THE HILL
Musterin’-days—that’s the terrible time!—Sickish I turn, an’ cold....
Men—an’ dogs!—nosin’ over an’ over....an’ what if you up an’ told?
Well, you ain’t gone back on me yet, old Hill! Nobody’s ever knew,
Only me, an’ the Stars an’ Sea, in the twenty year—an’ You.
Twenty year! an’, only in rains (which I reckon’d ‘ud help him rot),
Bet you there ain’t been more than ten minutes together when I’ve forgot.
..Winter’s evenin’, an’ wet: an’ we’d swagg’d it twenty-five mile an’ more,
An’ there was the lights at last, but far; an’ he grizzled an’ growl’d an’ swore.
An’ I was cold, an’ I was starvin’, an’ there, on top o’ the Hill,
He anger’d me so as I struck—By God! but I never meant to kill!
—Here I came, for, wherever one turns, here’s the view of It, up an’ down,
An’ one’s near enough for the papers to tell if anythin’s told in Town.
Here I’ve lived, ’way back in the Bush—dunno what the others think.
They come, an’ they go; my wharé’s away by itself, an’ I don’t dare drink.
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