Page:The Poems of Henry Kendall (1920).djvu/162

 And brother. never dreaming of the fate—

The fearful fate he met alone, unknown,

Within the ruthless Australasian wastes?

For in a far-off, sultry summer, rimmed

With thundercloud and red with forest fires,

All day, by ways uncouth and ledges rude,

The wild men held upon a stranger's trail,

Which ran against the rivers and athwart

The gorges of the deep blue western hills.

And when a cloudy sunset, like the flame

In windy evenings on the Plains of Thirst

Beyond the dead banks of the far Barcoo,

Lay heavy down the topmost peaks, they came,

With pent-in breath and stealthy steps, and crouched,

Like snakes, amongst the grasses, till the night

Had covered face from face, and thrown the gloom

Of many shadows on the front of things.

There, in the shelter of a nameless glen,

Fenced round by cedars and the tangled growths

Of blackwood, stained with brown and shot with grey,

The jaded white man built his fire, and turned

His horse adrift amongst the water-pools

That trickled underneath the yellow leaves

And made a pleasant murmur, like the brooks

Of England through the sweet autumnal noons.

Then, after he had slaked his thirst and used

The forest fare, for which a healthful day

Of mountain life had brought a zest, he took

His axe, and shaped with boughs and wattle-forks

A wurley, fashioned like a bushman's roof:

The door brought out athwart the strenuous flame

The back thatched in against a rising wind.

And while the sturdy hatchet filled the clifts

With sounds unknown, the immemorial haunts

Of echoes sent their lonely dwellers forth,