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)

First Frost     -     by CJ Dennis

NOW comes an end to quiet autumn days
And to frail loveliness. In the still night
Cold death has crept along the garden ways
To wrap at last about each blossom bright
Its funeral garment white.
And where a myriad cruel prisms blaze,
Ironically now the sun's kind rays
Shine but to blast and blight.

One hour of beauty on this shining morn--
White, mocking beauty while the frost rime clings.
Then bud and blossom, fashioned to adorn
The earth, are but a heap of blackened things,
All loveliness takes wings . . .
And yet, not all! Still in a land forlorn,
Most valiantly by a glowing thorn,
A grey thrush sweetly sings.

---