The Singing Garden

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The Singing Garden

CONTENTS

SPRING

• Dawn (Verse)
• The Way of the Vandal
• Forest Sanctuary (Verse)
• Green Walls (Verse)
• Morning Glory (Verse)
• Blandishing the Birds
• Songs of Bush Birds
• The Wedge-tailed Eagle
• The Coachwhip Bird
• The Welcome Swallow
• The Wattle Bird
• The Eastern Shrike-tit
• The Spinebill Honeyeater
• The Flame-breasted Robin
• The Firetail Finches
• The Pallid Cuckoo
• The English Blackbird
• The Bronze Cuckoo
• The King Parrot
• The Tawny Frogmouth

SUMMER

• Summer (Verse)
• This Lonely Forest
• North Wind (Verse)
• Heat Wave (Verse)
• Recuperation
• Songs of Bush Birds
• The Grey Thrush
• The Rufous Fantail
• The Scrub Wren
• The Kookaburra
• The English Goldfinch
• The Grey Goshawk
• The Grey Fantail
• The Little Black Cormorant
• The Golden Whistler
• The Treecreeper
• The Gang Gang
• The Singing Honeyeater
• The Boobook Owl
• The Lyretail
• The Black and White Fantail
• The Dusky Wood-swallow

AUTUMN

• Autumn (Verse)
• The Kookaburra Murder Case
• Indian Summer (Verse)
• First Frost (Verse)
• The Case of Long John Silver
• Songs of Bush Birds
• The Magpie Lark
• The Silver-eye
• The Crimson Parrot
• The White Cockatoo
• The Butcher Bird
• The Blue Kingfisher
• The Ground Thrush
• The Sparrow
• Starlings
• The Indian Myna
• The Yellow-tailed Thornbill
• The Wonga Pigeon

WINTER

• Winter (Verse)
• Birdland on the Dole
• The Tree (Verse)
• The Besting of Bombastes
• Songs of Bush Birds
• The Blue Wren
• Currawong, Pied
• The Black Cockatoo
• The Satin Bower Bird
• The Bronzewing Pigeon
• The Crow (Australian Raven)
• The Yellow Robin
• The Pink-breasted Robin
• The Magpie
• Epilogue
• Promise of Spring (Verse)
• The Quiet Hour
• Dusk (Verse)

Forest Sanctuary     -     by CJ Dennis

SEEK you sorely, for a space,
Respite from the world's dull fretting?
Come then to a secret place--
Man's entanglements forgetting--
Deep within the forest dreaming,
Deep within its shadows cool,
Where the mountain waters streaming
Broaden to the placid beaming
Of a quiet pool.

Making here a great green tent,
Tea-tree bough and wattle bending--
As strong lovers' arms are bent
Shielding beauty--droop, defending
This green sanctuary sleeping
In its soft green twilit day;
And a scrap of bright sky peeping
Thro' the tall trees, sentry keeping,
Seems a world away.

Rage the tempest as it may
O'er the tree-tops, writhing, broiling;
Burn as may the burning day,
Frailer loveliness despoiling;
Summer's scorn and Winter's bluster
Seek in vain this hallowed spot
Lending its translucent lustre
To the nodding ferns that cluster
Many a mossy grot.

Steeply slope the banks above,
All the outer turmoil muting;
Softly, bush birds' songs of love
Match an organ's mellow fluting.
Here is peace past all conceiving
In this forest chancel, here
Spreads a grace that transmutes grieving
To hushed wonder, to believing
God is very near.

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