Page:Songs from the Southern Seas and Other Poems (1873).djvu/124

So he turned one day from the haunts of men,
And their friendless faces; an old man then,
In a convict's garb, with white flowing hair,
And a brow deep seared with the word, "Despair."
He gazed not back as his way he took
To the untrod forest; and oh! the look,
The piteous look in his sunken eyes,
Told that life was the bitterest sacrifice.

But little was heard of his later days:
'Twas deemed in the West that in change of ways
He tried with his tears to wash out the sin.
'Twas told by some natives who once came in
From the Kojunup Hills, that lonely there
They had seen a figure with long white hair;
They encamped close by where his hut was made,
And were scared at night when they saw he prayed
To the white man's God; and on one wild night
They had heard his voice till the morning light.

Years passed, and a sandalwood-cutter stood
At a ruined hut in a Kojunup wood: