The Christ Of The 'Never'

With eyes that are narrowed to pierce     To the awful horizons of land,     Through the blaze of hot days, and the fierce     White heat-waves that flow on the sand;     Through the Never Land westward and nor'ward,     Bronzed, bearded, and gaunt on the track,     Low-voiced and hard-knuckled, rides forward     The Christ of the Outer Out-back.     For the cause that will ne'er be relinquished     Despite all the cynics on earth,     In the ranks of the bush undistinguished     By manner or dress, if by birth;     God's preacher, of churches unheeded,     God's vineyard, though barren the sod,     Plain spokesman where spokesman is needed,     Rough link 'twixt the bushman and God.     He works where the hearts of a nation     Are withered in flame from the sky,     Where the sinners work out their salvation     In a hell-upon-earth ere they die.     In the camp or the lonely hut lying     In a waste that seems out of God's sight,     He's the doctor, the mate of the dying     Through the smothering heat of the night.     By his work in the hells of the shearers,     Where the drinking is ghastly and grim,     Where the roughest and worst of his hearers     Have listened bareheaded to him;     By his paths through the parched desolation,     Hot rides, and the long, terrible tramps;     By the hunger, the thirst, the privation     Of his work in the farthermost camps;     By his worth in the light that shall search men     And prove, ay! and justify, each,     I place him in front of all churchmen     Who feel not, who know not, but preach!