| |
| I SEE him sit, wild-eyed, alone, | |
| Amidst gaunt, spectral, moonlit gums; | |
| He waits for death: not once a moan | |
| From out his rigid fixed lips comes; | |
| His lank hair falls adown a face | 5 |
| Haggard as any wave-worn stone, | |
| And in his eyes I dimly trace | |
| The memory of a vanished race. | |
| |
| The lofty ancient gum-trees stand, | |
| Each gray and ghostly in the moon, | 10 |
| The giants of an old strange land | |
| That was exultant in its noon | |
| When all our Europe was o’erturned | |
| With deluge and with shifting sand, | |
| With earthquakes that the hills inurned | 15 |
| And central fires that fused and burned. | |
| |
| The moon moves slowly through the vast | |
| And solemn skies; the night is still, | |
| Save when a warrigal springs past | |
| With dismal howl, or when the shrill | 20 |
| Scream of a parrot rings which feels | |
| A twining serpent’s fangs fixed fast, | |
| Or when a gray opossum squeals,— | |
| Or long iguana, as it steals | |
| |
| From bole to bole, disturbs the leaves: | 25 |
| But hushed and still he sits—who knows | |
| That all is o’er for him who weaves | |
| With inner speech, malign, morose, | |
| A curse upon the whites who came | |
| And gathered up his race like sheaves | 30 |
| Of thin wheat, fit but for the flame— | |
| Who shot or spurned them without shame. | |
| |
| He knows he shall not see again | |
| The creeks whereby the lyre-birds sing; | |
| He shall no more upon the plain, | 35 |
| Sun-scorched, and void of water-spring, | |
| Watch the dark cassowaries sweep | |
| In startled flight, or, with spear lain | |
| In ready poise, glide, twist, and creep | |
| Where the brown kangaroo doth leap. | 40 |
| |
| No more in silent dawns he’ll wait | |
| By still lagoons, and mark the flight | |
| Of black swans near: no more elate | |
| Whirl high the boomerang aright | |
| Upon some foe. He knows that now | 45 |
| He too must share his race’s night— | |
| He scarce can know the white man’s plough | |
| Will one day pass above his brow. | |
| |
| Last remnant of the Austral race | |
| He sits and stares, with failing breath: | 50 |
| The shadow deepens on his face, | |
| For ’midst the spectral gums waits death: | |
| A dingo’s sudden howl swells near— | |
| He stares once with a startled gaze, | |
| As half in wonder, half in fear, | 55 |
| Then sinks back on his unknown bier. | |
| |
