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(Written one evening near Mount Russel Station, Darling Downs, Queensland.)
Beneath a vault of spotless blue
Extends the mighty plain,
Where scattered windmills heave in view
As sails on a hoary main.
There on his course Sol proudly rides,
With aspect bright and bold,
And towards the russet prairie glides
Like a ball of glowing gold.
Down in the gleaming foxtail grass
He settles soft and low,
While eastward golden vistas pass
To set the plain aglow.
A moment one is apt to think
It is some drover’s fire,
Aglowing from the prairie brink
Thro’ many a grassy spire.
But ne’er a sound of kine or sheep
Disturbs the stillness there;
The eerie space and silence deep
Are both beyond compare.
And ever above that fiery ball
Grand rainbow colours rise,
Like fairy scenes that cover all
The arch of the prairie skies.
The sportive wind had ceased to blow,
Had hushed its evening lay,
And sunk into a calm as tho’
It mourned the dying day.
Just once a bird with dipping wing
Thro’ deepening dusk did fly,
That might have been some phantom thing
So quietly it went by.
The level line that circled round
Where sky and prairie meet
Stole o’er the intervening ground
On swift and silent feet.
The sable goddess did I mark
In silence take command,
And throw her mantle broad and dark
All o’er the prairie land.
Her countenance is cold and stern,
There is no gladdening ray,
For I can scarce the stars discern—
They are so far away.
And there I sleep from danger free,
A tussock ‘neath my head.
The vault above my canopy,
The boundless plain my bed!
And, tho’ no voice doth break the quiet
That’s brooding o’er that sea,
I know throughout the lonely night
God watches over me.
Edward S. Sorenson
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