Page:Songs from the Southern Seas and Other Poems (1873).djvu/71

And a flag, red-crossed, says the patch of sand
Is a recognized part of the wide domain
That is blessed with the peace of Victoria's reign.
But behind the lighthouse the land's the same,
And it bears grim proof of the white man's shame;
For the miniature vales that the island owns
Have a horrible harvest of human bones!

And how did they come there? that's the word;
And I'll answer it now with the tale I heard
From the lips of a man who was there, and saw
The bad end of man's greed and of colony law.

Many years ago, when the white man first
Set his foot on the coast, and was hated and cursed
By the native, who had not yet learned to fear
The dark wrath of the stranger, but drove his spear
With a freeman's force and a bushman's yell
At the white invader, it then befell
That so many were killed and cooked and eaten,
There was risk of the whites in the end being beaten