[Editor: This poem by John Shaw Neilson was published in Collected Poems of John Shaw Neilson (1934).]
The Winter Sundown
They falter, they stay not
To your eyes and mine,
The boatmen in violet
On bays of wine.
Calm without sorrow,
The peace without prayer:
All fear is folly in
That country out there.
Many we mourn are out
Seaward away;
Tears did they leave us
As players who play.
The highlands, the hilltops,
They make the heart bare,
Burned out with wishing for
That country out there.
* * * * * * *
They stay not, they stay not,
But your eyes and mine
Have boatmen in violet
On bays of wine.
Source:
John Shaw Neilson (editor: R. H. Croll), Collected Poems of John Shaw Neilson, Melbourne: Lothian Publishing Company, 1934 [May 1949 reprint], page 162
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