| |
| THE HUT was built of bark and shrunken slabs | |
| That wore the marks of many rains, and showed | |
| Dry flaws, wherein had crept and nestled rot. | |
| Moreover, round the bases of the bark | |
| Were left the tracks of flying forest-fires, | 5 |
| As you may see them on the lower bole | |
| Of every elder of the native woods. | |
| |
| For, ere the early settlers came and stocked | |
| These wilds with sheep and kine, the grasses grew | |
| So that they took the passing pilgrim in, | 10 |
| And whelmed him, like a running sea, from sight. | |
| |
| And therefore, through the fiercer summer months, | |
| While all the swamps were rotten, while the flats | |
| Were baked and broken; when the clayey rifts | |
| Yawned wide, half choked with drifted herbage, past | 15 |
| Spontaneous flames would burst from thence, and race | |
Across the prairies all day long.
At night | |
| The winds were up, and then with fourfold speed, | |
| A harsh gigantic growth of smoke and fire | |
| Would roar along the bottoms, in the wake | 20 |
| Of fainting flocks of parrots, wallaroos, | |
| And wildered wild things, scattering right and left, | |
| For safety vague, throughout the general gloom. | |
| |
| Anon, the nearer hillside growing trees | |
| Would take the surges; thus, from bough to bough, | 25 |
| Was borne the flaming terror! Bole and spire, | |
| Rank after rank, now pillared, ringed, and rolled | |
| In blinding blaze, stood out against the dead | |
| Down-smothered dark, for fifty leagues away. | |
| |
| For fifty leagues! and when the winds were strong, | 30 |
| For fifty more! But, in the olden time, | |
| These fires were counted as the harbingers | |
| Of life-essential storms; since out of smoke | |
| And heat there came across the midnight ways | |
| Abundant comfort, with upgathered clouds, | 35 |
| And runnels babbling of a plenteous fall. | |
| |
| So comes the Southern gale at evenfall | |
| (The swift “brickfielder” of the local folk) | |
| About the streets of Sydney, when the dust | |
| Lies burnt on glaring windows, and the men | 40 |
| Look forth from doors of drouth, and drink the change | |
| With thirsty haste and that most thankful cry | |
| Of, “Here it is—the cool, bright, blessed rain!” | |
| |
| The hut, I say, was built of bark and slabs, | |
| And stood, the centre of a clearing, hemmed | 45 |
| By hurdle-yards, and ancients of the blacks: | |
| These moped about their lazy fires, and sang | |
| Wild ditties of the old days, with a sound | |
| Of sorrow, like an everlasting wind, | |
| Which mingled with the echoes of the noon, | 50 |
| And moaned amongst the noises of the night. | |
| |
| From thence a cattle-track, with link to link, | |
| Ran off against the fishpools, to the gap, | |
| Which sets you face to face with gleaming miles | |
| Of broad Orara, winding in amongst | 55 |
| Black, barren ridges, where the nether spurs | |
| Are fenced about by cotton-scrub, and grass | |
| Blue-bitten with the salt of many droughts. | |
| |
| ’T was here the shepherd housed him every night, | |
| And faced the prospect like a patient soul; | 60 |
| Borne up by some vague hope of better days, | |
| And God’s fine blessing in his faithful wife; | |
| Until the humor of his malady | |
| Took cunning changes from the good to bad, | |
| And laid him lastly on a bed of death. | 65 |
| |
| Two months thereafter, when the summer heat | |
| Had roused the serpent from his rotten lair, | |
| And made a noise of locusts in the boughs, | |
| It came to this, that, as the blood-red sun | |
| Of one fierce day of many slanted down | 70 |
| Obliquely past the nether jags of peaks | |
| And gulfs of mist, the tardy night came vexed | |
| By belted clouds, and scuds that wheeled and whirled | |
| To left and right about the brazen clifts | |
| Of ridges, rigid with a leaden gloom. | 75 |
| |
| Then took the cattle to the forest camps | |
| With vacant terror, and the hustled sheep | |
| Stood dumb against the hurdles, even like | |
| A fallen patch of shadowed mountain snow; | |
| And ever through the curlew’s call afar | 80 |
| The storm grew on, while round the stinted slabs | |
| Sharp snaps and hisses came, and went, and came, | |
| The huddled tokens of a mighty blast | |
| Which ran with an exceeding bitter cry | |
| Across the tumbled fragments of the hills, | 85 |
| And through the sluices of the gorge and glen. | |
| |
| So, therefore, all about the shepherd’s hut | |
| That space was mute, save when the fastened dog, | |
| Without a kennel, caught a passing glimpse | |
| Of firelight moving through the lighted chinks; | 90 |
| For then he knew the hints of warmth within, | |
| And stood, and set his great pathetic eyes, | |
| In wind and wet, imploring to be loosed. | |
| |
| Not often now the watcher left the couch | |
| Of him she watched; since, in his fitful sleep, | 95 |
| His lips would stir to wayward themes, and close | |
| With bodeful catches. Once she moved away, | |
| Half deafened by terrific claps, and stooped, | |
| And looked without, to see a pillar dim | |
Of gathered gusts and fiery rain.
