At Cape Schanck

Down to the lighthouse pillar     The rolling woodland comes,     Gay with the gold of she-oaks     And the green of the stunted gums,     With the silver-grey of honeysuckle,     With the wasted bracken red,     With a tuft of softest emerald     And a cloud-flecked sky oerhead.     We climbed by ridge and boulder,     Umber and yellow scarred,     Out to the utmost precipice,     To the point that was ocean-barred,     Till we looked below on the fastness     Of the breeding eagles nest,     And Cape Wollomai opened eastward     And the Otway on the west.     Over the mirror of azure     The purple shadows crept,     League upon league of rollers     Landward evermore swept,     And burst upon gleaming basalt,     And foamed in cranny and crack,     And mounted in sheets of silver,     And hurried reluctant back.     And the sea, so calm out yonder,     Wherever we turned our eyes,     Like the blast of an angels trumpet     Rang out to the earth and skies,     Till the reefs and the rocky ramparts     Throbbed to the giant fray,     And the gullies and jutting headlands     Were bathed in a misty spray.     Oh, sweet in the distant ranges,     To the ear of inland men,     Is the ripple of falling water     In sassafras-haunted glen,     The stir in the ripening cornfield     That gently rustles and swells,     The wind in the wattle sighing,     The tinkle of cattle bells.     But best is the voice of ocean,     That strikes to the heart and brain,     That lulls with its passionate music     Trouble and grief and pain,     That murmurs the requiem sweetest     For those who have loved and lost,     And thunders a jubilant anthem     To brave hearts tempest-tossed.     That takes to its boundless bosom     The burden of all our care,     That whispers of sorrow vanquished,     Of hours that may yet be fair,     That tells of a Harbour of Refuge     Beyond lifes stormy straits,     Of an infinite peace that gladdens,     Of an infinite love that waits.