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(Excerpt)
AS when the strong stream of a wintering sea | |
| Rolls round our coast, with bodeful breaks of storm, | |
| And swift salt rain, and bitter wind that saith | |
| Wild things and woeful of the White South Land | |
| Alone with God and Silence in the cold,— | 5 |
| As when this cometh, men from dripping doors | |
| Look forth, and shudder for the mariners | |
| Abroad, so we for absent brothers looked | |
| In days of drought, and when the flying floods | |
| Swept boundless, roaring down the bald, black plains | 10 |
| Beyond the farthest spur of western hills. | |
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| For where the Barwan cuts a rotten land, | |
| Or lies unshaken, like a great blind creek, | |
| Between hot mouldering banks, it came to this, | |
| All in a time of short and thirsty sighs, | 15 |
| That thirty rainless months had left the pools | |
| And grass as dry as ashes; then it was | |
| Our kinsmen started for the lone Paroo, | |
| From point to point, with patient strivings, sheer | |
| Across the horrors of the windless downs, | 20 |
| Blue-gleaming like a sea of molten steel. | |
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| But never drought had broke them, never flood | |
| Had quenched them; they with mighty youth and health, | |
| And thews and sinews knotted like the trees,— | |
| They, like the children of the native woods, | 25 |
| Could stem the strenuous waters, or outlive | |
| The crimson days and dull dead nights of thirst | |
| Like camels! yet of what avail was strength | |
| Alone to them—though it was like the rocks | |
| On stormy mountains—in the bloody time | 30 |
| When fierce sleep caught them in the camps at rest, | |
| And violent darkness gripped the life in them | |
| And whelmed them, as an eagle unawares | |
| Is whelmed and slaughtered in a sudden snare? | |
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| All murdered by the blacks! smit while they lay | 35 |
| In silver dreams, and with the far faint fall | |
| Of many waters breaking on their sleep! | |
| Yea, in the tracts unknown of any man | |
| Save savages,—the dim-discovered ways | |
| Of footless silence or unhappy winds,— | 40 |
| The wild men came upon them, like a fire | |
| Of desert thunder; and the fine firm lips | |
| That touched a mother’s lips a year before, | |
| And hands that knew a dearer hand than life, | |
| Were hewn like sacrifice before the stars, | 45 |
| And left with hooting owls, and blowing clouds, | |
| And falling leaves, and solitary wings! | |
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| Ay, you may see their graves,—you who have toiled | |
| And tripped and thirsted, like these men of ours; | |
| For verily I say that not so deep | 50 |
| Their bones are that the scattered drift and dust | |
| Of gusty days will never leave them bare. | |
| O dear, dead, bleaching bones! I know of those | |
| Who have the wild strong will to go and sit | |
| Outside all things with you, and keep the ways | 55 |
| Aloof from bats, and snakes, and trampling feet | |
| That smite your peace and theirs,—who have the heart | |
| Without the lusty limbs to face the fire, | |
| And moonless midnights, and to be indeed, | |
| For very sorrow, like a moaning wind | 60 |
| In wintry forests with perpetual rain. * * * * * | |
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