pine,
The river sounded clear,
When a change came on, and we saw the sign
That told us the end was near.

But he spoke in a cultured voice and low --
'I fancy they've "sent the route";
I once was an army man, you know,
Though now I'm a drunken brute;
But bury me out where the bloodwoods wave,
And if ever you're fairly stuck,
Just take and shovel me out of the grave
And, maybe, I'll bring you luck.

'For I've always heard --' here his voice fell weak,
His strength was well-nigh sped,
He gasped and struggled and tried to speak,
Then fell in a moment -- dead.
Thus ended a wasted life and hard,
Of energies misapplied --
Old Bob was out of the 'swagman's yard'
And over the Great Divide.

. . . . .

The drought came down on the field and flock,
And never a raindrop fell,
Though the tortured moans of the starving stock
Might soften a fiend from hell.
And we thought of the hint that the swagman gave
When he went to the Great Unseen --
We shovelled the skeleton out of the grave
To see what his hint might mean.

We dug where the cross and the grave posts were,
We shovelled away the mould,
When sudden a vein of quartz lay bare
All gleaming with yellow gold.
'Twas a reef with never a fault nor baulk
That ran from the range's crest,
And the richest mine on the Eaglehawk
Is known as 'The Swagman's Rest'.

[The End.]

[From the section of Advertisements at the end of the 1911 printing.]

THE MAN FROM SNOWY RIVER, AND OTHER VERSES.

By A. B. Paterson.

THE LITERARY YEAR BOOK: "The immediate success of this
book of bush ballads is without parallel in Colonial literary annals,
nor can any living English or American poet boast so wide a public,
always excepting Mr. Rudyard Kipling."

SPECTATOR: "These lines have the true lyrical cry in them.
Eloquent and ardent verses."

ATHENAEUM: "Swinging, rattling ballads of ready humour, ready pathos,
and crowding adventure. ... Stirring and entertaining ballads
about great rides, in which the lines gallop like the very hoofs
of the horses."

THE TIMES: "At his best he compares not unfavourably with the author
of 'Barrack-Room Ballads'."

Mr. A. Patchett Martin, in LITERATURE (London): "In my opinion,
it is the absolutely un-English, thoroughly Australian style and character
of these new bush bards which ha