very fond of Coogee, and gives us verses that we who "know the place," and have wandered there in our own very young days, when it was much more beautiful than it is now, in its then purely natural state, with its growth of wild vines and foliage so near the sea, we know how faithful to Nature his picture really was of Coogee in those days when he wrote the stanzas:
"Sing the song of wave-worn Coogee—
Coogee in the distance white,
With its peaks and points disruptured—
gaps and fragments filled with light.
Haunts of glade and restless plovers
of the melancholy wail,
Ever lending deeper pathos of the
melancholy gale.
Here, my brothers, down the fissures,
chasms deep and worn and wild,
Grows the sea-bloom, one that blushes
like a shrinking, fair, blind child.
And amongst the oozing forelands,
many a glad green rock-vine runs.
Getting ease on earthly lodges, sheltered
from December's sun.
Often, when a gusty morning, rising
cold and gray and strange,
Lifts its face from watery spaces,
vistas full of cloudy change,
Bearing up a glowing burden which anon
begins to wane,
Fading in the sudden shadow of a
dark, determined rain.
Do I seek an eastern window, so to
watch the breakers beat
Round the steadfast craigs of Coogee,
dim with drifts of driving sleet;
Hearing hollow, mournful noises
sweeping down a solemn shore,
While the grim sea waves are tideless,
and the storm strives at their core."
