And the golden-tinted fern leaves, how they rustled underneath!
And the honeysuckle osiers how they crashed!
We led the hunt throughout, Ned, on the chestnut and the gray,
And the troopers were three hundred yards behind,
While we emptied our six-shooters on the bushrangers at bay,
In the creek with stunted box-trees for a blind!
There you grappled with the leader, man to man and horse to horse.
And you rolled together when the chestnut reared;
He blazed away and missed you in that shallow watercourse—
A narrow shave—his powder singed your beard!
In these hours when life is ebbing, how those days when life was young
Come back to us; how clearly I recall
Even the yams Jack Hall invented, and the songs Jem Boper sung;
And where are now Jem Roper and Jack Hall?
Ay! nearly all our comrades of the old colonial school.
Our ancient boon companions, Ned, are gone;
Hard livers for the most part, somewhat reckless as a rule,
It seems that you and I are left alone.
There was Hughes, who got in trouble through that business with the cards.
It matters little what became of him;
But a steer ripped up MacPherson in the Cooraminta yards.
And Sullivan was drowned at Sink-or-swim;
And Mostyn—poor Frank Mostyn—died at last a fearful wreck.
In "the horrors" at the upper Wandinong,
And Carisbrooke, the rider, at the Horsefall broke his neck;
Faith! the wonder was he saved his neck so long!
Ah! those days and nights we squandered at the Logans' in the Glen—
The Logans, man and wife, have long been dead,
Elsie's tallest girl seems taller than your little Elsie then;
And Ethel is a woman grown and wed.
I've had my share of pastime, and I've done my share of toil,
And life is short—the longest life a span:
I care not now to tarry for the corn or for the oil.
Or for the wine that maketh glad the heart of man.
For good undone and gifts misspent and resolutions vain
'Tis somewhat late to trouble. This I know—
I should live the same life over, if I had to live again;
And the chances are I go where most men go.
