[Editor: This poem by John Shaw Neilson was published in Heart of Spring (1919), Ballad and Lyrical Poems (1923), and Collected Poems of John Shaw Neilson (1934).]
Green Singer
All singers have shadows
that follow like fears,
But I know a singer
who never saw tears:
A gay love — a green love —
delightsome! divine!
The Spring is that singer —
an old love of mine!
All players have shadows
and into the play
Old sorrows will saunter —
old sorrows will stay.
But here is a player
whose speech is divine!
The Spring is that player —
an old love of mine!
All singers grow heavy:
the hours as they run
Bite up all the blossoms,
suck up all the sun.
But I know a singer,
delightsome! divine!
The gay love — the green love —
an old love of mine!
Source:
Shaw Neilson, Heart of Spring, Sydney: The Bookfellow, 1919, page 2
Also published in:
John Shaw Neilson, Ballad and Lyrical Poems, Sydney: Bookfellow in Australia, 1923, page 79
John Shaw Neilson (edited by R. H. Croll), Collected Poems of John Shaw Neilson, Melbourne: Lothian Publishing Company, 1934, page 2
Editor’s notes:
gay = happy, joyous, carefree; well-decorated, bright, attractive (in modern times it may especially refer to a homosexual, especially a male homosexual; can also refer to something which is no good, pathetic, useless)
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