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Bleating Sheep

Edward S. Sorenson

A clump of stunted wilga-trees,
    A boggy tank near by,
Low hills around like billowed seas,
    Above a starlit sky;
‘Tis there, amidst the reek and slime,
    A night-long watch we keep,
To guard and tend at drinking-time
    Packed mobs of bleating sheep.

A dustcloud floats across the flat,
    Fast-trailing towards the tank;
A thousand hoofs come pit-a-pat,
    And scamper down the bank.
Where, round the rim low-sapped by drought,
    Soon scores are bogging deep;
And ever, while we pull them out,
    We hear the bleat of sheep.

Before the last bogged brute is freed,
    And gone mudbound and wet,
Another mob with fatal speed
    Sweeps o’er the parapet.
And so they come and bog and go,
    And so the night hours creep,
All clam’rous with the tremolo
    And plaintive bleat of sheep.

Not till the morning sun rides high,
    And from the flocks there’s none
Late heading in or camping nigh,
    The bogman’s task is done.
But still he hears in camp by day,
    And oft-times in his sleep,
Although the mobs are far away,
    The bleating of the sheep.

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