private life of the poet when he was not thinking of the public, and simply gave expression to an experience in his hours of recreation and leisure. It was shortly after he went to live at Cundletown, on the Manning River, where he gave the lecture mentioned in the preceding page that he wrote the following:—
"About a mile from Cundletown I came unexpectedly upon the loveliest bit of river scenery I ever saw in my life. It is a crescent of the surpassingly beautiful little stream called the Dawson, which empties itself into the Manning River near this point. The half circle formed by the clear, soft river round a copse of rich, dark foliage is as perfect in kind as if it has been measured by art. The bank opposite the brushwood is a great green slope, falling away, with its verdure, into limpid water. Some one of these days the floods more than half ruin the picture, but I dread to think of the time; for
"Here, indeed, the soul of song
Might stay a life and dream;
And strain of harp would echo long
The music of the stream.
Here in this spot of soft green light
I saw that perfect thing—
The poem I can never write,
The song I cannot sing.
Some great glad lustre floods my face,
All life seems joy to-day.
And I will carry from this place
A radiant dream away.
Hard toil may weary hand and heart,
But it will comfort me
To know a bit of fairy land
Is now so near to me.
"He was then living, I believe, at Cundletown, where his wife and family were also residing with him on leaving Camden Haven, and while he was Inspector of Forests, a position given to him by Sir Henry Parkes.
