The Singing Garden

| Home | The Singing Garden |

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)

Indian Summer     -     by CJ Dennis

WINTER had come to frown a little while,
And bluster from his skies of sodden grey,
Until bland Autumn, with a cheerful smile,
Chased him into the dark hills far away;
Returning then to stay
Where singing birds the silver dawns beguile
And sunsets burn down an illumined aisle
Day after golden day.

Now comes a season of surprised delight.
The alien trees, now loath to lose their leaves,
Strive yet to hold their yellow treasure tight.
Shy swallows twitter by the sun-bathed eaves
And, while sly Autumn thieves
Yet more of Winter's days, postpone their flight.
Birds hymn the day; but thro' the windless night
A gloomy mopoke grieves.

Under the azure noon the forest sleeps
Drugged by this sudden and unlooked-for balm.
Up from her lowly bed a primrose peeps,
Tempted too soon by hours of spring-like calm
Spilled from a lavish palm.
And now, from where the hill-stream laughs and leaps,
The thrush's evensong, as slow dusk creeps,
Lifts like a grateful psalm.

---