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Project Gutenberg Australia HomeReturn to Index of Poems
While the white mist curtained the sleeping stream, the
blush on the eastern sky,
Glode round the bends in the coot canoe a fair little girl
and I;
For the redbills perched in the willow trees when darkness
was on the corn,
And ‘long the river till harvest home they raided the
crops at morn.
In the bows I sat with a waiting gun, when voices and
wings were still,
And watched the scrub for a shaking leaf, the glint of a
flaming bill;
The flash of white ‘neath a flickering tail ‘gainst the
plumage of dusky blue;
And, her brown hair bared to the morning breeze, she
paddled the coot canoe.
The mullet schools by the selvedge weeds broke up with a
plunge and fled,
And the turtles dropped from the cobra logs as ‘long by
the banks we sped,
With a shot anon, and a puff of smoke that hung in the
misty air,
And a pause awhile ‘neath the drooping limbs retrieving
a fallen pair.
The dilbong tinkled a symphony from the top of a
tamarind,
And the wonga hailed in a liquid note, far sped on the
scented wind,
And sharply over the river reach the cry of the whipbird
rang,
From dim-lit depths of a scrubby haunt, the home of the
tallewang.
To the hum of bees where the bluebells grew, and the
gossamers built their swings;
By rush and reed where the dragon flies e’er hovered on
shimmering wings;
We glided downward on duty bent, and a length between
the crew,
But side by side on the homeward way we paddled the
coot canoe.
‘Twas narrow amidships where we sat, and, pressed for
the want of room,
Our pace was slow ‘neath the cherry trees, along by
the fragrant broom;
Nor heeded we when the regent crossed with a flashing
of gold and jet,
Or the glittering sheen of the rifle-bird gleamed under an
arboret.
The wind sprite lifted her flowing hair, and twined it
around my neck—
Did the redbills know in that nerve-thrilled hour ‘twas
Cupid’s look-out on deck?
Ah, cherries that painted the craft blood-red, crushed
under a dainty shoe,
Were not as sweet as the lips of her who paddled the coot
canoe.
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