The swans sail past the willow-hooded boat,
Where broken light and spreading ripples make
A comet-train behind them as they float.
I have absorbed great artistry; song has wrought
Its magic upon me: often I have come
Out of a trance of passionate reading fraught
With power of vision to draw the faint hills home.
These and their company take me, magic, immense;
Yet in the morning equivalent wonders unfold
When the sun pours through the breaks in a paling fence
To stencil a frosted pavement with jagged gold.
First published in The Bulletin, 29 July 1936
Author: Frank Leslie Thompson Wilmot (1881-1942) was born in Collingwood, Victoria, and left school at 13 to work in E. W. Cole's Book Arcade. He began writing poetry while still in his teens but struggled to get any accepted by The Bulletin until he submitted under the pseudonym 'Furnley Maurice', a pen-name he continued to use throughout this life. He rose to the position of manager of the Book Arcade until it closed in 1929. He later became the first full-time manager of the Melbourne University Press and Bookroom in 1932. He died in Melbourne in 1942.
Author reference sites: Austlit, Australian Dictionary of Biography