The stamp of Scotland is on his face, <br />But he sailed to the South a lad, <br />And he does not think of the black bleak hills <br />And the bitter hard youth he had; <br />He thinks of a nearer and dearer past <br />In the bright land far away, <br />When the teams went up and the teams came down, <br />In the days when they made bush hay. <br /> <br />The fare was rough and the bush was grim <br />In the “years of his pilgrimage”, <br />But he gained the strength that is still with him <br />In his hale, late middle age. <br />He thinks of the girl at the halfway inn <br />They use as a barn to-day— <br />Oh, she was a dumpling and he was thin <br />In the days when they made bush hay. <br /> <br />The ration teams to the Bathurst Plains <br />Were often a fortnight full. <br />And they branched all ways in the early days <br />And back to the port with wool. <br />They watched for the lights of old Cobb & Co. <br />That flashed to the West away, <br />When drivers drove six on a twelve-mile stage <br />In the days when they made bush hay. <br /> <br />He has made enough, and he’s sold his claim, <br />And he goes by the morning train, <br />From the gold-field town in the sultry West <br />To his home by the sea again, <br />Where a bustling old body’s expecting him <br />Whose hair is scarcely grey, <br />And she was the girl of the halfway house <br />In the days when they made bush hay.<br /><br />Henry Lawson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/bush-hay/
