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(Excerpt)
A SKY of wind! And while these fitful gusts | |
| Are beating round the windows in the cold, | |
| With sullen sobs of rain, behold I shape | |
| A settler’s story of the wild old times: | |
| One told by camp-fires when the station-drays | 5 |
| Were housed and hidden, forty years ago; | |
| While swarthy drivers smoked their pipes, and drew, | |
| And crowded round the friendly-gleaming flame | |
| That lured the dingo howling from his caves | |
| And brought sharp sudden feet about the brakes. | 10 |
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| A tale of love and death. And shall I say | |
| A tale of love in death; for all the patient eyes | |
| That gathered darkness, watching for a son | |
| And brother, never dreaming of the fate— | |
| The fearful fate he met alone, unknown, | 15 |
| Within the ruthless Australasian wastes? | |
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| For, in a far-off sultry summer rimmed | |
| With thunder-cloud and red with forest-fires, | |
| All day, by ways uncouth and ledges rude, | |
| The wild men held upon a stranger’s trail | 20 |
| Which ran against the rivers and athwart | |
| The gorges of the deep blue western hills. | |
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| And when a cloudy sunset, like the flame | |
| In windy evenings on the Plains of Thirst | |
| Beyond the dead banks of the far Barcoo, | 25 |
| Lay heavy down the topmost peaks, they came | |
| With pent-in breath and stealthy steps, and crouched, | |
| Like snakes, amongst the grasses, till the night | |
| Had covered face from face and thrown the gloom | |
| Of many shadows on the front of things. | 30 |
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| There, in the shelter of a nameless glen | |
| Fenced round by cedars and the tangled growths | |
| Of blackwood stained with brown and shot with gray, | |
| The jaded white man built his fire, and turned | |
| His horse adrift amongst the water-pools | 35 |
| That trickled underneath the yellow leaves | |
| And made a pleasant murmur, like the brooks | |
| Of England through the sweet autumnal noons. | |
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| Then after he had slaked his thirst, and used | |
| The forest-fare, for which a healthful day | 40 |
| Of mountain-life had brought a zest, he took | |
| His axe, and shaped with boughs and wattle-forks | |
| A wurley, fashioned like a bushman’s roof: | |
| The door brought out athwart the strenuous flame: | |
| The back thatched in against a rising wind. | 45 |
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| And, while the sturdy hatchet filled the clifts | |
| With sounds unknown, the immemorial haunts | |
| Of echoes sent their lonely dwellers forth | |
| Who lived a life of wonder: flying round | |
| And round the glen,—what time the kangaroo | 50 |
| Leapt from his lair and huddled with the bats,— | |
| Far-scattering down the wildly startled fells. | |
| Then came the doleful owl; and evermore | |
| The bleak morass gave out the bittern’s call, | |
| The plover’s cry, and many a fitful wail | 55 |
| Of chilly omen, falling on the ear | |
| Like those cold flaws of wind that come and go | |
An hour before the break of day.
Anon | |
| The stranger held from toil, and, settling down, | |
| He drew rough solace from his well-filled pipe | 60 |
| And smoked into the night: revolving there | |
| The primal questions of a squatter’s life; | |
| For in the flats, a short day’s journey past | |
| His present camp, his station yards were kept | |
| With many a lodge and paddock jutting forth | 65 |
| Across the heart of unnamed prairie-lands, | |
| Now loud with bleating and the cattle bells | |
| And misty with the hut-fire’s daily smoke. | |
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| Wide spreading flats, and western spurs of hills | |
| That dipped to plains of dim perpetual blue; | 70 |
| Bold summits set against the thunder-heaps; | |
| And slopes be-hacked and crushed by battling kine! | |
| Where now the furious tumult of their feet | |
| Gives back the dust, and up from glen and brake | |
| Evokes fierce clamor, and becomes indeed | 75 |
| A token of the squatter’s daring life, | |
| Which growing inland—growing year by year, | |
| Doth set us thinking in these latter days, | |
| And makes one ponder of the lonely lands | |
| Beyond the lonely tracks of Burke and Wills, | 80 |
| Where, when the wandering Stuart fixed his camps | |
| In central wastes afar from any home | |
| Or haunt of man, and in the changeless midst | |
| Of sullen deserts and the footless miles | |
| Of sultry silence, all the ways about | 85 |
| Grew strangely vocal and a marvellous noise | |
| Became the wonder of the waxing glooms. * * * * * | |
| Thus passed the time until the moon serene | |
| Stood over high dominion like a dream | |
| Of peace: within the white-transfigured woods, | 90 |
| And o’er the vast dew-dripping wilderness | |
| Of slopes illumined with her silent fires. | |
| Then far beyond the home of pale red leaves | |
| And silver sluices, and the shining stems | |
| Of runnel-blooms, the dreamy wanderer saw, | 95 |
| The wilder for the vision of the moon, | |
| Stark desolations and a waste of plain | |
| All smit by flame and broken with the storms: | |
| Black ghosts of trees, and sapless trunks that stood | |
| Harsh hollow channels of the fiery noise | 100 |
| Which ran from bole to bole a year before, | |
| And grew with ruin, and was like, indeed, | |
| The roar of mighty winds with wintering streams | |
| That foam about the limits of the land, | |
| And mix their swiftness with the flying seas. | 105 |
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| Now, when the man had turned his face about | |
| To take his rest, behold the gem-like eyes | |
| Of ambushed wild things stared from bole and brake | |
| With dumb amaze and faint-recurring glance, | |
| And fear anon that drove them down the brash; | 110 |
| While from his den the dingo, like a scout | |
| In sheltered ways, crept out and cowered near | |
| To sniff the tokens of the stranger’s feast | |
| And marvel at the shadows of the flame. | |
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| Thereafter grew the wind; and chafing depths | 115 |
| In distant waters sent a troubled cry | |
| Across the slumberous forest; and the chill | |
| Of coming rain was on the sleeper’s brow, | |
| When, flat as reptiles hutted in the scrub, | |
| A deadly crescent crawled to where he lay,— | 120 |
| A band of fierce fantastic savages | |
| That, starting naked round the faded fire, | |
| With sudden spears and swift terrific yells, | |
| Came bounding wildly at the white man’s head, | |
| And faced him, staring like a dream of hell! | 125 |
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| Here let me pass! I would not stay to tell | |
| Of hopeless struggles under crushing blows; | |
| Of how the surging fiends with thickening strokes | |
| Howled round the stranger till they drained his strength; | |
| How Love and Life stood face to face with Hate | 130 |
| And Death; and then how Death was left alone | |
| With Night and Silence in the sobbing rains. | |
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| So, after many moons, the searchers found | |
| The body mouldering in the mouldering dell | |
| Amidst the fungi and the bleaching leaves, | 135 |
| And buried it; and raised a stony mound | |
| Which took the mosses: then the place became | |
| The haunt of fearful legends, and the lair | |
| Of bats and adders. * * * * * | |
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