With ring and with ripple, like runnels whose tor-
rents
Are toned by the pebbles and leaves in the currents.
Often I sit, looking back to a childhood

Mixt with the sights and the sounds of the wildwood,

Longing for power and the sweetness to fashion

Lyrics with beats like the heart-beats of passion —

Songs interwoven of lights and of laughters

Borrowed from bell-birds in far forest rafters ;

So I might keep in the city and alleys

The beauty and strength of the deep mountain

valleys.
Charming to slumber the pain of my losses
With glimpses of creeks and a vision of mosses.
A DEATH IN THE BUSH

'T'HE hut was built of bark and shranken slabs,

That wore the marks of many rains, and showed
Dry flaws wherein had crept and nestled rot.
Moreover, round the bases of the bark
Were left the tracks of flying forest fires.
As you may see them on the lower bole
Of every elder of the native woods.
For, ere the early settlers came and stocked
These wilds with sheep and kine, the grasses grew
So that they took the passing pilgrim in
And whelmed him, like a running sea, from sight.
And therefore, through the fiercer summer months.
While cdl the swamps were rotten ; while the flats
Were baked and broken ; when the clayey rifts
Yawned wide, half-choked with herbage drifted past.
Spontaneous flames would burst from thence and race
Across the prairies all day long.
At night
The winds were up, and then, with four-fold speed
A harsh gigantic growth of smoke and fire



A DEATH IN THE BUSH 13

Would roar along the bottoms, in the wake

Of fainting flocks of parrots, wallaroos.
