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)

Winter     -     by CJ Dennis

NOW golden days of autumn are no more.
Down on the forest ruthless Winter frees--
First with far rumblings, waxing to a roar--
His shouting winds that riot thro' the trees,
Raging like savage seas.
Bedraggled now the gown this garden wore;
Lost are those evanescent gems she bore;
Lost, half the melodies.

A grey thrush, every morn hops round the door,
His wise head cocked inquiringly aslant;
Magpie and robin, these are shy no more,
And every songster, as his fare grows scant,
Becomes a mendicant.
Small their demands upon the larder's store
On these dark, sodden days or mornings hoar,
Cruel to bird and plant.

A strange and ghostly silence came last night,
After the wind's wild clamour and the rain;
And now, at dawn, a coverlet of white
Swathes many a long, fantastic forest lane
And unfamiliar plain.
Beneath the burden spar and sapling slight
Bow down, revealing many a vista bright
In this once green domain.

The silence shouts in this new, muffled world
After the tempest's nerve-destroying din . . .
Here, like three pixies, impudently curled
In a giant's pallet, sheets up to each chin,
Three pert violas grin . . .
The forest is a lady richly pearled,
Else a white penitent in pure robes furled,
And newly cleansed of sin.

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