POETRY.
BLACK WINGS.
SEXTONS of the Overland ! Buriers of the dead,
Where graves are lone and shallow and winding sheets are red !
Wardens of the wagon track, watchers by the creek, Loiterers in the lignum where the blacksoil traps the weak !
Feasters at the wayside, guests at the lagoon, Gloating over dead sheep rotting in the noon ! Robbers on the red roads, highwaymen of Drought, Settlers of the issue that the dawn has left in doubt!
Was there ever team-horse from the chains let go, Was there ever lean steer lightened of the bow, But your hungry vanguard drifting from the sky Croaked beside his shoulder, glad to watch him die P Ever tramped our cattle knee-deep in the grass, But you soared above them praying Death to pass P Ever went our sheep-mobs starvedly and slow, But you marked their weaklings stumbling to and fro?
Ever trod a bushman, tramp, or pioneer, O'er the plains of Famine, through the scrubs of Fear, But darker than his danger, closer than his dread, Shadows on his pathway, flapped ye overhead P Call to mind the stock routes, north and west and east !- Every heap of white bones fashioned you a feast ! Call to mind the sandhills !—every wrinkled hide Made your perch at banquet the day a dumb beast died !
Surely, at God's muster, when our mobs again, Trample through the star-grass up the purple plain, When from creek and sandhill crowd our western dead, He shall suffer only white wings overhead I WILL H. OGILVIE.
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