Page:The Poems of Henry Kendall (1920).djvu/106

 On the topmost peak of mountains bleak

The south wind sobs, and strays

Through moaning pine and turpentine,

And the rippling runnel ways;

And strong streams flow, and great mists go,

Where the warrigal starts to hear

The watch-dog's bark break sharp in the dark,

And flees like a phantom of fear.

The swift rains beat, and the thunders fleet

On the wings of the fiery gale,

And down in the glen of pool and fen,

The wild gums whistle and wail,

As over the plains and past the chains

Of waterholes glimmering deep,

The warrigal flies from the shepherd's cries,

And the clamour of dogs and sheep.

He roves through the lands of sultry sands,

He hunts in the iron range,

Untamed as surge of the far sea verge,

And fierce and fickle and strange.

The white man's track and the haunts of the black

He shuns, and shudders to see;

For his joy he tastes in lonely wastes

Where his mates are torrent and tree.

the storm-cloven Cape

The bitter waves roll,

With the bergs of the Pole,

And the darks and the damps of the Northern Sea:

For the storm-cloven Cape

Is an alien Shape

With a fearful face; and it moans, and it stands

Outside all lands

Everlastingly!

When the fruits of the year

Have been gathered in Spain,

And the Indian rain