life
And love to feel my spirit spreading free,
Stretching itself through every calm and strife
...

Never again shall he with wizard sleight
Ensare on threshold of his soul the bright
Unearthly splendors that would oft alight,
And in the magic web of melody
...

Arthur Bayldon Biography

Arthur Albert Dawson Bayldon, poet, was born on 20 March 1865 at Leeds, Yorkshire, England, son of Charles Henry Bayldon, solicitor, and Matilda Maria, née Dawson. As a student at Leeds Grammar School, he won prizes for swimming, and developed an appreciation of poetry through the scholar J. R. Tutin. His parents having died while he was young, he travelled widely in Europe and, he claimed, in the United States of America and India. In his early twenties he published two volumes of verse which, in their conventional evocation of delight and despair, display a bookish regard for nineteenth-century English poets and an attraction towards Victorian Romantic diction. Bayldon arrived in Brisbane in 1889, practised freelance journalism, and lost his possessions and money in a flood. In the 1890s he became a prominent Bulletin poet and 'Red Page' critic who embodied many of that paper's characteristics and myths. Independent, egalitarian, egotistic, ostentatious and convivial, he confessed, however, to 'desolate brooding', restlessness and a stoicism relieved by religious faith. His occupations between 1890 and 1930 included those of swagman, rouseabout, phrenologist, full-time motto-writer, lighter-owner, salesman of his own books, insurance agent, picture dealer, clothier's agent, teacher of English composition, literary lecturer, editor of and canvasser for a comic monthly, tea-merchant, private secretary, and advertisement-writer. In cities and towns in Queensland and New South Wales, he recited his verse and, like the poet R. H. Horne, performed 'fancy swimming strokes' for a fee. Bayldon's poetry was dominated in these years by melancholy realism in depicting the swagman's life, drought, sordid aspects of cities, and the bush as 'hell'. But he wrote in a happier and occasionally more 'majestic' tone on themes of liberty, egalitarianism, his personal philosophy, and his experience of a more Arcadian Australian landscape. His frequently derivative and tritely aphoristic style is interesting as the product of an educated Englishman's adaptation to a nationalistic Australian environment. Bayldon was modest about his poetry, but sensitive about the 'little encouragement … shown to an Author in Australia'. Less distinguished than his contemporaries A. G. Stephens and Christopher Brennan, like them he extended the scope of the Bulletin's literary criticism beyond national subject-matter; he wrote brightly and frankly on Byron, Tennyson, Longfellow and Browning as well as on local authors. Bayldon was in Brisbane in 1897, and published his Poems there that year; in 1900 he moved to Orange, New South Wales, where he married Maude Bernard Leighton on 16 June 1902; they had no children. A collection of short stories, The Tragedy Behind the Curtain, was published in Sydney in 1910, but a novel and various other works remained unpublished. His verse included Collected Poems (Sydney, 1932) and four other volumes. During and after World War I Bayldon turned more to patriotic, democratic and optimistic themes. He had settled in Sydney in the 1920s or earlier. In 1930 he suffered 'another breakdown', which he attributed to overwork as a canvasser; though he kept his job he was granted a Commonwealth literary pension of £52 a year. When he died at the Home of the Little Sisters of the Poor, Randwick, on 26 September 1958, he had outlived his wife and all the Bulletin poets of the 1890s except Will Ogilvie and his friend Dame Mary Gilmore. He was buried in the Roman Catholic section of Botany cemetery.)

The Best Poem Of Arthur Bayldon

A Woman's Mood

I think to-night I could bear it all,
   Even the arrow that cleft the core, --
Could I wait again for your swift footfall,
   And your sunny face coming in at the door.
With the old frank look and the gay young smile,
   And the ring of the words you used to say;
I could almost deem the pain worth while,
   To greet you again in the olden way!

But you stand without in the dark and cold,
   And I may not open the long closed door,
Nor call thro' the night, with the love of old, --
   "Come into the warmth, as in nights of yore!"
I kneel alone in the red fire-glow,
   And hear the wings of the wind sweep by;
You are out afar in the night, I know,
   And the sough of the wind is like a cry.

You are out afar -- and I wait within,
   A grave-eyed woman whose pulse is slow;
The flames round the red coals softly spin,
   And the lonely room's in a rosy glow.
The firelight falls on your vacant chair,
   And the soft brown rug where you used to stand;
Dear, never again shall I see you there,
   Nor lift my head for your seeking hand.

Yet sometimes still, and in spite of all,
   I wistful look at the fastened door,
And wait again for the swift footfall,
   And the gay young voice as in hours of yore.
It still seems strange to be here alone,
   With the rising sob of the wind without;
The sound takes a deep, insisting tone,
   Where the trees are swinging their arms about.

Its moaning reaches the sheltered room,
   And thrills my heart with a sense of pain;
I walk to the window, and pierce the gloom,
   With a yearning look that is all in vain.
You are out in a night of depths that hold
   No promise of dawning for you and me,
And only a ghost from the life of old
   Has come from the world of memory!

You are out evermore! God wills it so!
   But ah! my spirit is yearning yet!
As I kneel alone by the red fire-glow,
   My eyes grow dim with the old regret.
O when shall the aching throb grow still,
   The warm love-life turn cold at the core!
Must I be watching, against my will,
   For your banished face in the opening door?

It may be, dear, when the sequel's told
   Of the story, read to its bitter close;
When the inner meanings of life unfold,
   And the under-side of our being shows --
It may be then, in that truer light,
   When all our knowledge has larger grown,
I may understand why you stray to-night,
   And I am left, with the past, alone.

Arthur Bayldon Comments

paul amrod 02 May 2019

I was so fascinated by these few poems I ordered a book of this man's genius.

3 0 Reply
JOHN WICK 12 November 2018

COOL BRO KEEP IT UP I WHISH I WAS SO SMART LIKE YOU . YOU ARE THE BEST POEMS MAKER OF ALL TIME BRO

3 0 Reply

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