The Glen of Arrawatta
A sky of wind! And while these fitful gustsAre beating round the windows in the cold,With sullen sobs of rain, behold I shapeA settler’s story of the wild old times:One told by camp-fires when the station draysWere housed and hidden, forty years ago;While swarthy drivers smoked their pipes, and drew,And crowded round the friendly gleaming flameThat lured the dingo, howling, from his caves,And brought sharp sudden feet about the brakes.
A tale of Love and Death. And shall I sayA tale of love in death—for all the patient eyesThat gathered darkness, watching for a sonAnd 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, rimmedWith 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 athwartThe gorges of the deep blue western hills.
And when a cloudy sunset, like the flameIn windy evenings on the Plains of ThirstBeyond 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 nightHad covered face from face, and thrown the gloomOf many shadows on the front of things.
There, in the shelter of a nameless glen,Fenced round by cedars and the tangled growthsOf blackwood, stained with brown and shot with grey,The jaded white man built his fire, and turnedHis horse adrift amongst the water-poolsThat trickled underneath the yellow leavesAnd made a pleasant murmur, like the brooksOf England through the sweet autumnal noons.
Then, after he had slaked his thirst and usedThe forest fare, for which a healthful dayOf mountain life had brought a zest, he tookHis axe, and shaped with boughs and wattle-forksA wurley, fashioned like a bushman’s roof:The door brought out athwart the strenuous flameThe back thatched in against a rising wind.
And while the sturdy hatchet filled the cliftsWith sounds unknown, the immemorial hauntsOf echoes sent their lonely dwellers forth,Who lived a life of wonder: flying roundAnd round the glen—what time the kangarooLeapt from his lair and huddled with the bats—Far scattering down the wildly startled fells.Then came the doleful owl; and evermoreThe bleak morass gave out the bittern’s call,The plover’s cry, and many a fitful wailOf chilly omen, falling on the earLike those cold flaws of wind that come and goAn hour before the break of day.
AnonThe stranger held from toil, and, settling down,He drew rough solace from his well-filled pipe,And smoked into the night, revolving thereThe primal questions of a squatter’s life;For in the flats, a short day’s journey pastHis present camp, his station yards were kept,With many a lodge and paddock jutting forthAcross the heart of unnamed prairie-lands,Now loud with bleating and the cattle bells,And misty with the hut-fire’s daily smoke.
Wide spreading flats, and western spurs of hillsThat dipped to plains of dim perpetual blue;Bold summits set against the thunder heaps;And slopes behacked and crushed by battling kine,Where now the furious tumult of their feetGives back the dust, and up from glen and brakeEvokes fierce clamour, and becomes indeedA token of the squatter’s daring life,Which, growing inland—growing year by year—Doth set us thinking in these latter days,And makes one ponder of the lonely landsBeyond the lonely tracks of Burke and Wills,Where, when the wandering Stuart fixed his campsIn central wastes, afar from any homeOr haunt of man, and in the changeless midstOf sullen deserts and the footless milesOf sultry silence, all the ways aboutGrew strangely vocal, and a marvellous noiseBecame the wonder of the waxing glooms.
Now, after darkness, like a mighty spellAmongst the hills and dim, dispeopled dells,Had brought a stillness to the soul of things,It came to pass that, from the secret depthsOf dripping gorges, many a runnel-voiceCame, mellowed with the silence, and remainedAbout the caves, a sweet though alien sound;Now rising ever, like a fervent fluteIn moony evenings, when the theme is love;Now falling, as ye hear the Sunday bellsWhile hastening fieldward from the gleaming town.
Then fell a softer mood, and memory pausedWith faithful love, amidst the sainted shrinesOf youth and passion in the valleys pastOf dear delights which never grow again.And if the stranger (who had left behindFar anxious homesteads in a wave-swept isle,To face a fierce sea-circle day by day,And hear at night the dark Atlantic’s moan)Now took a hope and planned a swift return,With wealth and health and with a youth unspent,To those sweet ones that stayed with want at home,Say who shall blame him—though the years are long,And life is hard, and waiting makes the heart grow old?
Thus passed the time, until the moon sereneStood over high dominion like a dreamOf peace: within the white, transfigured woods;And o’er the vast dew-dripping wildernessOf slopes illumined with her silent fires.
Then, far beyond the home of pale red leavesAnd silver sluices, and the shining stemsOf runnel blooms, the dreamy wanderer saw,The wilder for the vision of the moon,Stark desolations and a waste of plain,All smit by flame and broken with the storms;Black ghosts of trees, and sapless trunks that stoodHarsh hollow channels of the fiery noise,Which ran from bole to bole a year before,And grew with ruin, and was like, indeed,The roar of mighty winds with wintering streamsThat foam about the limits of the landAnd mix their swiftness with the flying seas.
Now, when the man had turned his face aboutTo take his rest, behold the gem-like eyesOf ambushed wild things stared from bole and brakeWith dumb amaze and faint-recurring glance,And fear anon that drove them down the brush;While from his den the dingo, like a scoutIn sheltered ways, crept out and cowered nearTo sniff the tokens of the stranger’s feastAnd marvel at the shadows of the flame.
Thereafter grew the wind; and chafing depthsIn distant waters sent a troubled cryAcross the slumb’rous forest; and the chillOf coming rain was on the sleeper’s brow,When, flat as reptiles hutted in the scrub,A deadly crescent crawled to where he lay—A band of fierce, fantastic savagesThat, starting naked round the faded fire,With sudden spears and swift terrific yells,Came bounding wildly at the white man’s head,And faced him, staring like a dream of Hell!
Here let me pass! I would not stay to tellOf hopeless struggles under crushing blows;Of how the surging fiends, with thickening strokes,Howled round the stranger till they drained his strength;How Love and Life stood face to face with HateAnd Death; and then how Death was left aloneWith Night and Silence in the sobbing rains.
So, after many moons, the searchers foundThe body mouldering in the mouldering dellAmidst the fungi and the bleaching leaves,And buried it, and raised a stony moundWhich took the mosses. Then the place becameThe haunt of fearful legends and the lairOf bats and adders.
There he lies and sleepsFrom year to year—in soft Australian nights,And through the furnaced noons, and in the timesOf wind and wet! Yet never mourner comesTo drop upon that grave the Christian’s tearOr pluck the foul, dank weeds of death away.
But while the English autumn filled her lapWith faded gold, and while the reapers cooledTheir flame-red faces in the clover grass,They looked for him at home: and when the frostHad made a silence in the mourning lanesAnd cooped the farmers by December fires,They looked for him at home: and through the daysWhich brought about the million-coloured Spring,With moon-like splendours, in the garden plots,They looked for him at home: while Summer danced,A shining singer, through the tasselled corn,They looked for him at home. From sun to sunThey waited. Season after season went,And Memory wept upon the lonely moors,And hope grew voiceless, and the watchers passed,Like shadows, one by one away.
And heWhose fate was hidden under forest leavesAnd in the darkness of untrodden dellsBecame a marvel. Often by the hearthsIn winter nights, and when the wind was wildOutside the casements, children heard the taleOf how he left their native vales behind(Where he had been a child himself) to shapeNew fortunes for his father’s fallen house;Of how he struggled—how his name became,By fine devotion and unselfish zeal,A name of beauty in a selfish land;And then of how the aching hours went by,With patient listeners praying for the stepWhich never crossed the floor again. So passedThe tale to children; but the bitter endRemained a wonder, like the unknown grave,Alone with God and Silence in the hills.