Dawnwards?

To the Author of the "Songs of the Army of the Night."      We - who, encircled in sleepless sadness         With ears laid close to the Austral earth,      Have heard far cries of wrong-wrought madness,         Of hopeless anguish and murd'rous mirth      Beneath all noise of maudlin gladness         Awail, environ the world's wide girth -      Almost arise with Hope's keen urging         When out the vasty and night-bound North      Red rays ascend, and Songs resurging         Through all the darkness and chill, come forth!      The comet climbs until it scorches         The sacred dais that skies the great,      Until it gleams on palace porches,         Where blissful aeons-to-be hold state -      Fades, and we know it one of the torches         Madmen a moment elevate!      And, closer clutching the earth, our sorrow         Doth then with desperate murmur cry,      "We ne'er shall see or morn or morrow!         For never star doth scale the sky,      "All men made wise through midnight sable         To lead where, safe after all annoy,      Sleep soft in earth's Augean stable         The virgin "Justice," the infant "Joy!" -      Grant this, O Father, being able,         Or else in merciful might destroy      "This orb whose past and present, awful         Alike, attest it a torture wheel,      Where, bound by holy men and lawful,         Man's body's broken with bars of steel!"      But when we pause, despairing wholly,         As a storm that strengthens out on the sea,      The far-flown SONGS come sounding slowly!         As sea-birds kindle that sweep alee      New hopes, old yearnings winging slowly         From breast to bosom for shelter flee!      And scarce we know, as there they hover         And our blood beats 'neath their beating wings,      If 'tis an old dream earthed over         Or new bird-ballad that stirs and sings!      But truth's Tyrtaeus is now our neighbour,         And strives to waken the slumbering South      With peal and throb of trump and tabour         And sobbing songs of his mournful mouth      To see where Life's all-giver, Labour,         Lies fettered, famished and dumb with drouth.                                                             Sydney Jephcott,                                     Brisbane Boomerang, 25th January 1888.