A BUSH SECTION
At the little raw farm on the edge of the desolate hillside,
Perch’d on the brink, overlooking the desolate valley,
To-night, now the milking is finish’d, and all the calves fed,
The kindling all split, and the dishes all wash’d after supper:
Thorold von Reden, the last of a long line of nobles,
Little “Thor Rayden,” the twice-orphan’d son of a drunkard,
Dependent on strangers, the taciturn, grave ten-year-old,
Stands and looks from the garden of cabbage and larkspur, looks over
The one little stump-spotted rye-patch, so gratefully green,
Out, on this desert of logs, on this dead disconsolate ocean
Of billows arrested, of currents stay’d, that never awake and flow.
Day after day,
The hills stand out on the sky,
The splinters stand on the hills,
In the paddock the logs lie prone.
The prone logs never arise,
The erect ones never grow green,
Leaves never rustle, the birds went away with the Bush,—
There is no change, nothing stirs!
And to-night there is no change;
All is mute, monotonous, stark;
In the whole wide sweep round the low little hut of the settler
No life to be seen; nothing stirs.
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