| Walter Murdoch (1874–1970). The Oxford Book of Australasian Verse. 1918. |
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| 123. The Old Place |
| | | (New Zealand) |
| | | By Blanche Edith Baughan |
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| SO the last day’s come at last, the close of my fifteen year— | |
| The end of the hope, an’ the struggles, an’ messes I’ve put in here. | |
| All of the shearings over, the final mustering done,— | |
| Eleven hundred an’ fifty for the incoming man, near on. | |
| Over five thousand I drove ’em, mob by mob, down the coast; | 5 |
| Eleven-fifty in fifteen year…it isn’t much of a boast. | |
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| Oh, it’s a bad old place! Blown out o’ your bed half the nights, | |
| And in the summer the grass burnt shiny an’ bare as your hand, on the heights: | |
| The creek dried up by November, and in May a thundering roar | |
| That carries down toll o’ your stock to salt ’em whole on the shore. | 10 |
| Clear’d I have, and I’ve clear’d an’ clear’d, yet everywhere, slap in your face, | |
| Briar, tauhinu, 1 an’ ruin! God! it’s a brute of a place. | |
| …An’ the house got burnt which I built, myself, with all that worry and pride; | |
| Where the Missus was always homesick, and where she took fever, and died. | |
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| Yes, well! I’m leaving the place. Apples look red on that bough. | 15 |
| I set the slips with my own hand. Well—they’re the other man’s now. | |
| The breezy bluff: an’ the clover that smells so over the land, | |
| Drowning the reek o’ the rubbish, that plucks the profit out o’ your hand: | |
| That bit o’ Bush paddock I fall’d myself, an’ watch’d, each year, come clean | |
| (Don’t it look fresh in the tawny? A scrap of Old-Country green): | 20 |
| This air, all healthy with sun an’ salt, an’ bright with purity: | |
| An’ the glossy karakas 2 there, twinkling to the big blue twinkling sea: | |
| Aye, the broad blue sea beyond, an’ the gem-clear cove below, | |
| Where the boat I’ll never handle again; sits rocking to and fro: | |
| There’s the last look to it all! an’ now for the last upon | 25 |
| This room, where Hetty was born, an’ my Mary died, an’ John… | |
| Well! I’m leaving the poor old place, and it cuts as keen as a knife; | |
| The place that’s broken my heart—the place where I’ve lived my life. | |
| | | Note 1. Tauhinu, an aromatic shrub, infesting poor soil. [back] |
| Note 2. Karaka, a tree, with a shining dark-green foliage. [back] |
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