Page:The Poems of Henry Kendall (1920).djvu/120



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,

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

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,

Spontaneous flames would burst from thence and race

Across the prairies all day long.

At night

The winds were up, and then, with four-fold speed

A harsh gigantic growth of smoke and fire

Would roar along the bottoms, in the wake

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

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

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

And runnels babbling of a plenteous fall.