Our realm was the fenceless ranges. We fed in the bluegrass swamps.
The green of the branching wilga was the roof of our noonday camps.
We drank at the pools in the lignum, where die mist and moonlight meet,
Stealing like wraiths through the darkness with the dew on our shoeless feet.
I was the chief and warden. I watched while the shy mares fed.
I herded the bitless yearlingsthose proud, wild sons I bred.
When a dry twig snapped in the forest, when a snake slid out of the grass,
I called my mob together till I saw the danger pass.
For matchless speed and beauty and pride of blood and bone
The bushmen of the Border had marked us as their own.
All day they planned their stockyards and set their blue-gum bars,
All night they wrought our capture as they dreamed beneath the stars.
They tracked us to our playgrounds. They hid to watch us teed.
They matched their weighted walers against our naked speed;
And when we broke and beat them, out-wiled them, and out-ran,
I was the proud grey stallion that thundered in the van !
For long our speed defied them. We met and beat their best:
The Border's swiftest horses and the picked men of the West;
But Drought rode down the ranges and drove us worn and weak
From out the sheltering mulga to the flats beside the creek.
Then with their corn-fed horses they chased us, frail and afraid,
And forced us foamed and fretting to the yards that they had made;
Within their ten-foot fences and behind their blue-gum bars
They held uskings of freedom whose fence had been the stars.
They broke my mares to harness. They saddled my splendid sons
To round the cattle on drafting-camps on drought-bound western runs.
These they bent to their bidding; but I was aware and awake;
They broke my sons to service, but me they could not break!
I threw their famous riders one by one as they came:
The lean, brown reckless bushmen that sought my heart to tame.
I would not bear their burden, I who had never borne
More than the dust of the noonday, more than the wind of the morn!
And then he camemy master I Lissome and iron-thighed,
Lord of the earth's wild horses, riding as Centaurs ride.
Boldly I battled beneath him; I matched my strength with his own.
I had thrown a hundred riders. He was not born to be thrown !
He scored my ribs with greenhide. He spurred my flanks till they bled.
He checked my mouth with the bar-bit till the foam came back to him red.
I fought like a maddened wild-cat at the ceaseless sting of his steel,
I turned like a tortured tiger-snake and bit at his rowelled heel.
I gave him no easy triumph. Stubborn, I would not yield
Till my eyes were hot and clouded and my hide was wet and wealed;
But at last my sinews slackened, my proud, wild spirit was spent,
And I bent to the will of my rider as I never before had bent.
Then did he show no mercy, but for every stroke I had made
Struck me again, and fiercely, with his splendid strength for blade.
He spurred me out to the ranges then, dripping with blood and foam;
And weary and blind and conquered, he flogged me bitterly home.
Day after day he rode me. I ceased from the useless fight;
I could not face his courage and I could not match his might.
I had marshalled in vain my cunning, I had pitted my strength and failed,
And under the eye of the master at each new dawn I quailed.
But the fire at my heart kept burning. At last, as he stooped for a girth,
I leapt with a scream of fury and struck my foe to the earth.
I trod and trampled him under, I tore his breast with my teeth,
My towering weight above him and his quivering flesh beneath \
Then I broke to the open ranges; there was none could stop me or stay.
No creek in flood could toil me, no fence could bar my way.
I tore his trappings from me on the boughs of the belar
And, naked as I left them, I went back to wind and star!
The scrubs were gray as ever and the lignum swamps as green.
I found the shady wilgas where our noonday camps had been.
But the Bush was still and lonely; I had neither breed nor bride,
When I whinnied down the ranges it was echo that replied.
Then came my fear upon me; a fear that fills my breast;
A racking, ruthless terror that robs me of my rest;
A shadow-shape that meets me where the wilga-shadows stir,
The phantom of a horseman that rides with whip and spur.
My flanks are cleansed of blood-marks, my bit-torn mouth is healed,
But again I meet my master and again he makes me yield.
Beneath the moons of midnight and through the morning haze
He flogs me, wet and trembling, down the old remembered ways.
I could not throw him, living, in my fierceness and my faith;
And to-day I find no courage that will rid me of his wraith.
With lean ribs lashed by terror, with flanks that fear makes red
I carry through the ranges the Unrelenting Dead.
I feed not in the daytime. At night I take no rest.
The sweat is on my shoulder and the foam is on my breast.
I bear no bit nor bridle, but 'neath the open sky
The wraith of him that rode me shall ride me till I die
