In the Days When the World Was Wide | Page 8

once I used to sit and rest?Beneath the fading dome,?For there was one that I loved best?Who'd bring the cattle home.
Our yard is fixed with double bails,?Round one the grass is green,?The bush is growing through the rails,?The spike is rusted in;?And 'twas from there his freckled face?Would turn and smile at me --?He'd milk a dozen in the race?While I was milking three.
I milk eleven cows myself?Where once I milked but four;?I set the dishes on the shelf?And close the dairy door;?And when the glaring sunlight fails?And the fire shines through the cracks,?I climb the broken stockyard rails?And watch the bridle-tracks.
He kissed me twice and once again?And rode across the hill,?The pint-pots and the hobble-chain?I hear them jingling still;?He'll come at night or not at all --?He left in dust and heat,?And when the soft, cool shadows fall?Is the best time to meet.
And he is coming back again,?He wrote to let me know,?The floods were in the Darling then --?It seems so long ago;?He'd come through miles of slush and mud,?And it was weary work,?The creeks were bankers, and the flood?Was forty miles round Bourke.
He said the floods had formed a block,?The plains could not be crossed,?And there was foot-rot in the flock?And hundreds had been lost;?The sheep were falling thick and fast?A hundred miles from town,?And when he reached the line at last?He trucked the remnant down.
And so he'll have to stand the cost;?His luck was always bad,?Instead of making more, he lost?The money that he had;?And how he'll manage, heaven knows?(My eyes are getting dim),?He says -- he says -- he don't -- suppose?I'll want -- to -- marry -- him.
As if I wouldn't take his hand?Without a golden glove --?Oh! Jack, you men won't understand?How much a girl can love.?I long to see his face once more --?Jack's dog! thank God, it's Jack! --?(I never thought I'd faint before)?He's coming -- up -- the track.
Out Back
The old year went, and the new returned, in the withering weeks of drought, The cheque was spent that the shearer earned,?and the sheds were all cut out;?The publican's words were short and few,?and the publican's looks were black --?And the time had come, as the shearer knew, to carry his swag Out Back.
For time means tucker, and tramp you must,?where the scrubs and plains are wide,?With seldom a track that a man can trust, or a mountain peak to guide; All day long in the dust and heat -- when summer is on the track -- With stinted stomachs and blistered feet,?they carry their swags Out Back.
He tramped away from the shanty there, when the days were long and hot, With never a soul to know or care if he died on the track or not. The poor of the city have friends in woe, no matter how much they lack, But only God and the swagmen know how a poor man fares Out Back.
He begged his way on the parched Paroo and the Warrego tracks once more, And lived like a dog, as the swagmen do, till the Western stations shore; But men were many, and sheds were full, for work in the town was slack -- The traveller never got hands in wool,?though he tramped for a year Out Back.
In stifling noons when his back was wrung?by its load, and the air seemed dead,?And the water warmed in the bag that hung to his aching arm like lead, Or in times of flood, when plains were seas,?and the scrubs were cold and black,?He ploughed in mud to his trembling knees, and paid for his sins Out Back.
He blamed himself in the year `Too Late' --?in the heaviest hours of life --?'Twas little he dreamed that a shearing-mate had care of his home and wife; There are times when wrongs from your kindred come,?and treacherous tongues attack --?When a man is better away from home, and dead to the world, Out Back.
And dirty and careless and old he wore, as his lamp of hope grew dim; He tramped for years till the swag he bore seemed part of himself to him. As a bullock drags in the sandy ruts, he followed the dreary track, With never a thought but to reach the huts when the sun went down Out Back.
It chanced one day, when the north wind blew?in his face like a furnace-breath,?He left the track for a tank he knew -- 'twas a short-cut to his death; For the bed of the tank was hard and dry, and crossed with many a crack, And, oh! it's a terrible thing to die of thirst in the scrub Out Back.
A drover came, but the fringe of law was eastward many a mile; He never reported the thing he saw, for it was not worth his while. The tanks are full