“A HORSE amongst ten thousand! on the verge,
The extremest verge of equine life he stands;
Yet mark his action, as those wild young colts
Freed from the stock-yard gallop whinnying up;
See how he trots towards them,–nose in air,
Tail arched, and his still sinewy legs out-thrown
In gallant grace before him! A brave beast
As ever spurned the moorland, ay, and more,
He bore me once,–such words but smite the truth,
I’ the outer ring, while vivid memory wakes,
Recalling now, the passion and the pain,–
He bore me once from earthly hell to heaven!
“The sight of fine old Widderin (that’s his name,
Caught from a peak, the topmost rugged peak
Of tall Mount Widderin, towering to the North
Most like a steed’s head, with full nostrils blown,
And ears pricked up),–the sight of Widderin brings
That day of days before me, whose strange hours
Of fear and anguish, ere the sunset, changed
To hours of such content and full-veined joy,
As Heaven can give our mortal lives but once.
“Well, here’s the story: While yon bushfires sweep
The distant ranges, and the river’s voice
Pipes a thin treble through the heart of drought,
While the red heaven like some huge caldron’s top
Seems with the beat a-simmering, better far
In place of riding tilt ‘gainst such a sun,
Here in the safe veranda’s flowery gloom,
To play the dwarfish Homer to a song,
Thereof myself am hero:
“Two decades
Have passed since that wild autumn-time when last
The convict hordes from near Van Diemen, freed
By force or fraud, swept, like a blood-red fire,
Inland from beach to mountain, bent on raid
And rapine; fiends o’ th’ lowest pit, they spared
Nor sex, nor age, nor infancy; the vulture
Followed their track, and a black smoke like hell’s
Hung its foul reek above each home accursed,
Sacked by their greed, or ravished by their lust.
Their crimes were monstrous, weird, unutterable,
Not to be hinted, save in awe-struck whispers
Dropped by dark hearthstones, far from maidens’ ears,
In the blank silent midnight! all the land
Uprose to seek, confront and decimate
These devils spawned of Tophet; but their bands
At the first bruit of battle, the first clang
Of sabres girding honest loins, and champ
Of horse-bit’s held by manly hands that burned
To smite them, hip and thigh,–fled, disappeared,
And crouched in hiding, wheresoe’er the earth,
By wave and hill-side, forest, and bleak tarn.
Vouchsafed to shield them; as the time rolled on,
Our fears grew lighter, and all dread was quelled,
When on a morning, ‘mid the outmost reefs
Of rough Cape Bolling, our chief herdsman found
The carcass of a huge boat overturned,
All stoven, and firmly wedged between the jaws
Of monster rocks, whereby three bodies lay,
Splashing and gurgling in the refluent tides,
Well known as corses of three desperate men,
The outlaws’ leaders; thereupon ’twas deemed,–
And all must own with fairest likelihood,
That glutted by their vengeance, or spurred on
By hopes of rapine, beckoning otherwhere,–
The whole foul crew embarking, had been seized
By wind and wave, God’s executioners,
The pitiless doomsmen of the wrath of Heaven,–
And so, crushed out of being, and made less
Than the vile seaweed dabbling in the surf.
“Thenceforth, our caution cooled; save here and there,
At critical mountain-passes, or lone caves,
And sheltered inlets of the wild southwest,
No sentinels watched; and wherefore should they watch?
The storm had threatened, broken and was passed!
“So, in late autumn,–’twas a marvellous morn,
With breezes from the calm snow-river borne
That touched the air, and stirred it into thrills,
Mysterious and mesmeric, a bright mist
Lapping the landscape like a golden trance,
Swathing the hilltops with fantastic veils,
And o’er the moorland-ocean quivering light
As gossamer threads drawn down the forest aisles
At dewy dawning,–on this marvellous morn,
I, with four comrades, in this self-same spot,
Watched the fair scene, and drank the spicy airs,
That held a subtler spirit than our wine,
And talked and laughed, and mused in idleness,
Weaving vague fancies, as our pipe-wreaths curled
Fantastic, in the sunlight! I, with head
Thrown back, and cushioned snugly, and with eyes
Intent on one grotesque and curious cloud,
Puffed upward, that now seemed to take the shape
Of a Dutch tulip, now a Turk’s face topped
By folds on folds of turban limitless,–
Heard suddenly, just as the clock chimed one,
To melt in musical echoes up the hills,
Quick footsteps on the gravelled path without,–
Steps of the couriers of calamity,–
So my heart told me, ere with blanched regards,
Two stalwart herdsmen on our threshold paused,
Panting, with lips that writhed, and awful eyes;
A breath’s space in each other’s eyes we glared,
Then, swift as interchange of lightning thrusts
In deadly combat, question and reply
Clashed sharply, ‘What! the Rangers?’ ‘Ay, by Heaven!
And loosed in force,–the hell-hounds!’ ‘Whither bound?’
I stammered, hoarsely. ‘Bound,’ the elder said,
‘Southward!–four stations had they sacked and burnt,
And now, drunk, furious–‘ but I stopped to hear
No more; with booming thunder in mine ears,
And blood-flushed eyes, I rushed to Widderin’s side,
Drew tight the girths, upgathered curb and rein,
And sprang to horse ere yet our laggard friends,
Now trooping from the green veranda’s shade,
Could dream of action!
“Love had winged my will,
For to the southward, fair Garoopna held
My all of hope, life, passion; she whose hair
(Its tiniest strand of waving witch-like gold)
Had caught my heart, entwined, and bound it fast,
As ’twere some sweet enchantment’s heavenly net!
“I only gave a hand-wave in farewell,
Shot by, and o’er the endless moorland swept
(Endless it seemed, as those weird, measureless plains,
Which in some nightmare vision, stretch and stretch
Towards infinity!) like some lone ship
O’er wastes of sailless waters; now, a pine,
The beacon pine gigantic, whose grim crown
Signals the far land-mariner from out
Gaunt boulders of the gray-backed Organ hill,
Rose on my sight, a mistlike, wavering orb,
The while, still onward, onward, onward still,
With motion winged, elastic, equable,
Brave Widderin cleaved the air tides, tossed aside
The winds as waves their swift, invisible, breasts,
Hissing with foamlike noise when pressed and pierced
By that keen head and fiery-crested form!
“The lonely shepherd guardian on the plains,
Watching his sheep through languid half-shut eyes,
Looked up, and marvelled, as we passed him by,
Thinking perchance it was a glorious thing,
So dressed, so booted, so caparisoned,
To ride such bright blood-coursers unto death!
Two sun-blacked natives, slumbering in the grass,
Just rose betimes to ‘scape the trampling hoofs,
And hurled hot curses at me as I sped;
While here and there, the timid kangaroo
Blundered athwart the mole-hills, and in puffs
Of steamy dust-cloud vanished like a mote!
“Onward, still onward, onward, onward still!
And lo! thank Heaven, the mighty Organ hill,
That seemed a dim blue cloudlet at the start,
Hangs in a
(Paul Hamilton Hayne)
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Based on Topics: Man Poems, God Poems, Life Poems, Light Poems, Sadness Poems, Time Poems, Death & Dying Poems, War & Peace Poems, Joy & Excitement Poems, Heaven Poems, Fairness PoemsBased on Keywords: girths, rangers, steamy, corses, spawned, dabbling, veranda, tophet, whinnying, dust-cloud, embarking