| |
| HOLD hard, Ned! Lift me down once more, and lay me in the shade. | |
| Old man, you’ve had your work cut out to guide | |
| Both horses, and to hold me in the saddle when I swayed, | |
| All through the hot, slow, sleepy, silent ride. | |
| |
| The dawn at ‘Moorabinda’ was a mist rack dull and dense, | 5 |
| The sunrise was a sullen, sluggish lamp; | |
| I was dozing in the gateway of Arbuthnot’s boundary fence, | |
| I was dreaming on the Limestone cattle camp. | |
| |
| We crossed the creek at Carricksford, and sharply through the haze, | |
| And suddenly the sun shot flaming forth; | 10 |
| To southward lay ‘Katâwa’, with the sand peaks all ablaze, | |
| And the flushed fields of Glen Lomond lay to north. | |
| |
| Now westward winds the bridle-path that leads to Lindisfarm, | |
| And yonder looms the double-headed Bluff; | |
| From the far side of the first hill, when the skies are clear and calm, | 15 |
| You can see Sylvester’s woolshed fair enough. | |
| |
| Five miles we used to call it from our homestead to the place | |
| Where the big tree spans the roadway like an arch; | |
| ’Twas here we ran the dingo down that gave us such a chase | |
| Eight years ago—or was it nine?—last March. | 20 |
| |
| ’Twas merry in the glowing morn, among the gleaming grass, | |
| To wander as we’ve wandered many a mile, | |
| And blow the cool tobacco cloud, and watch the white wreaths pass, | |
| Sitting loosely in the saddle all the while. | |
| |
| ’Twas merry ’mid the blackwoods, when we spied the station roofs, | 25 |
| To wheel the wild scrub cattle at the yard, | |
| With a running fire of stockwhips and a fiery run of hoofs; | |
| Oh! the hardest day was never then too hard! | |
| |
| Aye! we had a glorious gallop after ‘Starlight’ and his gang, | |
| When they bolted from Sylvester’s on the flat; | 30 |
| How the sun-dried reed-beds crackled, how the flint-strewn ranges rang | |
| To the strokes of ‘Mountaineer’ and ‘Acrobat’. | |
| |
| Hard behind them in the timber, harder still across the heath, | |
| Close behind them through the tea-tree scrub we dashed; | |
| And the golden-tinted fern-leaves, how they rustled underneath! | 35 |
| And the honeysuckle osiers, how they crashed! | |
| |
| We led the hunt throughout, Ned, on the chestnut and the grey, | |
| And the troopers were three hundred yards behind, | |
| While we emptied our six-shooters on the bushrangers at bay, | |
| In the creek with stunted box-tree for a blind! | 40 |
| |
| There you grappled with the leader, man to man and horse to horse, | |
| And you rolled together when the chestnut reared; | |
| He blazed away and missed you in that shallow water-course— | |
| A narrow shave—his powder singed your beard! | |
| |
| In these hours when life is ebbing, how those days when life was young | 45 |
| Come back to us; how clearly I recall | |
| Even the yarns Jack Hall invented, and the songs Jem Roper sung; | |
| And where are now Jem Roper and Jack Hall? | |
| |
| Aye! nearly all our comrades of the old colonial school, | |
| Our ancient boon companions, Ned, are gone; | 50 |
| Hard livers for the most part, somewhat reckless as a rule,— | |
| It seems that you and I are left alone. | |
| |
| There was Hughes, who got in trouble through that business with the cards: | |
| It matters little what became of him; | |
| But a steer ripped up MacPherson in the Cooraminta yards, | 55 |
| And Sullivan was drowned at Sink-or-swim; | |
| |
| And Mostyn—poor Frank Mostyn—died at last a fearful wreck, | |
| In ‘the horrors’, at the Upper Wandinong, | |
| And Carisbrooke, the rider, at the Horsefall broke his neck— | |
| Faith! the wonder was he saved his neck so long! | 60 |
| |
| Ah, those days and nights we squandered at the Logans’ in the glen— | |
| The Logans, man and wife, have long been dead. | |
| Elsie’s tallest girl seems taller than your little Elsie then; | |
| And Ethel is a woman grown and wed. | |
| |
| I’ve had my share of pastime, and I’ve done my share of toil, | 65 |
| And life is short—the longest life a span; | |
| I care not now to tarry for the corn or for the oil, | |
| Or for the wine that maketh glad the heart of man. | |
| |
| For good undone and gifts misspent and resolutions vain | |
| ’Tis somewhat late to trouble. This I know— | 70 |
| I should live the same life over, if I had to live again, | |
| And the chances are I go where most men go. | |
| |
| The deep blue skies wax dusky, and the tall green trees grow dim, | |
| The sward beneath me seems to heave and fall; | |
| And sickly, smoky shadows through the sleepy sunlight swim, | 75 |
| And on the very sun’s face weave their pall. | |
| |
| Let me slumber in the hollow where the wattle blossoms wave, | |
| With never stone or rail to fence my bed; | |
| Should the sturdy station children pull the blush flowers on my grave, | |
| I may chance to hear them romping overhead. | 80 |
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