The Mountains <br />A land of sombre, silent hills, where mountain cattle go <br />By twisted tracks, on sidelings deep, where giant gum trees grow <br />And the wind replies, in the river oaks, to the song of the stream below. <br />A land where the hills keep watch and ward, silent and wide awake <br />As those who sit by a dead campfire, and wait for the dawn to break, <br />Or those who watched by the Holy Cross for the dead Redeemer's sake. <br /> <br />A land where silence lies so deep that sound itself is dead <br />And a gaunt grey bird, like a homeless soul, drifts, noiseless, overhead <br />And the world's great story is left untold, and the message is left unsaid. <br /> <br /> <br /> The Plains <br />A land as far as the eye can see, where the waving grasses grow <br />Or the plains are blackened and burnt and bare, where the false mirages go <br />Like shifting symbols of hope deferred — land where you never know. <br />Land of plenty or land of want, where the grey Companions dance, <br />Feast or famine, or hope or fear, and in all things land of chance, <br />Where Nature pampers or Nature slays, in her ruthless, red, romance. <br /> <br />And we catch a sound of a fairy's song, as the wind goes whipping by, <br />Or a scent like incense drifts along from the herbage ripe and dry <br />— Or the dust storms dance on their ballroom floor, where the bones of the cattle lie.<br /><br />Banjo Paterson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/australian-scenery-2/
