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Then when the flood went down, paddocks and roads were strewn With timber and broken branches, half-buried in oozy mud; Carcases hither and thither, palings and posts torn down, Flax and toi uprooted, traced the course of the flood.
This is the place where he lay with his wan white face to the skies, Caught here against a gorse-stump amongst the reeds on the bank; Here, at the merciless sun he stared with unseeing eyes, Neither despairing, nor pleading, but horribly, hopelessly blank.
And here we stood in silence;—the shepherd Jim and I,— Stood, and stared at the stillness in the staring face of the dead; And Jim knelt down in the rushes, and closed the expressionless eye, And covered the corpse with his coat; “For the sake of the Mother,” he said.
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