A BUSH SECTION
Listen! Listen!....
Far away, down the voiceless valley,
Thro’ league-long spaces of empty air,
A sound! as of thunder.
Look! ah, look!
Yonder, deep in the clear dark distance,
At the foot of the shaggy, snow-hooded ranges,—
Out on the houseless and homeless country
Suddenly issuing, eddying, volleying—
Smoke, bright smoke! Not the soft blue vapour
By day, in the paddock there, wreathing and wavering,
O’er the red spark well at work in the stumps:
Not the poor little misty pale pillar
Here straggling up, close at hand, from the crazy tin chimney:—
No! but an airy river of riches,
Irrepressibly billowing, volume on volume
Rolling, unrolling, tempestuously tossing,
Ah! like the glorious hair of some else-invisible Angel
Rushing splendidly forth in the darkness—
Gold! gold on the gloom!
....Floating, fleeing, flying....
Thor catches his breath....Ah, flown!
Gone! Yes, the torrent of glory,
The Voice and the Vision are gone—
For over the viaduct, out of the valley,
It is gone, the wonderful Train!
Gone, yet still going on: on: on! to the far-away township
(Ten miles off, down the track, and the mud of the metal-less roadway:
Seen, once at Christmas, and once on a fine summer Sunday:
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