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 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.
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,Within the ruthless Australasian wastes?
For in a far-off sultry Summer rimmed With thundercloud and red with forest-fires,All day,by ways uncouth and ledges rude,The wild men held upon a stranger's trail Which ran against the rivers and athwart The gorges of the deep blue western hills.
And when a cloudy sunset,like the flame In windy evenings on the Plains of Thirst Beyond the dead banks of the far Barcoo,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.
There,in the shelter of a nameless glen Fenced round by cedars and the tangled growths Of blackwood,stained with brown and shot with grey,The jaded white man built his fire,and turned His horse adrift amongst the water-pools That trickled underneath the yellow leaves And made a pleasant murmur,like the brooks Of England through the sweet autumnal noons.
Then,after he had slaked his thirst,and used The forest-fare,for which a healthful day 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.
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 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 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 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.Across the heart of unnamed prairie-lands,Now loud with bleating and the cattle bells And misty with the hut-fire's daily smoke.
Wide spreading flats,and western spurs of hills That dipped to plains of dim perpetual blue;Bold summits set against the thunder-heaps;
And slopes behacked 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 clamour,and becomes indeed 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,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 Grew strangely vocal and a marvellous noise Became the wonder of the waxing glooms.
Now,after darkness,like a mighty spell Amongst the hills and dim dispeopled dells,Had brought a stillness to the soul of things,It came to pass that,from the secret depths.Of dripping gorges,many a runnel-voice Came,mellowed with the silence,and remained About the caves,a sweet though alien sound:
Now rising ever,like a fervent flute In moony evenings,when the theme is love:
Now falling,as ye hear the Sunday bells While hastening fieldward from the gleaming town.
