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Project Gutenberg Australia HomeReturn to Index of Poems
O‘er a broad white waste extending to horizons dim and black,
Showing miles before the swagman, lies a never-ending track,
With no leafy tree to shade him that dull cares might buried be
In a sweet siesta after he has boiled his quart of tea.
Through his solitary wanderings the luck-forsaken swain
Knoweth nothing half so bitter
As the endless hush and glitter
On the lone and dreary journey ‘cross a wide, wide plain.
There he sees the white grass shimmer ‘neath the sun’s midsummer light,
And visions of cool waters chase each other into night.
‘Gainst the closing dome above him not a speck of white or black,
But cerulean everlasting, and a dazzle up the track;
Then the care-worn mind goes wandering off to dallying days of rain—
To the croon of flowing fountains,
Shooting streams down mossy mountains.
On that dry, heart-breaking journey ‘cross the wide, wide plain.
Oft he views the distant lignum through the palpitating glare;
In his heart a prayer unspoken: “Would to God that I was there!”
Far ahead the spectral cattle up in mid-air seem to be,
And weird sheep, that look like camels, float across a ghostly sea,
Where the water-craving traveller may for liquid look in vain;
Where the carrion crows are crying,
And the new-born lambs are dying—
On the never-shaded tracks across the wide, wide plain.
Where the night is never brightened with the cheering tongues of fire,
Man’s assiduous memory caters to a hungry heart’s desire;
Where the half-forgotten rises as the vivid mind revolves,
Forming riddle after riddle that the After never solves;
Where the precepts old and golden that by Plenitude were slain
Are reborn and nursed in sorrow,
To be honored on the morrow,
When the searing journey’s ended on the wide, wide plain.
Those who follow in the footsteps of the brave old pioneers
Well may wonder at the perils that were faced in early years,
When the bank of gums they steered for was an unknown wilderness,
Where a black man’s spear or nulla was the usual night’s caress.
There, perhaps, a prayer is wafted from lone hearts that wait in vain,
For a sweetheart, son or brother.
Far away from home and mother,
Sleeping long the sleep eternal on the wide, wide plain.
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