Wide-spreading flats, and western spurs of hills
That dipped to plains of dim perpetual blue ;
Bold summits set against the thunder heaps ;
And slopes behacked and crushed by battling kine !



46 THE GLEN OF ARRAWATTA

Where now the furious tumult of their feet

Gives back the dust, and up from glen and brake

Evokes fierce clamour, and becomes indeed

A token of the squatter's daring life,

Which, growing inland — growing year by year —

Doth set us thinking in these latter days.
And makes one ponder of the silent lands

Beyond the lonely tracks of Burke and Wills,

Where, when the wandering Stuart fixed his camps

In central wastes, afar from any home

Or haunt of man, and in the changeless midst

Of sullen deserts and the footless miles

Of sultry silence, all the ways about

Grew strangely vocal, and a marvellous noise

Became the wonder of the waxing glooms.
Now, after darkness, like a mighty spell

Amongst the hills and dim dispeopled dells.
Had brought a stillness to the soul of things,

It came to pass that, from the secret depths

Of dripping gorges, many a runnel-voice

Came, mellowed with the silence, and remained

About the caves, a sweet though alien sound :

Now rising ever, like a fervent flute

In moony evenings, when the theme is love ;

Now falling, as ye hear the Sunday bells

While hastening fieldward from the gleaming town.
Then fell a softer mood, and memory paused
With faithful love, amidst the sainted shrines



THE GLEN OF ARRAWATTA 47

Of youth and passion in the valleys past
Of dear delights which never grow again.
