Morning And Night

The Australian Worker, 18 March 1915 p. 19.

Here from this city-tram I see the bay
(We whirl around its marge)—
The shining sands, the eager waves at play
About the anchored barge;    
And catch the odor of the near-by sea,  
And glimpse the low-down hulls,
While in the morning, heavens, white and free,        
Circle and scream the gulls.

How vital is the scene! The pulse of life
Beats swiftly in it all!—
Deep as the organ, piercing as the fife,
I hear my Spirit's, call.
But when at night again I round the bay,
It lies as something dead—  
Still, silent, sombre, wrapped in ghostly gray,
Its light and color fled.

Where in the morn the eager waves had played
Is now a pit of gloom;
The anchored, barge lies stricken in the shade ;  
The gulls, what was their doom?
An evil shadow issues from the grave
My shrinking soul to damn;—
It seems that nothing lives 'neath heaven save
This blatant, screeching tram.  

H.E.B.