BURNT BUSH
Fading, forsaking?
....Forlorn! forsaken!
Again I lose you,
Again ye are gone!”
Over the paddock,
The pale Moon was lifting
The light of her forehead;
Down in the bare ravine,
Spiked with black shadow,
Bright was the flowing of Mangi, the River;
But, as I turn’d and ascended the gully,
Nought, save the flowing of water, I heard.
Far off, through the stretches
(Old forest, new pasture),
That over the gully,
High over the river,
Mountainward tend:
In-and-out the lean splinters,
See! firelight sparkling.
From the dead forest
(Old trees, but new timber),
Hark! voices echoing.
Through the Burnt Bush, and the little bare settlement,
Lo! transmuted but vital as ever,
(No more from fern, from green branches no more,
But from flesh-and-blood tissues, through eyes and through fingers,
From brains and from bosoms), laugh’d out the old magic
Of Nature, wise Mother of Forest and Man.
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