Poems (Forrest)/Moonrise

by Mabel Forrest

For works with similar titles, see Moonrise.

MOONRISE

The Barley creek was running high, the Narrows were abrim,As low I crouched beside the ridge, and watched an hour for him.And out against the round red moon that lipped each standing twigHow black the drooping gum-boughs seemed! The moon how bright and big!

The troopers watched the hills, I knew. But I, more wise than they,Guessed that the man they hunted down would ride a nearer way.If rider passed along the ridge from where I watched the track,He would stand out against the moon, a silhouette in black.So hidden in the fern I lay, for he, I loved, had swornThat he would come to where I hid, at moonrise or at morn.And then above the sighing wind, the leaf talk in the trees,I thought I heard a horse's bit a-jingle in the breeze,And all the red came to my cheeks, the kisses to my mouth,As though a crush of roses fed the wind along the South. I peered between the ferny cowls; I clasped my hands aboveThe heart that ached to cry aloud thanksgiving for its love.I saw him black against the red. How blood-red was the moon!And more of summer was the air than like a night in June,A frosty night. And clear the sound of hoof-beats on the track:And he a target on the moon, the red beyond the black.

A curlew whistled from the plain; a mopoke flapped; and then—The night was full of spitting oaths, and pistol shots, and men.I thought the troopers watched the hills. Ah, God, how could I knowAmong the laces of the fern they, too, were crouching low?I saw a trooper's grim-set face across a fallen log.My Man? Among the shattered gorse they trapped him like a dog!

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The sergeant got his stripes for this. My man hanged yesterday.. . . The sergeant with his new-won stripes to-night will pass this way.The red moon will be full to-night, and very bright and bigAcross her face the boughs will stand, clean-cut in every twig; And I shall creep among the fern—I know the old trail well,It is the road that lies between the walls of Heaven and Hell—With rifle laid across my knees I'll watch the dewy track:The sergeant 'twixt me and the moon, a silhouette in black. . .