A chest of secrets, with a heart of fire
And crust of fossils.
When the summer night
Falls over that great island in the south
Whereon his flocks repose, the Polar Star,
Once never lost by ancient mariners
In their confined adventures on the sea,
Peers not above the horizon,— lost to him
Forever; but the splendid Southern Cross,
And those two clouds which bear Magellan's name,
Two clouds of clustered stars in the clear sky,
Hang nightly, far above the winds that blow
Around our planet, changeless films of light.
And when Orion and the wandering moon
Come with familiar aspect, they remind
The exile of the land on which they shone
When he first saw them, and his earliest friends,
And hills and streams and meadows of his youth,
And this old gabled house where he was born.
Philip Gilbert Hamerton.
HE hut was built of bark and shrunken slabs
That wore the marks of many rains, and showed Dry flaws, wherein had crept and nestled rot. Moreover, round the bases of the bark Were left the tracks of flying forest-fires, As you may see them on the lower bole Of every elder of the native woods.
For, ere the early settlers came and stocked
These wilds with sheep and kine, the grasses grew
So that they took the passing pilgrim in,
And whelmed him, like a running sea, from sight.
And therefore, through the fiercer summer months, While all the swamps were rotten, while the flats Were baked and broken; when the clayey rifts Yawned wide, half choked with drifted herbage, past Spontaneous flames would burst from thence, and race Across the prairies all day long.
The winds were up, and then with fourfold speed,
A harsh gigantic growth of smoke and fire
Would roar along the bottoms, in the wake
Of fainting flocks of parrots, wallaroos,
And wildered wild things, scattering right and left,
For safety vague, throughout the general gloom.
Anon, the nearer hillside growing trees
Would take the surges; thus, from bough to bough,
Was borne the flaming terror! Bole and spire,
Rank after rank, now pillared, ringed, and rolled
In blinding blaze, stood out against the dead
Down-smothered dark, for fifty leagues away.
For fifty leagues! and when the winds were strong,
For fifty more! But, in the olden time,
These fires were counted as the harbingers
Of life-essential storms; since out of smoke
And heat there came across the midnight ways
Abundant comfort, with upgathered clouds,
And runnels babbling of a plenteous fall.
So comes the Southern gale at evenfall
(The swift “brickfielder" of the local folk)
About the streets of Sydney, when the dust
Lies burnt on glaring windows, and the men
Look forth from doors of drouth, and drink the change
With thirsty haste and that most thankful cry
Of, "Here it is -the cool, bright, blessed rain!"
The hut, I say, was built of bark and slabs,
And stood, the centre of a clearing, hemmed
By hurdle-yards, and ancients of the blacks:
These moped about their lazy fires, and sang
Wild ditties of the old days, with a sound
Of sorrow, like an everlasting wind,
Which mingled with the echoes of the noon,
And moaned amongst the noises of the night.
From thence a cattle-track, with link to link,
Ran off against the fishpools, to the gap,
Which sets you face to face with gleaming miles
Of broad Orara, winding in amongst
Black, barren ridges, where the nether spurs
Are fenced about by cotton-scrub, and grass
Blue-bitten with the salt of many droughts.
"T was here the shepherd housed him every night, And faced the prospect like a patient soul;
Borne up by some vague hope of better days,
And God's fine blessing in his faithful wife;
Until the humor of his malady
Took cunning changes from the good to bad,
And laid him lastly on a bed of death.
Two months thereafter, when the summer heat
Had roused the serpent from his rotten lair,
And made a noise of locusts in the boughs,
It came to this, that, as the blood-red sun
Of one fierce day of many slanted down
Obliquely past the nether jags of peaks
And gulfs of mist, the tardy night came vexed
By belted clouds, and scuds that wheeled and whirled
To left and right about the brazen clifts
Of ridges, rigid with a leaden gloom.
Then took the cattle to the forest camps
With vacant terror, and the hustled sheep
Stood dumb against the hurdles, even like
A fallen patch of shadowed mountain snow;
And ever through the curlew's call afar
The storm grew on, while round the stinted slabs
Sharp snaps and hisses came, and went, and came,
The huddled tokens of a mighty blast
Which ran with an exceeding bitter cry
Across the tumbled fragments of the hills,
And through the sluices of the gorge and glen.
So, therefore, all about the shepherd's hut
That space was mute, save when the fastened dog,
Without a kennel, caught a passing glimpse
Of firelight moving through the lighted chinks;
For then he knew the hints of warmth within,
And stood, and set his great pathetic eyes,
In wind and wet, imploring to be loosed.
Not often now the watcher left the couch
Of him she watched; since, in his fitful sleep,
His lips would stir to wayward themes, and close
With bodeful catches. Once she moved away,
Half deafened by terrific claps, and stooped,
And looked without, to see a pillar dim
Of gathered gusts and fiery rain.
The sick man woke, and, startled by the noise,
Stared round the room, with dull delirious sight,
At this wild thing and that; for, through his eyes,
The place took fearful shapes, and fever showed
Strange crosswise lights about his pillow-head.
He, catching there at some phantasmic help,
Sat upright on the bolster, with a cry
Of, "Where is Jesus? it is bitter cold!"
And then, because the thundercalls outside
Were mixed for him with slanders of the past,
He called his weeping wife by name, and said,
"Come closer, darling! we shall speed away
Across the seas, and seek some mountain home,
Shut in from liars, and the wicked words
That track us day and night, and night and day."
So waned the sad refrain. And those poor lips, Whose latest phrases were for peace, grew mute, And into everlasting silence passed.
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