Charles Harpur

Rating: 4.67
Rating: 4.67

Charles Harpur Poems

A MIDSUMMER NOON IN THE AUSTRALIAN FOREST

Not a bird disturbs the air!
There is quiet everywhere;
...

Flowers in their freshness are flushing the earth,
And the voice-peopled forest is loud in its mirth,
And streams in their fulness are laughing at dearth—
Yet my bosom is aching.
...

An Aboriginal Mother’s Lament
Charles Harpur
...

A lonely boy, far venturing from home
Out on the half-wild herd’s faint tracks I roam;
Mid rock-browned mountains, which with stony frown
Glare into haggard chasms deep adown;
...

5.

Of Cora, once so dearly ours,
Would mournful memory sing;
Of how she came when came the flowers,
To leave us with the spring.
...

Deep trust in God—for that I still have sought
Through all the grim doubts that bemock the soul,
When in the amazement of far-reaching throught,
We list the labourings that for ever roll
...

Long ere I knew thee—years of loveless days,
A shape would gather from my dreams, and pour
The soul-sweet influence of its gentle gaze
Into my heart, to thrill it to the core:
...

Night was new-throned in heaven, and we did rove
Together in the cool and shadowless haze
That thickened round, at the wild stars to gaze
Ere yet the moon’s red rim had showed above
...

HIS lot how glorious whom the must shall name
Her first high-priest in this bright southern clime!
Aglow with light from her aspiring flame,
Catching the raptures of her Grecian prime,
...

Mark yon runnel, how ’tis flowing,
Like a sylvan spirit dreaming
Of the spring-blooms near it blowing,
And the sunlight o’er it beaming—
...

First see those ample melons-brindled o'er
With mingled green and brown is all the rind;
For they are ripe, and mealy at the core,
...

We build but for change and for death,
To whom a like homage pay glory and shame;
For something must pass to give being to both.
All things are rounded by change, and are perishing—
...

A POWER is stirring—a broad light has shone
Amid the nation’s—in the wilderness
Of the world’s social horror and distress,
Heralding temperance as the Baptist John
...

Far up the River-hark! 'tls the loud shock
Deadened by distance, of some Fowler's gun:
And as into the stillness of the scene
...

15.

MY OWN WILD BURNS! these rude-wrought rhymes of thine
In golden worth are like the unshapely coin
Of some new realm, yet pure as from the mine—
...

A Dealer, bewitched by gain-promising dreams
Settled down near my Station, to trade with my Teams,
...

FAIR as the night—when all the astral fires
Of heaven are burning in the clear expanse,
My love is; and her eyes like star-depths glance
Lustrous with glowing thoughts and pure desires,
...

A Genius caged in niceties of art;
A full-souled Bard that should have thought apart,
Creatively peculiar—not as taught
...

My country! I am sore at heart for thee!
An in mine ear, like a storm-heralding breeze,
A voice against thee gathers warningly!
...

Still his little grave she seeketh
In her mother-sorrow wild,
Hush! While in her heart she speaketh
To the spirit of her child:
...

Charles Harpur Biography

Charles Harpur was an Australian poet. Early Life Harpur was born at Windsor, New South Wales, the third child of Joseph Harpur — originally from Kinsale, County Cork, Ireland, parish clerk and master of the Windsor district school — and Sarah, née Chidley (from Somerset; both had been transported.) Harpur received his elementary education in Windsor. This was probably largely supplemented by private study; he was an eager reader of William Shakespeare. Harpur followed various avocations in the bush and for some years in his twenties held a clerical position at the post office in Sydney. The Poet In Sydney, he met Henry Parkes, Daniel Deniehy, Robert Lowe and W. A. Duncan, who in 1845 published Harpur's first little volume, Thoughts, A Series of Sonnets, which has since become very rare. Harpur had left Sydney two years before and was farming with a brother on the Hunter River. In 1850, he married Mary Doyle and engaged in sheep farming for some years with varying success. In 1853, he published The Bushrangers: a Play in Five Acts, and other Poems. The play is a failure and contains some of Harpur's worst writing, but the volume included some of his best poems. In 1858, he was appointed gold commissioner at Araluen with a good salary. He held the position for eight years and also had a farm at Eurobodalla. Harpur found, however, that his duties prevented him from supervising the work on the farm and it became a bad investment. Two verse pamphlets, A Poets Home and The Tower of a Dream, appeared in 1862 and 1865 respectively. Demise In 1866, Harpur's position was abolished at a time of retrenchment, and in March 1867 he had a great sorrow when his second son was killed by the accidental discharge of his own gun. Harpur never recovered from the blow. He contracted tuberculosis in the hard winter of 1867, and died on 10 June 1868. He was survived by his wife, two sons and two daughters. One of his daughters, writing many years later, mentioned that he had left his family an unencumbered farm and a well-furnished comfortable home. Poetry Evaluation A collected edition of Harpur's poems was not published until 1883. The unknown editor stated that he had "had to supply those final revisions which the author had been obliged to leave unmade". This work does not appear to have been well done, and several already published poems which needed no revision were not included. The manuscripts of Harpur's poems are at the Mitchell Library, Sydney, and a portrait is in the council chamber at Windsor. Harpur was the first Australian poet worthy of the name. He is little read today and the tendency has been to under-rate him in comparison with other writers of the nineteenth century. He may have been slightly influenced by William Wordsworth but he is not really a derivative poet, and his best work is excellent. He is represented in several Australian anthologies.)

The Best Poem Of Charles Harpur

A Midsummer Noon In The Australian Forest

A MIDSUMMER NOON IN THE AUSTRALIAN FOREST

Not a bird disturbs the air!
There is quiet everywhere;
Over plains and over woods
What a mighty stillness broods.

Even the grasshoppers keep
[All the birds and insects keep]
Where the coolest shadows sleep;
Even the busy ants are found
Resting in their pebbled mound;
Even the locust clingeth now
In silence to the barky bough:
And over hills and over plains
Quiet, vast and slumbrous, reigns.

Only there's a drowsy humming
From yon warm lagoon slow coming:
'Tis the dragon-hornet - see!
All bedaubed resplendently
With yellow on a tawny ground -
Each rich spot nor square nor round,
But rudely heart-shaped, as it were
The blurred and hasty impress there,
Of vermeil-crusted seal
Dusted o'er with golden meal:
Only there's a droning where
Yon bright beetle gleams the air -
Gleams it in its droning flight
[Tracks it in its gleaming flight]
With a slanting track of light,
Till rising in the sunshine higher,
[Rising in the sunshine higher,]
Its shards flame out like gems on fire.
[Till its shards flame out like fire.]

Every other thing is still,
Save the ever wakeful rill,
Whose cool murmur only throws
A cooler comfort round Repose;
Or some ripple in the sea
Of leafy boughs, where, lazily,
Tired Summer, in her forest bower
Turning with the noontide hour,
Heaves a slumbrous breath, ere she
Once more slumbers peacefully.

0 'tis easeful here to lie
Hidden from Noon's scorching eye,
In this grassy cool recess
Musing thus of Quietness.

two versions of this poem have been located. The relevant changes are included in the text in square brackets, i.e. "[...]".

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