Burnt Bush.
On the low bridge
In the depth of the gully,
At fall of the twilight
I linger’d, alone.
Naked, denuded,
Forestless, fernless,
Mute, now, and songless,
Sharp on sheer sky gape the lips of the gully;
Burden’d with black is the green of its pasture:
On whose long slopes
The sheep in their browsing
Must leap o’er a million,
Strewn, helter-skelter, headlong and helpless
Burnt bones of the Bush;
And, high on the hill-tops,
Once muffled with misty ever-green forest,
Gaunt tree-skeletons,
Tall blacken’d splinters,
Limbless, and leafless, and lifeless for ever,
In piteous distinctness
Starkly appear.
But, to me in my musing,
As on the low bridge in the depth of the gully,
At fall of the twilight I linger’d alone,—
63
