lls.
And all night long we are lulled by the song
Of gales in the grand old trees;
And in the brakes we can hear the lakes
And the moan of the distant seas.
For afar from heat and dust of street,
And hall and turret and dome,
In forest deep, where the torrents leap,
Is the shingle-splitter's home.

The dweller in town may lie upon down,
And own his palace and park:
We envy him not his prosperous lot,
Though we slumber on sheets of bark.
Our food is rough, but we have enough;
Our drink is better than wine:
For cool creeks flow wherever we go,
Shut in from the hot sunshine.
Though rude our roof, it is weather-proof,
And at the end of the days
We sit and smoke over yarn and joke,
By the bush-fire's sturdy blaze.
For away from din and sorrow and sin,
Where troubles but rarely come,
We jog along, like a merry song,
In the shingle-splitter's home.

What though our work be heavy, we shirk
From nothing beneath the sun;
And toil is sweet to those who can eat
And rest when the day is done.
In the Sabbath-time we hear no chime,
No sound of the Sunday bells;
But yet Heaven smiles on the forest aisles,
And God in the woodland dwells.
We listen to notes from the million throats
Of chorister birds on high,
Our psalm is the breeze in the lordly trees,
And our dome is the broad blue sky.
Oh! a brave, frank life, unsmitten by strife,
We live wherever we roam,
And our hearts are free as the great strong sea,
In the shingle-splitter's home.

On a Street

I dread that street--its haggard face
I have not seen for eight long years;
A mother's curse is on the place,
(There's blood, my reader, in her tears).
No child of man shall ever track,
Through filthy dust, the singer's feet--
A fierce old memory drags me back;
I hate its name--I dread that street.

Upon the lap of green, sweet lands,
Whose months are like your English Mays,
I try to hide in Lethe's sands
The bitter, old Bohemian days.
But sorrow speaks in singing leaf,
And trouble talketh in the tide;
The skirts of a stupendous grief
Are trailing ever at my side.

I will not say who suffered there,
'Tis best the name aloof to keep,
Because the world is very fair--
Its light should sing the dark t