But I wander wild, and wail like a child
For a face that will never return!

And it's here a mighty water flows,
With drifts of wind and wimpled waves;
But the darling head of a dear one dead
Is hidden beneath its caves.




The Wail in the Native Oak



Where the lone creek, chafing nightly in the cold and sad moonshine,
Beats beneath the twisted fern-roots and the drenched and dripping vine;
Where the gum trees, ringed and ragged, from the mazy margins rise,
Staring out against the heavens with their languid gaping eyes;
There I listened -- there I heard it! Oh, that melancholy sound,
Wandering like a ghostly whisper, through the dreaming darkness round!
Wandering, like a fearful warning, where the withered twilight broke
Through a mass of mournful tresses, drooping down the Native Oak.

And I caught a glimpse of sunset fading from a far-off wild,
As I sat me down to fancy, like a thoughtful, wistful child --
Sat me down to fancy what might mean those hollow, hopeless tones,
Sooming round the swooning silence, dying out in smothered moans!
What might mean that muffled sobbing? Did a lonely phantom wail,
Pent amongst those tangled branches barring out the moonlight pale?