Part 30 (1/2)

For the kings of the earth, for the faces august Of princes, the millions may shout; To Bill, as he lumbers along in the dust, A bullock's the grandest thing out.

His four-footed friends are the friends of his choice-- No lover is Bill of your dames; But the cattle that turn at the sound of his voice Have the sweetest of features and names.

A father's chief joy is a favourite son, When he reaches some eminent goal, But the pride of Bill's heart is the hairy-legged one That pulls with a will at the pole.

His dray is no living, responsible thing, But he gives it the gender of life; And, seeing his fancy is free in the wing, It suits him as well as a wife.

He thrives like an Arab. Between the two wheels Is his bedroom, where, lying up-curled, He thinks for himself, like a sultan, and feels That his home is the best in the world.

For, even though cattle, like subjects, will break At times from the yoke and the band, Bill knows how to act when his rule is at stake, And is therefore a lord of the land.

Of course he must dream; but be sure that his dreams, If happy, must compa.s.s, alas!

Fat bullocks at feed by improbable streams, Knee-deep in improbable gra.s.s.

No poet is Bill, for the visions of night To him are as visions of day; And the pipe that in sleep he endeavours to light Is the pipe that he smokes on the dray.

To the mighty, magnificent temples of G.o.d, In the hearts of the dominant hills, Bill's eyes are as blind as the fire-blackened clod That burns far away from the rills.

Through beautiful, bountiful forests that screen A marvel of blossoms from heat-- Whose lights are the mellow and golden and green-- Bill walks with irreverent feet.

The manifold splendours of mountain and wood By Bill like nonent.i.ties slip; He loves the black myrtle because it is good As a handle to lash to his whip.

And thus through the world, with a swing in his tread, Our hero self-satisfied goes; With his cabbage-tree hat on the back of his head, And the string of it under his nose.

Poor bullocky Bill! In the circles select Of the scholars he hasn't a place; But he walks like a _man_, with his forehead erect, And he looks at G.o.d's day in the face.

For, rough as he seems, he would shudder to wrong A dog with the loss of a hair; And the angels of s.h.i.+ne and superlative song See his heart and the deity there.

Few know him, indeed; but the beauty that glows In the forest is loveliness still; And Providence helping the life of the rose Is a Friend and a Father to Bill.

Cooranbean

Years fifty, and seven to boot, have smitten the children of men Since sound of a voice or a foot came out of the head of that glen.

The brand of black devil is there--an evil wind moaneth around-- There is doom, there is death in the air: a curse groweth up from the ground!

No noise of the axe or the saw in that hollow unholy is heard, No fall of the hoof or the paw, no whirr of the wing of the bird; But a grey mother down by the sea, as wan as the foam on the strait, Has counted the beads on her knee these forty-nine winters and eight.

Whenever an elder is asked--a white-headed man of the woods-- Of the terrible mystery masked where the dark everlastingly broods, Be sure he will turn to the bay, with his back to the glen in the range, And glide like a phantom away, with a countenance pallid with change.

From the line of dead timber that lies supine at the foot of the glade, The fierce-featured eaglehawk flies--afraid as a dove is afraid; But back in that wilderness dread are a fall and the forks of a ford-- _Ah! pray and uncover your head, and lean like a child on the Lord._

A sinister fog at the wane--at the change of the moon cometh forth Like an ominous ghost in the train of a bitter, black storm of the north!

At the head of the gully unknown it hangs like a spirit of bale.

And the noise of a shriek and a groan strikes up in the gusts of the gale.

In the throat of a feculent pit is the beard of a b.l.o.o.d.y-red sedge; And a foam like the foam of a fit sweats out of the lips of the ledge.

But down in the water of death, in the livid, dead pool at the base-- _Bow low, with inaudible breath, beseech with the hands to the face!_