A Poetry of Exiles By Douglas B. W. Sladen: An Australian colonist: Second edition, revised |
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IN MEMORIAM, F. M. H.—A SONNET. |
 | A Poetry of Exiles |  |
79
IN MEMORIAM, F. M. H.—A SONNET.
As when a man who leaves his native shoreFinds it grow dimmer as the good ship flees,
So he, who long in our Antipodes
Sojourns, will find friends' features evermore
Eluding recollection, which before
Were near as well as dear. But when such die,
As on a pitch dark night the traveller's eye,
Waked by a flash of lightning-fire, runs o'er
The landscape round him—so the memory,
Waked by the shock, can call back every trait
Of face and person, light on lovingly
Each kindly look and gesture of a day
Now past for ever, till the shock goes by
As darkness closes round the lightning's ray.
| A Poetry of Exiles | |