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The Glen of Arrawatta

by Henry Kendall

A sky of wind! And while these fitful gusts

Are beating round the windows in the cold,

With sullen sobs of rain, behold I shape

A settler's story of the wild old times:

One told by camp-fires when the station drays

Were housed and hidden, forty years ago;

While swarthy drivers smoked their pipes, and drew,

And crowded round the friendly gleaming flame

That lured the dingo, howling, from his caves,

And brought sharp sudden feet about the brakes.

A tale of Love and Death. And shall I say

A tale of love in death for all the patient eyes

That gathered darkness, watching for a son

And brother, never dreaming of the fate

The fearful fate he met alone, unknown,

Within the ruthless Australasian wastes?

For in a far-off, sultry summer, rimmed

With thundercloud and red with forest fires,

All day, by ways uncouth and ledges rude,

The wild men held upon a stranger's trail,

Which ran against the rivers and athwart

The gorges of the deep blue western hills.

And when a cloudy sunset, like the flame

In windy evenings on the Plains of Thirst

Beyond the dead banks of the far Barcoo,

Lay heavy down the topmost peaks, they came,

With pent-in breath and stealthy steps, and crouched,

Like snakes, amongst the grasses, till the night

Had covered face from face, and thrown the gloom

Of many shadows on the front of things.

There, in the shelter of a nameless glen,

Fenced round by cedars and the tangled growths

Of blackwood, stained with brown and shot with grey,

The jaded white man built his fire, and turned

His horse adrift amongst the water-pools

That trickled underneath the yellow leaves

And made a pleasant murmur, like the brooks

Of England through the sweet autumnal noons.

Then, after he had slaked his thirst and used

The forest fare, for which a healthful day

Of mountain life had brought a zest, he took

His axe, and shaped with boughs and wattle-forks

A wurley, fashioned like a bushman's roof:

The door brought out athwart the strenuous flame

The back thatched in against a rising wind.

And while the sturdy hatchet filled the clifts

With sounds unknown, the immemorial haunts

Of echoes sent their lonely dwellers forth,

Who lived a life of wonder: flying round

And round the glen what time the kangaroo

Leapt from his lair and huddled with the bats

Far scattering down the wildly startled fells.

Then came the doleful owl; and evermore

The bleak morass gave out the bittern's call,

The plover's cry, and many a fitful wail

Of chilly omen, falling on the ear

Like those cold flaws of wind that come and go

An hour before the break of day.

Anon

The stranger held from toil, and, settling down,

He drew rough solace from his well-filled pipe,

And smoked into the night, revolving there

The primal questions of a squatter's life;

For in the flats, a short day's journey past

His present camp, his station yards were kept,

With many a lodge and paddock jutting forth

Across the heart of unnamed prairie-lands,

Now loud with bleating and the cattle bells,

And misty with the hut-fire's daily smoke.

Wide spreading flats, and western spurs of hills

That dipped to plains of dim perpetual blue;

Bold summits set against the thunder heaps;

And slopes behacked and crushed by battling kine,

Where now the furious tumult of their feet

Gives back the dust, and up from glen and brake

Evokes fierce clamour, and becomes indeed

A token of the squatter's daring life,

Which, growing inland growing year by year

Doth set us thinking in these latter days,

And makes one ponder of the lonely lands

Beyond the lonely tracks of Burke and Wills,

Where, when the wandering Stuart fixed his camps

In central wastes, afar from any home

Or haunt of man, and in the changeless midst

Of sullen deserts and the footless miles

Of sultry silence, all the ways about

Grew strangely vocal, and a marvellous noise

Became the wonder of the waxing glooms.

Now, after darkness, like a mighty spell

Amongst the hills and dim, dispeopled dells,

Had brought a stillness to the soul of things,

It came to pass that, from the secret depths

Of dripping gorges, many a runnel-voice

Came, mellowed with the silence, and remained

About the caves, a sweet though alien sound;

Now rising ever, like a fervent flute

In moony evenings, when the theme is love;

Now falling, as ye hear the Sunday bells

While hastening fieldward from the gleaming town.

