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Crest from front cover cut out; note contribution of Robert Gordon Menzies in editorial and in poem: [p. 58] “A Mountain Fancy [/] It is morning, and there is a mist over all the earth; a mist that steals up over Macedon and wreathes itself sinuously among the trees – for all the world like white and ghostly banners floating out towards us. The breeze blows but faintly, and, as the cloudy mass drifts across, darkly, through its veiling curtain, we catch a glimpse of red roofs nestling among dark green pines; higher up, the pale moss green of the ferns; and, wherever the shades are deepest, the tall white trunks of the mountain gums, straight and clean-limbed, true sons of the hills. Far up there, on the very summit of the mount, just where a jagged array of pines cuts the air, the sky shows blue promise of the day to be. What a scene to ravish the soul! Shade after shade of exquisite green, blurred and soft [p. 59] ened by the mist, and, and coming up behind, the springing freshness of the sunlit heavens!

In a few hours it will be all so commonplace; the glamour will vanish with the mists, maybe, and trees once more be trees, and ferns but poor bracken at the best.

Somebody told me the other day that it was vain to look to Nature for proof of the supernatural, for most things about us were so ordinary, and even the finest scene so readily resolvable into common elements of earth and plant and atmosphere. But I cannot think that he was right. We are all so anxious to “grow up,” so impetuous to taste the fulness of life, with its ambitions too often unrealised and illusive, that we are inclined to put away our childish things. We learn to “think big,” and yearn, perhaps too much, after a fanciful and bizarre originality. And so the child of Wordsworth’s majestic Ode sees clearer than we do, in that to him all is wonderful, and even common things “apparelled in celestial light.”
Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower – but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.

So the mist blows over the mountain, and the sun adds its gold to the green – “the green and gold of forest sunshine”; overhead all is blue and peaceful, and below, on the plains of life, seemingly so far off the fretting multitudes go on their noisy way.

And yet, in my heart, I know that this is not commonplace, and can never be; the hills have reached forth their hands to me and their mystery has entered into my soul.

Last night, at midnight, we walked home across the mountain; walked in silence for the most part, with the light of the hurricane lamp casting fantastic and giant shadows on the trees as we passed; up and up through bracken and bush that whispered as we went, and tall trees that glimmered, weird and ghostly in the gloom. The light shone on the back of the man in front of me, and to my queer fancy he looked to be always on the point of stepping into a black abyss. The thousand voices borne of lead and tree came to us in faint noises from right and left. At times I was conscious of a vague terror that shuddered through my very being. And so on, till at length we passed out into a level path that wound its way among tall pines – pines that always seem to tell of grief and longing, and with the immortal song of centuries upon their branches.

Far to the south, just where the faintly starlit sky faded into darkness, a long glow showed where Melbourne’s thousands slept, and below us the lights of Macedon twinkled their invitation. We ascended no longer. Down we stumbled – down a long dark tunnel, as it seemed, slipping on rocks and fallen branches – past huge trunks green with moss and weathered by years of mountain storms. Ever and anon we stooped pass to under an overhanging tree fern, and found ourselves standing in a little sylvan arbour, roofed in from peering eyes and carpeted with fallen leaves. To our left there trickled a tiny mountain stream, which filled each little gully with its music. Long arms of undergrowth touched me as we passed, and unseen spirits came from the shadows to lay their hands of coolness on my brow.

I will never forget that walk across Macedon. As the lights of home shone suddenly bright among the trees, and well-known voices hailed our approach, I felt like one who awakens with a start, leaving behind him a world of dreams. Foolish it may be, and in a sense almost absurdly “concettist” in its imagination; yet my heart tells me that there, in the shade of fern and pine, the ghosts of Wordsworth and our own Kendall walked with me, and my eye saw the pages of the immortal Book –
With holy leaves of rock, and flower, and tree,
And moss, and shining runnel.

And if that be my fancy, all things have become glory to me, and nothing shall deprive me of the glamour and wonder of the world.
– R.G.M.