A Death in the Bush
The hut was built of bark and shrunken slabs,That wore the marks of many rains, and showedDry flaws wherein had crept and nestled rot.Moreover, round the bases of the barkWere left the tracks of flying forest fires,As you may see them on the lower boleOf every elder of the native woods.
For, ere the early settlers came and stockedThese wilds with sheep and kine, the grasses grewSo that they took the passing pilgrim inAnd whelmed him, like a running sea, from sight.
And therefore, through the fiercer summer months,While all the swamps were rotten; while the flatsWere baked and broken; when the clayey riftsYawned wide, half-choked with drifted herbage past,Spontaneous flames would burst from thence and raceAcross the prairies all day long.
At nightThe winds were up, and then, with four-fold speedA harsh gigantic growth of smoke and fireWould roar along the bottoms, in the wakeOf 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 treesWould take the surges; thus from bough to boughWas borne the flaming terror! Bole and spire,Rank after rank, now pillared, ringed, and rolledIn blinding blaze, stood out against the dead,Down-smothered dark, for fifty leagues away.
For fifty leagues; and when the winds were strongFor fifty more! But in the olden timeThese fires were counted as the harbingersOf life-essential storms, since out of smokeAnd heat there came across the midnight waysAbundant comfort, with upgathered cloudsAnd runnels babbling of a plenteous fall.
So comes the southern gale at evenfall(The swift brick-fielder of the local folk),About the streets of Sydney, when the dustLies burnt on glaring windows, and the menLook forth from doors of drouth and drink the changeWith thirsty haste, and that most thankful cryOf “Here it is—the cool, bright, blessed rain!”
The hut, I say, was built of bark and slabs,And stood, the centre of a clearing, hemmedBy hurdle-yards, and ancients of the blacks;These moped about their lazy fires, and sangWild ditties of the old days, with a soundOf sorrow, like an everlasting windWhich mingled with the echoes of the noonAnd moaned amongst the noises of the night.
From thence a cattle track, with link to link,Ran off against the fish-pools to the gapWhich sets you face to face with gleaming milesOf broad Orara*, winding in amongstBlack, barren ridges, where the nether spursAre fenced about by cotton scrub, and grassBlue-bitten with the salt of many droughts.
—* A tributary of the river Clarence, N.S.W.—
’Twas here the shepherd housed him every night,And faced the prospect like a patient soul,Borne up by some vague hope of better days,And God’s fine blessing in his faithful wife,Until the humour of his maladyTook cunning changes from the good to bad,And laid him lastly on a bed of death.
Two months thereafter, when the summer heatHad roused the serpent from his rotten lair,And made a noise of locusts in the boughs,It came to this, that as the blood-red sunOf one fierce day of many slanted downObliquely past the nether jags of peaksAnd gulfs of mist, the tardy night came vexedBy belted clouds and scuds that wheeled and whirledTo left and right about the brazen cliftsOf ridges, rigid with a leaden gloom.
Then took the cattle to the forest campsWith vacant terror, and the hustled sheepStood dumb against the hurdles, even likeA fallen patch of shadowed mountain snow;And ever through the curlew’s call afar,The storm grew on, while round the stinted slabsSharp snaps and hisses came, and went, and came,The huddled tokens of a mighty blastWhich ran with an exceeding bitter cryAcross the tumbled fragments of the hills,And through the sluices of the gorge and glen.
So, therefore, all about the shepherd’s hutThat space was mute, save when the fastened dog,Without a kennel, caught a passing glimpseOf firelight moving through the lighted chinks,For then he knew the hints of warmth within,And stood and set his great pathetic eyes,In wind and wet, imploring to be loosed.
Not often now the watcher left the couchOf him she watched, since in his fitful sleepHis lips would stir to wayward themes, and closeWith bodeful catches. Once she moved away,Half-deafened by terrific claps, and stoopedAnd looked without—to see a pillar dimOf gathered gusts and fiery rain.
