Meeting of Sighs [poem by John Shaw Neilson]

[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).]

Meeting of Sighs

Your voice was the rugged
old voice that I knew;
I gave the best grip of
my greeting to you.
I know not of your lips —
you knew not of mine;
Of travel and travail
we gave not a sign.

We drank and we chorused
with quips in our eyes;
But under our song was
the meeting of sighs.
I knew not of your lips —
you knew not of mine;
For lean years and lone years
had watered the wine.

Source:
Shaw Neilson, Heart of Spring, Sydney: The Bookfellow, 1919, page 38

Also published in:
John Shaw Neilson, Ballad and Lyrical Poems, Sydney: The Bookfellow in Australia, 1923, page 70
John Shaw Neilson (edited by R. H. Croll), Collected Poems of John Shaw Neilson, Melbourne: Lothian Book Publishing Company, 1934, page 34

Editor’s notes:
travail = work, especially strenuous work or work involving painful effort