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| ’T IS cold and rainy on this winter night, | |
| But one whom I have known is with his flocks | |
| At noonday in the summer of the South. | |
| Before the sun the colors of the spring | |
| Fade from the forest, and the odorous air | 5 |
| Is heated through and through. He takes his seat | |
| On other earth, surrounded by strange plants. | |
| He slays the wild dog and the stinging snake. | |
| He has a rifle by him in the grass, | |
| Wherewith he hunts the leaping kangaroo. | 10 |
| His dogs keep watch beside him. There he sleeps,— | |
| What lies between us? All this bulky globe, | |
| A chest of secrets, with a heart of fire | |
And crust of fossils.
When the summer night | |
| Falls over that great island in the south | 15 |
| Whereon his flocks repose, the Polar Star, | |
| Once never lost by ancient mariners | |
| In their confined adventures on the sea, | |
| Peers not above the horizon,—lost to him | |
| Forever; but the splendid Southern Cross, | 20 |
| And those two clouds which bear Magellan’s name, | |
| Two clouds of clustered stars in the clear sky, | |
| Hang nightly, far above the winds that blow | |
| Around our planet, changeless films of light. | |
| And when Orion and the wandering moon | 25 |
| Come with familiar aspect, they remind | |
| The exile of the land on which they shone | |
| When he first saw them, and his earliest friends, | |
| And hills and streams and meadows of his youth, | |
| And this old gabled house where he was born. | 30 |
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