AnonThe sick man woke, and, startled by the noise,Stared round the room with dull, delirious sight,At this wild thing and that: for through his eyesThe place took fearful shapes, and fever showedStrange crosswise lights about his pillow-head.He, catching there at some phantasmic help,Sat upright on the bolster with a cryOf “Where is Jesus? It is bitter cold!”And then, because the thunder-calls outsideWere mixed for him with slanders of the past,He called his weeping wife by name, and said,“Come closer, darling! We shall speed awayAcross the seas, and seek some mountain homeShut in from liars and the wicked wordsThat track us day and night and night and day.”So waned the sad refrain. And those poor lips,Whose latest phrases were for peace, grew mute,And into everlasting silence passed.
As fares a swimmer who hath lost his breathIn ‘wildering seas afar from any help—Who, fronting Death, can never realizeThe dreadful Presence, but is prone to clutchAt every weed upon the weltering wave—So fared the watcher, poring o’er the lastOf him she loved, with dazed and stupid stare;Half conscious of the sudden loss and lackOf all that bound her life, but yet withoutThe power to take her mighty sorrow in.
Then came a patch or two of starry sky,And through a reef of cloven thunder-cloudThe soft moon looked: a patient face beyondThe fierce impatient shadows of the slopesAnd the harsh voices of the broken hills!A patient face, and one which came and wroughtA lovely silence, like a silver mist,Across the rainy relics of the storm.
For in the breaks and pauses of her lightThe gale died out in gusts: yet, evermoreAbout the roof-tree on the dripping eaves,The damp wind loitered, and a fitful driftSloped through the silent curtains, and athwartThe dead.
There, when the glare had dropped behindA mighty ridge of gloom, the woman turnedAnd sat in darkness, face to face with God,And said, “I know,” she said, “that Thou art wise;That when we build and hope, and hope and build,And see our best things fall, it comes to passFor evermore that we must turn to Thee!And therefore, now, because I cannot findThe faintest token of DivinityIn this my latest sorrow, let Thy lightInform mine eyes, so I may learn to lookOn something past the sight which shuts and blindsAnd seems to drive me wholly, Lord, from Thee.”
Now waned the moon beyond complaining depths,And as the dawn looked forth from showery woods(Whereon had dropped a hint of red and gold)There went about the crooked cavern-eavesLow flute-like echoes, with a noise of wings,And waters flying down far-hidden fells.Then might be seen the solitary owlPerched in the clefts, scared at the coming light,And staring outward (like a sea-shelled thingChased to his cover by some bright, fierce foe),As at a monster in the middle waste.
At last the great kingfisher came, and calledAcross the hollows, loud with early whips,And lighted, laughing, on the shepherd’s hut,And roused the widow from a swoon like death.
This day, and after it was noised abroadBy blacks, and straggling horsemen on the roads,That he was dead “who had been sick so long”,There flocked a troop from far-surrounding runs,To see their neighbour, and to bury him;And men who had forgotten how to cry(Rough, flinty fellows of the native bush)Now learned the bitter way, beholding thereThe wasted shadow of an iron frame,Brought down so low by years of fearful pain,And marking, too, the woman’s gentle face,And all the pathos in her moaned replyOf “Masters, we have lived in better days.”
One stooped—a stockman from the nearer hills—To loose his wallet-strings, from whence he tookA bag of tea, and laid it on her lap;Then sobbing, “God will help you, missus, yet,”He sought his horse, with most bewildered eyes,And, spurring, swiftly galloped down the glen.
Where black Orara nightly chafes his brink,Midway between lamenting lines of oakAnd Warra’s Gap, the shepherd’s grave was built;And there the wild dog pauses, in the midstOf moonless watches, howling through the gloomAt hopeless shadows flitting to and fro,What time the east wind hums his darkest hymn,And rains beat heavy on the ruined leaf.
There, while the autumn in the cedar treesSat cooped about by cloudy evergreensThe widow sojourned on the silent road,And mutely faced the barren mound, and pluckedA straggling shrub from thence, and passed away,Heart-broken, on to Sydney, where she tookHer passage in an English vessel boundTo London, for her home of other years.
At rest! Not near, with Sorrow on his grave,And roses quickened into beauty—wraptIn all the pathos of perennial bloom;But far from these, beneath the fretful clayOf lands within the lone perpetual cryOf hermit plovers and the night-like oaks,All moaning for the peace which never comes.
At rest! And she who sits and waits behindIs in the shadows; but her faith is sure,And one fine promise of the coming daysIs breaking, like a blessed morning, farOn hills that “slope through darkness up to God.”