Page:Moyarra- An Australian Legend in Two Cantos, 1891.djvu/34

Shrinks, languishing as a blighted flower
Beneath the taint of lawless power.
He staggers on, his vision swims,
Fail in their task his struggling limbs;
But on, with desperate energy
He reels, the unwelcome truth to see:
He nears the spot of past delight,
Hence doubly charged with woe to-night;
One glance sufficed the tale to own—
The idol of his heart was gone,
And he dejected—and alone.
He spoke not, but his lips compressed,—
The throb convulsive of his breast—
The expanded nostril—gathered brow
Shading the glittering orb below,
Whose fiery and insatiate glow
Seemed avaricious of a foe—
His nervous hand's impatient grasp
His weapon seeming now to clasp —
All told, though now controlled his ire
Within it raged with fiercer fire.
Meanwhile, at distance from his friend,
(Not friendship now a balm could lend)
Koreungat, gloomy, turned to know