THE OLD PLACE
The creek dried up by November, and in May a thundering roar
That carries down toll o’ your stock to salt ’em whole on the shore.
Clear’d I have, and I’ve clear’d an’ clear’d, yet everywhere, slap in your face,
Briar, tauhinu,[1] an’ ruin!—God! it’s a brute of a place.
. . . An’ the house got burnt which I built, myself, with all that worry and pride;
Where the Missus was always homesick, and where she took fever, and died.
Yes, well! I’m leaving the place. Apples look red on that bough.
I set the slips with my own hand. Well—they’re the other man’s now.
The breezy bluff: an’ the clover that smells so over the land,
Drowning the reek o’ the rubbish, that plucks the profit out o’ your hand:
That bit o’ Bush paddock I fall’d myself, an’ watch’d, each year, come clean
(Don’t it look fresh in the tawny? A scrap of Old-Country green):
This air, all healthy with sun an’ salt, an’ bright with purity:
- ↑ Tauhinu, an aromatic shrub, infesting poor soil.
88
