I knew them on the road : red, roan, and white,
Cock-horned and spear-horned, spotted, streaked and starred;
I knew their shapes moon-misted in the night
As I rode round them keeping lonely guard.
I knew them all, the laggards and the leaders,
The wild, the wandering, and the listless feeders.
And when I, weary, by the camp-fire slept,
Booted and spurred, beneath Heaven's rafter beams,
With slow and measured step their hundreds kept
Moving and moving past me in my dreams.
I knew them all : streaked, spotted, roan and red;
A thousand steers, range-run and Queensland bred.
I loved the wide gold glitter of the plains
Spread out before us like a silent sea,
The lazy lapping of the loose-held reins,
The sense of motion and of mystery
As the great beasts slid slowly through the grass,
One passing one, then letting it re-pass.
I loved the misty sunrise, when the herd
Drew from the camp, close-ranked, with clash of horn,
When 'neath their hoofs the scented dust was stirred
Still heavy with the dew-fall of the mom.
I loved the jingle of the swaying load
As the lean pack-horse lobbed into the road.
So, day by day, as men have done for years,
Across the plain we brought the cattle down;
And half my heart was with the moving steers
And half lay yonder in a Border town;
For, waiting there, my guerdon and my prize,
Was home, and love, and little Laughing Eyes.
I was a western bushman born and bred,
And so I loved the cattle, as men do
Whose life is to the dusty sandhills wed,
Whose world is bounded by a fence of blue;
Yet one flower nearer to my heart I wore -
The baby laughter of a child of four.
The lories screamed above us as we rode;
The emus ran before us, swift with fear.
A great resistless tide of life we flowed,
The largest mob out of the north that year;
The muffled moving of the many feet
Like sighing waves upon the silence beat.
Two hundred leagues of stock-route burnt and brown
In twelve-mile stages day by dazzling day
Had worn the cleft hoofs of our cattle down
But had not stolen their wild hearts away;
And in wide eyes 'neath shaggy frontlets set
The fire of the free ranges smouldered yet.
A swagman stumbling down the dusty track,
His blanket bundle on his shoulder borne,
Would send the startled flankers rushing back
To stop and stare at him with tossing horn.
A camel train across the sandhill stringing
Would lift all heads and set the leaders ringing.
At night a blown bough tapping on the wire
Would bring them scared and restless to their feet;
A burnt log crashing inward on the fire
Would lash their rebel blood to fever heat;
And on the stormier nights when winds blew hard
'Twas double watch - and sometimes three on guard.
As we drew near the Border tank and creek
For water failed us, and stage after stage
The poor brutes plodded on for near a week
In thirst that we were powerless to assuage.
Blind, dropping froth, they stumbled in their going
And filled the sandhills with their piteous lowing.
On all the earth there is no sadder sound
Than moan of cattle when their thirst is great;
It quivers in the trees, and sky and ground
With all its hopelessness reverberate :
This heart-cry of the dumb brutes in the wild
That sears you like the sobbing of a child.
We hung our stock whips on our saddle-dees;
We crooned to the great beasts to soothe their pain;
We sang to them to set them at their ease;
But still their weird, low moaning tilled the plain,
As, blind, they passed us on their ceaseless quest,
Pleading for water till the suns went west.
We reached the Border. On the night before,
Forgetting for an hour those moaning cries.
I found again the little flower I wore
Close to my heart, and dreamed of Laughing Eyes.
Ere the next night should come with star flag streaming
My arms should hold her; so I thought in dreaming.
The cattle passed the netting fence at noon.
Day blazed upon the glittering township roofs.
The sun peered like a pale and misty moon
Through the red dust wrack of the drumming hoofs.
They smelt the water at the dams already;
We rode in front to hold the leaders steady.
Voices they heard not; whips they would not heed.
They swept upon us like a tide-wave's flow.
The dust rose up and wrapped us, man and steed;
And through the dust came thrilling - "Let them go!"-
Swift towards the gleam that marked the river bed,
Mad, blind, unbound, thundered the thousand head.
The red earth shook. The horns flashed by like flame.
The moaning rose and gathered to a roar.
All passed; even the laggard and the lame;
The plain lay empty as a desolate shore.
A known root glimmered under dust-brown skies!
Home! - Home at last, and love - and Laughing Eyes!
Behind the mob the dust clouds thinned and cleared,
And as the sun broke through with sudden light
A tiny heap upon the sand appeared,
A heap of white; a - huddled - heap - of - white!
Ah! God! - I live again that anguished hour !
The tattered, trampled thing!My flower! My flower!
** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** **
All day I see them moving, moving by;
All night I hear them moaning in my dreams.
Always that little heap - ah! let it lie! -
Always the dust that whirls, the roof that gleams I
Always the sunlight as the dust clouds part,
And shadow, shadow, shadow on my heart!
The city reels about me. Carts and cars
Make thunder down the streetways east and west,
But out amid the silence and the stars
I ride around my cattle as they rest.
The camp fire's banners on the dark extend;
The horse bells jangle in the river bend.
The grey dawns wake them; out of sleep they start,
And draw amid the dim light down the plain;
Their every hoof is heavy on my heart,
Their every horn stabs deep with an old pain;
And yet I love my cattle - God knows why! -
I sing to them, I sing as they go by.
I know them all so well; red, roan, and white,
Cock-horned and curly, spotted, streaked, and starred;
I know their shapes moon-marked upon the night
As I ride round them keeping lonely guard.
I love them all: streaked, spotted, roan and red;
My thousand steers, range-run and Queensland bred.
