Page:Reuben and other poems.pdf/88

 The creek dried up by November, and in May a thundering roar That carries down toll o’ your stock to salt ’em whole on the shore. Clear’d I have, and I’ve clear’d an’ clear’d, yet everywhere, slap in your face, Briar, tauhinu, an’ ruin!—God! it’s a brute of a place. . . . An’ the house got burnt which I built, myself, with all that worry and pride; Where the Missus was always homesick, and where she took fever, and died.

Yes, well! I’m leaving the place. Apples look red on that bough. I set the slips with my own hand. Well—they’re the other man’s now. The breezy bluff: an’ the clover that smells so over the land, Drowning the reek o’ the rubbish, that plucks the profit out o’ your hand: That bit o’ Bush paddock I fall’d myself, an’ watch’d, each year, come clean (Don’t it look fresh in the tawny? A scrap of Old-Country green): This air, all healthy with sun an’ salt, an’ bright with purity: