POETRY.
THE OLD PLACE.
So the last day's come at last, the close of my fifteen year— The end of the hope, an' the struggles an' messes I've pat in here.
All of the shearings over, the final mustering done,— Eleven hundred an' fifty for the incoming man, near on. Over five thousand I drove 'em, mob by mob, down the coast; Eleven-fifty in fifteen year . . . it isn't much of a boast.
Oh, it's a bad old place! Blown out o' your bed half the nights, And in summer the grass burnt shiny an' bare as your hand, on the heights : The creek dried up by November, and in May a thundering roar That carries down toll o' your stock to salt 'em whole on the shore.
Clear'd I have, and I've clear'd an' clear'd, yet everywhere, slap in your face, Briar, tauhinu,* an' ruin !—God ! it's a brute of a place.
An' the house got burnt which I built myself, with all that worry and pride ; Where the Missus was always homesick, and where she took fever, an' died.
Yes, well ! I'm leaving the place. 'Apples look red on that bough.
I set the slips with my own hand. Well—they're the other man's now.
The breezy bluff : an' the clover that smells so over the land, Drowning the reek o' the rubbish, that plucks the profit out o' your baud : That bit o' Bush paddock I fall'd myself, an' watch'd, each year, come clean (Don't it look fresh in the tawny P A scrap of Old-Country green): An' this air, all healthy with sun an' salt, an' bright with purity : An' the glossy karakast there, twinkling to the big blue twink- ling sea : Ay, the broad blue sea beyond, an' the gem-clear cove below, Where my boat, I'll never handle again, sits rocking to an' fro: There's the last look to all ! an' now for the last upon This room, where Hetty was born, an' my Mary died, an' John . . .
Well! I'm leaving the poor old place, and it cuts as keen as a knife; The place that's broken my heart—The place where I've lived my life.
• Taublina, an aromatic shrub, infesting poor soil.
t raraka. a Bush tree, with dark green foliage shining as if Tarnished.
Previous page
