A BUSH SECTION
Always a dream, with its dozens of passing people,
Its three beneficent stores)....
And past the township, and on!
—The hills and the gully remain;
One day is just like another;
In the paddock the logs lie still;
But the Train is not still; every evening it sparkles out, streams by and goes.
“What is the Train, that it travels?
Where does it come from?
Where does it go?”
It is gone. And the evening deepens.
Darker the grey air grows.
From the black of the gully, the gleam of the River is gone.
Scarcely the ridges show to the sky-line,
Now, their disconsolate fringe;
But, bright to the deepening sky,
The Stars creep silently out.
“Oh, where do you hide in the day?”
....It is stiller than ever; the wind has fallen.
The moist air brings,
To mix with the spicy breath of the young break-wind macrocarpa,
Wafts of the acrid, familiar aroma of slowly-smouldering logs.
And, hark, through the empty silence and dimness
Solemnly clear,
Comes the wistful, haunting cry of some lonely, far-away morepork,
“[1]Kia toa! Be brave!”
—Night is come.
- ↑ Kia toa: approximate pronunciation Keé-ah tó-a.
83