Then fell a softer mood, and memory paused

With faithful love, amidst the sainted shrines

Of youth and passion in the valleys past

Of dear delights which never grow again.

And if the stranger (who had left behind

Far anxious homesteads in a wave-swept isle,

To face a fierce sea-circle day by day,

And hear at night the dark Atlantic's moan)

Now took a hope and planned a swift return,

With wealth and health and with a youth unspent,

To those sweet ones that stayed with want at home,

Say who shall blame him though the years are long,

And life is hard, and waiting makes the heart grow old?

Thus passed the time, until the moon serene

Stood over high dominion like a dream

Of peace: within the white, transfigured woods;

And o'er the vast dew-dripping wilderness

Of slopes illumined with her silent fires.

Then, far beyond the home of pale red leaves

And silver sluices, and the shining stems

Of runnel blooms, the dreamy wanderer saw,

The wilder for the vision of the moon,

Stark desolations and a waste of plain,

All smit by flame and broken with the storms;

Black ghosts of trees, and sapless trunks that stood

Harsh hollow channels of the fiery noise,

Which ran from bole to bole a year before,

And grew with ruin, and was like, indeed,

The roar of mighty winds with wintering streams

That foam about the limits of the land

And mix their swiftness with the flying seas.

Now, when the man had turned his face about

To take his rest, behold the gem-like eyes

Of ambushed wild things stared from bole and brake

With dumb amaze and faint-recurring glance,

And fear anon that drove them down the brush;

While from his den the dingo, like a scout

In sheltered ways, crept out and cowered near

To sniff the tokens of the stranger's feast

And marvel at the shadows of the flame.

Thereafter grew the wind; and chafing depths

In distant waters sent a troubled cry

Across the slumb'rous forest; and the chill

Of coming rain was on the sleeper's brow,

When, flat as reptiles hutted in the scrub,

A deadly crescent crawled to where he lay

A band of fierce, fantastic savages

That, starting naked round the faded fire,

With sudden spears and swift terrific yells,

Came bounding wildly at the white man's head,

And faced him, staring like a dream of Hell!

Here let me pass! I would not stay to tell

Of hopeless struggles under crushing blows;

Of how the surging fiends, with thickening strokes,

Howled round the stranger till they drained his strength;

How Love and Life stood face to face with Hate

And Death; and then how Death was left alone

With Night and Silence in the sobbing rains.

So, after many moons, the searchers found

The body mouldering in the mouldering dell

Amidst the fungi and the bleaching leaves,

And buried it, and raised a stony mound

Which took the mosses. Then the place became

The haunt of fearful legends and the lair

Of bats and adders.

There he lies and sleeps

From year to year in soft Australian nights,

And through the furnaced noons, and in the times

Of wind and wet! Yet never mourner comes

To drop upon that grave the Christian's tear

Or pluck the foul, dank weeds of death away.

But while the English autumn filled her lap

With faded gold, and while the reapers cooled

Their flame-red faces in the clover grass,

They looked for him at home: and when the frost

Had made a silence in the mourning lanes

And cooped the farmers by December fires,

They looked for him at home: and through the days

Which brought about the million-coloured Spring,

With moon-like splendours, in the garden plots,

They looked for him at home: while Summer danced,

A shining singer, through the tasselled corn,

They looked for him at home. From sun to sun

They waited. Season after season went,

And Memory wept upon the lonely moors,

And hope grew voiceless, and the watchers passed,

Like shadows, one by one away.

And he

Whose fate was hidden under forest leaves

And in the darkness of untrodden dells

Became a marvel. Often by the hearths

In winter nights, and when the wind was wild

Outside the casements, children heard the tale

Of how he left their native vales behind

(Where he had been a child himself) to shape

New fortunes for his father's fallen house;

Of how he struggled how his name became,

By fine devotion and unselfish zeal,

A name of beauty in a selfish land;

And then of how the aching hours went by,

With patient listeners praying for the step

Which never crossed the floor again. So passed

The tale to children; but the bitter end

Remained a wonder, like the unknown grave,

Alone with God and Silence in the hills.