On the Paroo

As when the strong stream of a wintering sea     Rolls round our coast, with bodeful breaks of storm,     And swift salt rain, and bitter wind that saith     Wild things and woeful of the White South Land     Alone with God and silence in the cold     As when this cometh, men from dripping doors     Look forth, and shudder for the mariners     Abroad, so we for absent brothers looked     In days of drought, and when the flying floods     Swept boundless; roaring down the bald, black plains     Beyond 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 pools     And grass as dry as ashes: then it was     Our kinsmen started for the lone Paroo,     From point to point, with patient strivings, sheer     Across the horrors of the windless downs,     Blue gleaming like a sea of molten steel.     But never drought had broke them: never flood     Had 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 outlive     The crimson days and dull, dead nights of thirst     Like camels: yet of what avail was strength     Alone to them though it was like the rocks     On stormy mountains in the bloody time     When fierce sleep caught them in the camps at rest,     And violent darkness gripped the life in them     And whelmed them, as an eagle unawares     Is whelmed and slaughtered in a sudden snare.     All murdered by the blacks; smit while they lay     In silver dreams, and with the far, faint fall     Of many waters breaking on their sleep!     Yea, in the tracts unknown of any man     Save savages the dim-discovered ways     Of footless silence or unhappy winds     The wild men came upon them, like a fire     Of desert thunder; and the fine, firm lips     That touched a mothers 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 toiled     And tripped and thirsted, like these men of ours;     For, verily, I say that not so deep     Their bones are that the scattered drift and dust     Of gusty days will never leave them bare.     O dear, dead, bleaching bones! I know of those     Who have the wild, strong will to go and sit     Outside all things with you, and keep the ways     Aloof from bats, and snakes, and trampling feet     That smite your peace and theirs who have the heart,     Without the lusty limbs, to face the fire     And moonless midnights, and to be, indeed,     For very sorrow, like a moaning wind     In wintry forests with perpetual rain.     Because of this because of sisters left     With 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 these     That should have come with age, that come with pain     O Master! Father! sitting where our eyes     Are tired of looking, say for once are we     Are we to set our lips with weary smiles     Before the bitterness of Life and Death,     And call it honey, while we bear away     A taste like wormwood?     Turn thyself, and sing     Sing, Son of Sorrow! Is there any gain     For 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 sighs     Than frost; or any light to come for those     Who stand and mumble in the alien streets     With heads as grey as Winter? any balm     For pleading women, and the love that knows     Of nothing left to love?     They sleep a sleep     Unknown of dreams, these darling friends of ours.     And we who taste the core of many tales     Of tribulation we whose lives are salt     With tears indeed we therefore hide our eyes     And weep in secret, lest our grief should risk     The rest that hath no hurt from daily racks     Of fiery clouds and immemorial rains.