The Glen of Arrawatta

A sky of wind! And while these fitful gusts     Are beating round the windows in the cold,     With sullen sobs of rain, behold I shape     A settlers story of the wild old times:     One told by camp-fires when the station drays     Were housed and hidden, forty years ago;     While swarthy drivers smoked their pipes, and drew,     And crowded round the friendly gleaming flame     That lured the dingo, howling, from his caves,     And brought sharp sudden feet about the brakes.     A tale of Love and Death. And shall I say     A tale of love in death for all the patient eyes     That gathered darkness, watching for a son     And 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, rimmed     With thundercloud and red with forest fires,     All day, by ways uncouth and ledges rude,     The wild men held upon a strangers trail,     Which ran against the rivers and athwart     The gorges of the deep blue western hills.     And when a cloudy sunset, like the flame     In windy evenings on the Plains of Thirst     Beyond 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 night     Had covered face from face, and thrown the gloom     Of many shadows on the front of things.     There, in the shelter of a nameless glen,     Fenced round by cedars and the tangled growths     Of blackwood, stained with brown and shot with grey,     The jaded white man built his fire, and turned     His horse adrift amongst the water-pools     That trickled underneath the yellow leaves     And made a pleasant murmur, like the brooks     Of England through the sweet autumnal noons.     Then, after he had slaked his thirst and used     The forest fare, for which a healthful day     Of mountain life had brought a zest, he took     His axe, and shaped with boughs and wattle-forks     A wurley, fashioned like a bushmans roof:     The door brought out athwart the strenuous flame     The back thatched in against a rising wind.     And while the sturdy hatchet filled the clifts     With sounds unknown, the immemorial haunts     Of echoes sent their lonely dwellers forth,     Who lived a life of wonder: flying round     And round the glen what time the kangaroo     Leapt from his lair and huddled with the bats     Far scattering down the wildly startled fells.     Then came the doleful owl; and evermore     The bleak morass gave out the bitterns call,     The plovers cry, and many a fitful wail     Of chilly omen, falling on the ear     Like those cold flaws of wind that come and go     An hour before the break of day.     Anon     The stranger held from toil, and, settling down,     He drew rough solace from his well-filled pipe,     And smoked into the night, revolving there     The primal questions of a squatters life;     For in the flats, a short days journey past     His present camp, his station yards were kept,     With many a lodge and paddock jutting forth     Across the heart of unnamed prairie-lands,     Now loud with bleating and the cattle bells,     And misty with the hut-fires daily smoke.     Wide spreading flats, and western spurs of hills     That 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 feet     Gives back the dust, and up from glen and brake     Evokes fierce clamour, and becomes indeed     A token of the squatters daring life,     Which, growing inland growing year by year     Doth set us thinking in these latter days,     And makes one ponder of the lonely lands     Beyond the lonely tracks of Burke and Wills,     Where, when the wandering Stuart fixed his camps     In central wastes, afar from any home     Or haunt of man, and in the changeless midst     Of sullen deserts and the footless miles     Of sultry silence, all the ways about     Grew strangely vocal, and a marvellous noise     Became the wonder of the waxing glooms.     Now, after darkness, like a mighty spell     Amongst the hills and dim, dispeopled dells,     Had brought a stillness to the soul of things,     It came to pass that, from the secret depths     Of dripping gorges, many a runnel-voice     Came, mellowed with the silence, and remained     About the caves, a sweet though alien sound;     Now rising ever, like a fervent flute     In moony evenings, when the theme is love;     Now falling, as ye hear the Sunday bells     While hastening fieldward from the gleaming town.     Then fell a softer mood, and memory paused     With faithful love, amidst the sainted shrines     Of youth and passion in the valleys past     Of dear delights which never grow again.     And if the stranger (who had left behind     Far anxious homesteads in a wave-swept isle,     To face a fierce sea-circle day by day,     And hear at night the dark Atlantics 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 serene     Stood over high dominion like a dream     Of peace: within the white, transfigured woods;     And oer the vast dew-dripping wilderness     Of slopes illumined with her silent fires.     Then, far beyond the home of pale red leaves     And silver sluices, and the shining stems     Of 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 stood     Harsh 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 streams     That foam about the limits of the land     And mix their swiftness with the flying seas.     Now, when the man had turned his face about     To take his rest, behold the gem-like eyes     Of ambushed wild things stared from bole and brake     With dumb amaze and faint-recurring glance,     And fear anon that drove them down the brush;     While from his den the dingo, like a scout     In sheltered ways, crept out and cowered near     To sniff the tokens of the strangers feast     And marvel at the shadows of the flame.     Thereafter grew the wind; and chafing depths     In distant waters sent a troubled cry     Across the slumbrous forest; and the chill     Of coming rain was on the sleepers brow,     When, flat as reptiles hutted in the scrub,     A deadly crescent crawled to where he lay     A band of fierce, fantastic savages     That, starting naked round the faded fire,     With sudden spears and swift terrific yells,     Came bounding wildly at the white mans head,     And faced him, staring like a dream of Hell!     Here let me pass! I would not stay to tell     Of 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 Hate     And Death; and then how Death was left alone     With Night and Silence in the sobbing rains.     So, after many moons, the searchers found     The body mouldering in the mouldering dell     Amidst the fungi and the bleaching leaves,     And buried it, and raised a stony mound     Which took the mosses. Then the place became     The haunt of fearful legends and the lair     Of bats and adders.     There he lies and sleeps     From year to year in soft Australian nights,     And through the furnaced noons, and in the times     Of wind and wet! Yet never mourner comes     To drop upon that grave the Christians tear     Or pluck the foul, dank weeds of death away.     But while the English autumn filled her lap     With faded gold, and while the reapers cooled     Their flame-red faces in the clover grass,     They looked for him at home: and when the frost     Had made a silence in the mourning lanes     And cooped the farmers by December fires,     They looked for him at home: and through the days     Which 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 sun     They 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 he     Whose fate was hidden under forest leaves     And in the darkness of untrodden dells     Became a marvel. Often by the hearths     In winter nights, and when the wind was wild     Outside the casements, children heard the tale     Of how he left their native vales behind     (Where he had been a child himself) to shape     New fortunes for his fathers 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 step     Which never crossed the floor again. So passed     The tale to children; but the bitter end     Remained a wonder, like the unknown grave,     Alone with God and Silence in the hills.