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d runnels babbling of a plenteous fall. So comes the southern gale at evenfall (The swift brick-fielder 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 fish-pools 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. -- * A tributary of the river Clarence, N.S.W. -- 'Twas 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 humour 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, therefor
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