On the Paroo
—* The name of a watercourse, often dry, which in flood-timereaches the river Darling.—
As when the strong stream of a wintering seaRolls round our coast, with bodeful breaks of storm,And swift salt rain, and bitter wind that saithWild things and woeful of the White South LandAlone with God and silence in the cold—As when this cometh, men from dripping doorsLook forth, and shudder for the marinersAbroad, so we for absent brothers lookedIn days of drought, and when the flying floodsSwept boundless; roaring down the bald, black plainsBeyond the farthest spur of western hills.
For where the Barwon cuts a rotten land,Or lies unshaken, like a great blind creek,Between hot mouldering banks, it came to this,All in a time of short and thirsty sighs,That thirty rainless months had left the poolsAnd grass as dry as ashes: then it wasOur kinsmen started for the lone Paroo,From point to point, with patient strivings, sheerAcross the horrors of the windless downs,Blue gleaming like a sea of molten steel.
But never drought had broke them: never floodHad quenched them: they with mighty youth and health,And thews and sinews knotted like the trees—They, like the children of the native woods,Could stem the strenuous waters, or outliveThe crimson days and dull, dead nights of thirstLike camels: yet of what avail was strengthAlone to them—though it was like the rocksOn stormy mountains—in the bloody timeWhen fierce sleep caught them in the camps at rest,And violent darkness gripped the life in themAnd whelmed them, as an eagle unawaresIs whelmed and slaughtered in a sudden snare.
All murdered by the blacks; smit while they layIn silver dreams, and with the far, faint fallOf many waters breaking on their sleep!Yea, in the tracts unknown of any manSave savages—the dim-discovered waysOf footless silence or unhappy winds—The wild men came upon them, like a fireOf desert thunder; and the fine, firm lipsThat touched a mother’s lips a year before,And hands that knew a dearer hand than life,Were hewn—a sacrifice before the stars,And left with hooting owls and blowing clouds,And falling leaves and solitary wings!
Aye, you may see their graves—you who have toiledAnd tripped and thirsted, like these men of ours;For, verily, I say that not so deepTheir bones are that the scattered drift and dustOf gusty days will never leave them bare.O dear, dead, bleaching bones! I know of thoseWho have the wild, strong will to go and sitOutside all things with you, and keep the waysAloof from bats, and snakes, and trampling feetThat smite your peace and theirs—who have the heart,Without the lusty limbs, to face the fireAnd moonless midnights, and to be, indeed,For very sorrow, like a moaning windIn wintry forests with perpetual rain.
Because of this—because of sisters leftWith desperate purpose and dishevelled hair,And broken breath, and sweetness quenched in tears—Because of swifter silver for the head,And furrows for the face—because of theseThat should have come with age, that come with pain—O Master! Father! sitting where our eyesAre tired of looking, say for once are we—Are we to set our lips with weary smilesBefore the bitterness of Life and Death,And call it honey, while we bear awayA taste like wormwood?
Turn thyself, and sing—Sing, Son of Sorrow! Is there any gainFor breaking of the loins, for melting eyes,And knees as weak as water?—any peace,Or hope for casual breath and labouring lips,For clapping of the palms, and sharper sighsThan frost; or any light to come for thoseWho stand and mumble in the alien streetsWith heads as grey as Winter?—any balmFor pleading women, and the love that knowsOf nothing left to love?
They sleep a sleepUnknown of dreams, these darling friends of ours.And we who taste the core of many talesOf tribulation—we whose lives are saltWith tears indeed—we therefore hide our eyesAnd weep in secret, lest our grief should riskThe rest that hath no hurt from daily racksOf fiery clouds and immemorial rains.