Anon, | 100 |
| The sick man woke, and, startled by the noise, | |
| Stared round the room, with dull delirious sight, | |
| At this wild thing and that; for, through his eyes, | |
| The place took fearful shapes, and fever showed | |
| Strange crosswise lights about his pillow-head. | 105 |
| He, catching there at some phantasmic help, | |
| Sat upright on the bolster, with a cry | |
| Of, “Where is Jesus?—it is bitter cold!” | |
| And then, because the thundercalls outside | |
| Were mixed for him with slanders of the past, | 110 |
| He called his weeping wife by name, and said, | |
| “Come closer, darling! we shall speed away | |
| Across the seas, and seek some mountain home, | |
| Shut in from liars, and the wicked words | |
| That track us day and night, and night and day.” | 115 |
| |
| So waned the sad refrain. And those poor lips, | |
| Whose latest phrases were for peace, grew mute, | |
| And into everlasting silence passed. | |
| |
| As fares a swimmer who hath lost his breath | |
| In wildering seas afar from any help, | 120 |
| Who, fronting Death, can never realize | |
| The dreadful presence, but is prone to clutch | |
| At every weed upon the weltering wave; | |
| So fared the watcher, poring o’er the last | |
| Of him she loved, with dazed and stupid stare; | 125 |
| Half conscious of the sudden loss and lack | |
| Of all that bound her life, but yet without | |
| The power to take her mighty sorrow in. | |
| |
| Then came a patch or two of starry sky; | |
| And through a reef of cloven thunder-cloud | 130 |
| The soft moon looked: a patient face beyond | |
| The fierce impatient shadows of the slopes, | |
| And the harsh voices of the broken hills! | |
| A patient face, and one which came and wrought | |
| A lovely silence like a silver mist | 135 |
| Across the rainy relics of the storm. | |
| |
| For in the breaks and pauses of her light | |
| The gale died out in gusts; yet evermore | |
| About the roof-tree, on the dripping eaves, | |
| The damp wind loitered; and a fitful drift | 140 |
| Sloped through the silent curtains, and athwart | |
The dead.
There, when the glare had dropped behind | |
| A mighty ridge of gloom, the woman turned | |
| And sat in darkness face to face with God, | |
| And said—“I know,” she said, “that Thou art wise; | 145 |
| That when we build and hope, and hope and build, | |
| And see our best things fall, it comes to pass | |
| Forevermore that we must turn to Thee! | |
| And therefore now, because I cannot find | |
| The faintest token of Divinity | 150 |
| In this my latest sorrow, let thy light | |
| Inform mine eyes, so I may learn to look | |
| On something past the sight which shuts, and blinds, | |
| And seems to drive me wholly, Lord, from thee.” | |
| |
| Now waned the moon beyond complaining depths; | 155 |
| And, as the dawn looked forth from showery woods | |
| (Whereon had dropt a hint of red and gold), | |
| There went about the crooked cavern-eaves | |
| Low, flute-like echoes with a noise of wings | |
| And waters flying down far-hidden fells. | 160 |
| Then might be seen the solitary owl, | |
| Perched in the clefts; scared at the coming light, | |
| And staring outward (like a sea-shelled thing | |
| Chased to his cover by some bright fierce foe) | |
| As at a monster in the middle waste. | 165 |
| |
| At last the great kingfisher came and called | |
| Across the hollows loud with early whips, | |
| And lighted, laughing, on the shepherd’s hut, | |
| And roused the widow from a swoon like death. | |
| |
| This day, and after it was noised abroad, | 170 |
| By blacks, and straggling horsemen on the roads, | |
| That he was dead “who had been sick so long,” | |
| There flocked a troop from far-surrounding runs | |
| To see their neighbor and to bury him. | |
| And men who had forgotten how to cry | 175 |
| (Rough flinty fellows of the native bush) | |
| Now learned the bitter way, beholding there | |
| The wasted shadow of an iron frame | |
| Brought down so low by years of fearful pain; | |
| And marking, too, the woman’s gentle face, | 180 |
| And all the pathos in her moaned reply | |
| Of, “Masters, we have lived in better days.” | |
| |
| One stooped—a stockman from the nearer hills— | |
| To loose his wallet-strings, from whence he took | |
| A bag of tea, and laid it on her lap; | 185 |
| Then, sobbing, “God will help you, missus, yet,” | |
| He sought his horse with most bewildered eyes, | |
| And, spurring swiftly, galloped down the glen. | |
| |
| Where black Orara nightly chafes his brink, | |
| Midway between lamenting lines of oak | 190 |
| And Warra’s gap, the shepherd’s grave was built. | |
| And there the wild-dog pauses, in the midst | |
| Of moonless watches: howling through the gloom | |
| At hopeless shadows flitting to and fro, | |
| What time the east-wind hums his darkest hymn, | 195 |
| And rains beat heavy on the ruined leaf. | |
| |
| There, while the Autumn in the cedar trees | |
| Sat cooped about by cloudy evergreens, | |
| The widow sojourned on the silent road, | |
| And mutely faced the barren mound, and plucked | 200 |
| A straggling shrub from thence, and passed away, | |
| Heart-broken, on to Sydney; where she took | |
| Her passage, in an English vessel bound | |
| To London, for her home of other years. | |
| |
| At rest! Not near, with sorrow on his grave, | 205 |
| And roses quickened into beauty,—wrapt | |
| In all the pathos of perennial bloom; | |
| But far from these, beneath the fretful clay | |
| Of lands within the lone perpetual cry | |
| Of hermit plovers and the night-like oaks, | 210 |
| All moaning for the peace which never comes. | |
| |
| At rest! And she who sits and waits behind | |
| Is in the shadows; but her faith is sure, | |
| And one fine promise of the coming days | |
| Is breaking, like a blessed morning, far | 215 |
| On hills “that slope through darkness up to God.” | |
| |
