Christmas Morning in the Bush

Above the skirt of yellow clouds The godlike sun—arrayed In blinding splendour—swiftly rose, And looked athwart the glade, The sleepy dingo watched him break The bonds that curbed his flight, And from his golden tresses shake The fading gems of night. And wild goburras@ laughed aloud Their merry morning songs, As echo answered in the depths With thousand thousand tongues:— The gully depths where many a vine Of ancient growth had crept, To cluster round the hoary pine, Where scanty mosses wept.

Huge stones, and damp and broken crags, In wild chaotic heap, Were lying at the barren base Of the ferny hillside steep. Between those fragments hollows lay, Upfilled with fruiful ground, Were many a modest floweret grew To scent the windbreaths round, As fertile patches live within A dried and worldly heart, When some that look can only see The cold—the barren part. The miser, dead to all but gain, Most senseless of his race, May in his breast some verdure claim, When none that verdure trace.

There time-worn cliffs were jutting out With rough and ragged edges; The snowy mountain-lily slept Behind the rocky ledges, Like some sweet oriental maid Who blindly deems it duty To wear a veil before her face, And hide her peerless beauty; Or like to innocence, that thrives In midst of sin and sorrows; Nor from the cheerless scene around The least infection borrows; But stayeth out her mortal life— Tho' in that lifetime lonely— With virtue's lustre round her heart, And virtue's lustre only.

A patch of sunshine here and there Lay on the leaf-strewn waterpool; Whose tribute trickled down the rocks, In gurgling ripples—clear and cool; As iguanas from the clefts Would steal along with stealthy sound To where the restless eddies roamed, Among the arrowy rushes round, While, scanning them with angry eyes, From off a fallen myrtle log,— That branchless bridged the brushy creek— There stood and barked, a Shepherd's dog. And underneath a neighbouring mass Of wattles—intertwining— His master lay, his back against The grassy banks reclining.

Beneath the shade of iron-barks Stretched o'er the valley's sloping bed, Half hidden in a tea-tree scrub, A flock of dusky sheep were spread; And fitful bleating faintly came On every joyous breath of wind, That up the stony hills would fly, And leave the hollows far behind. Wild tones of music from the creek Were intermingling with the breeze; The loud rich lays of countless birds, Perched on the dark mimosa trees; Those merry birds with wings of light Which rival every golden ray, Out flashing from the lamps of night, Or streaming o'er the brow of day.

Among the gnarly apple trees, A gorgeous tribe of parrots came; And screaming leapt from bough to bough, Like living jets of crimson flame. And where the hill-side growing gums Their web-like foliage upwards threw, Old nature rang with echoes from The loud-voiced mountain cockatoo, And a thousand nameless, twittering things, Among the rustling sapling sprays, Were chiming out their melodies, And dancing, like to fairy fays; Rejoicing in the glorious light That beauteous morning had unfurl'd, To make the heart of nature glad, And clothe with smiles a weeping world,

@ Aboriginal name of the laughing Jackass.