Bush Hay

The stamp of Scotland is on his face,     But he sailed to the South a lad,     And he does not think of the black bleak hills     And the bitter hard youth he had;     He thinks of a nearer and dearer past     In the bright land far away,     When the teams went up and the teams came down,     In the days when they made bush hay.     The fare was rough and the bush was grim     In the years of his pilgrimage,     But he gained the strength that is still with him     In his hale, late middle age.     He thinks of the girl at the halfway inn     They use as a barn to-day,     Oh, she was a dumpling and he was thin     In the days when they made bush hay.     The ration teams to the Bathurst Plains     Were often a fortnight full.     And they branched all ways in the early days     And back to the port with wool.     They watched for the lights of old Cobb & Co.     That flashed to the West away,     When drivers drove six on a twelve-mile stage     In the days when they made bush hay.     He has made enough, and hes sold his claim,     And he goes by the morning train,     From the gold-field town in the sultry West     To his home by the sea again,     Where a bustling old bodys expecting him     Whose hair is scarcely grey,     And she was the girl of the halfway house     In the days when they made bush hay.