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The Old Yahrung

Edward S. Sorenson

Where wombats roll in the twilight dim,
    Swans sleep afloat, and black-ducks swim,
And teal disport the green reeds among;
    Where the mopokes cry in the scrub below,
And the curlews scream by the glow-worm’s glow—
    Are the lone green shores of the old Yahrung.

They paced that sward in the moonlight night,
    They heard the whirr of wild wings in flight,
And refrains of songs that were long years sung;
    The little squirrels that gambolled round
They heeded not, for their hearts had found
    Their Heaven on Earth by the old Yahrung.

He galloped away in the moonlit night
    To his cattle camped in a far-off bight,
Where the clatter of hoofs in the wild woods rung;
    But he thought of her as the nights went past,
Till the trip was o’er and he came at last
    Back to the shores of the old Yahrung.

“Where’s Alice? Ay, my fair bride to be,
    My blue-eyed beauty—say, where is she?”
And the mother sighed, for her heart was stung.
    “Not of this world is thy sweetheart; know
At dawn of day, where the lilies grow,
    She was drowned last June in the old Yahrung.

“That snow-white swan that is swimming there
    Like a mist-wraith came thro’ the morning air,
And cried aloud with its wings out-flung
    ‘Tis my dear lost child, I have heard them say
(A strange, weird tale!), yet it swims for aye
    O’er the one sad spot on the old Yahrung.”

Then a drover, mad, trudged those banks in quest
    Of a fair sweet girl as the sun went west,
And the swan cried loud as Love’s song was sung:
    “I’m Alice! thine Alice!” it seemed to say.
He paused and he wooed, and he bore one day
    A bride from the shores of the old Yahrung.

Such is the tale that the drovers tell,
    Encamped by the spot that they know so well,
Harking to days when the world was young,
    While the dingoes howl by the brumbies’ trail;
The curlews scream, and the night-winds wail
    By the lone, weird shores of the old Yahrung.

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