Shingle-Short and Other Verses/The Hill
The Hill.
The Hill.
Fine fresh mornin’; a real Spring day; Alps a smother of snow,
Sea like a jolly good laugh spread out mile upon mile below,
[1]Kowhai all yellow wi’ blossom....
Nor’-east? Nor’-west it’ll be, from here....
Ay!—Sharp and sudden, and bitter as ever, yonder the Hill stands clear.
..Nothin’ to see! Nor there couldn’t be anythin’ now—only tongueless dust,
Snug, an’ deep down under the tussock.—Keep guard all the same I must!
Never had nerve to revisit the place; nor I’ll never get nerve to quit
Here, where I can have it before me, an’ see, an’ make sure of it.
Snow’s the safest; in storms I’m easy; days o’ the runnin’ fire,
I bother a bit—but it licks the crag, an’ never creeps up no higher.
Musterin’-days—that’s the terrible time!—Sickish I turn, an’ cold....
Men—an’ dogs!—nosin’ over an’ over....an’ what if you up an’ told?
Well, you ain’t gone back on me yet, old Hill! Nobody’s ever knew,
Only me, an’ the Stars an’ Sea, in the twenty year—an’ You.
Twenty year! an’, only in rains (which I reckon’d ‘ud help him rot),
Bet you there ain’t been more than ten minutes together when I’ve forgot.
..Winter’s evenin’, an’ wet: an’ we’d swagg’d it twenty-five mile an’ more,
An’ there was the lights at last, but far; an’ he grizzled an’ growl’d an’ swore.
An’ I was cold, an’ I was starvin’, an’ there, on top o’ the Hill,
He anger’d me so as I struck—By God! but I never meant to kill!
—Here I came, for, wherever one turns, here’s the view of It, up an’ down,
An’ one’s near enough for the papers to tell if anythin’s told in Town.
Here I’ve lived, ’way back in the Bush—dunno what the others think.
They come, an’ they go; my wharé’s away by itself, an’ I don’t dare drink.
Men as I’ve known ’ud ha’ carried it off—married, an’ started sheep.
Couldn’t,—just think o’ the woman....Besides, what if I talk asleep?
Back in the wharé there’s none to hear, an’ the wind it bellows an’ blows—
Lord! it’s lonesome and eerie enough—but it’s safe, though. Nobody knows!
In the dead o’ night, at the very hour, often I wake, an’—Hark!....
Nothin’! only the dreadful Sea, tellin’ the dreadful Dark;
An’ they terrible Stars a-pointin’ at me, witnessin’, layin’ bare—
An’ yet, that’s a kind o’ a little relief, that they know, like the Hill: they share.
But I couldn’t ha’ done wi’ lambs, nor I couldn’t ha’ stood the face of a child—
There’s little kiddies live hereabouts that pretty well drives me wild.
When I have to pass by the schoolhouse door, my eyes get sneakin’ away;
Turn, o’ theirselves, to their own place, there!—waitin’ across the Bay.
It’s a rummy thing, how the Spring can start, an’ the Sun keep shinin’ still,
Year after year,—an’ all the time, That laid up in the Hill?
An’ the Stars go on, an’ the Sea goes on, an’ the lambs can be born an’ be.
You’d ha’ thought ’twould ha’ changed the world?—It has: but only for him, an’ me.
Ay! him in the Hill, an’ me outside,—we ain’t very far apart;
For the shade o’ you shadows my eyes, old Hill, and the weight o’ you wears my heart.
I struck but the once; for twenty year you’ve held my neck to the knife.
Whether you tell in the end or not,—ain’t he had his “life for a life”?
..Was that a shake?....Thank God, it wasn’t! Shakes turn me silly wi’ fright,
For then’s your chance, if you’ve got a grudge, to spit him up into the light.
Well, what if you did, eh? Whiles I fancy hangin’ could be no worse....
Dunno if you been my best o’ friends all the while, or my bitterest curse.
Here’s the way-out, now—over the Point, where the sea-birds swing an’ dive;
The Hill ’ud be hidden....an’ what do I get, anyway, by bein’ alive?
Jump over, and finish it!....
Can’t! I can’t! I’ve never had pluck to tell;
I haven’t the pluck to hurry that smallest o’ steps—from here to Hell.
Well, some day it’ll finish itself. I’ve written it all, so then
Everybody on earth ’ll know; but I shall ha’ done wi’ men.
Poor old Jack, an’ his Maker to face....but—one bit o’ the torment past:
No Hill!—all, everythin’, known, an’ open, an’ public, thank God, at last!
- ↑ Kowhai (kóh-why): A Bush shrub, covered in early spring with abundant large yellow blossoms.