Page:Moyarra- An Australian Legend in Two Cantos, 1891.djvu/63

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MOYARRA
57

Searching as if it would deny
The too appalling certainty.
Turn! turn! Moyarra! from the sight,
Thy glance is powerless as thy might.

Who hath not felt, when Death was near
And all he loved lay on the bier,
That icy chill, that deadly calm.
That calenture that gulls the sense,
Shedding disease, but feigning balm.
Like the stillness ere the storm
Bursts in its wild magnificence
And the lightning springs from its form?
Ganst thou tell where that lightning vanished,
Or where the spirit Death hath banished?
The sorcery of that hour, confessed,
Weighs heavily on the gazer's breast
As the miasma's deadly dews
O'er the languid frame their power diffuse;
Felt, though unseen, yet all-pervading
The soul, which recks not the invading
Till, sunk beneath the treacherous thrall
Flung o'er us by Death's gloomy pall,
With stupid stare we view