'Tis a song of the Never Never land— <br />Set to the tune of a scorching gale <br />On the sandhills red, <br />When the grasses dead <br />Loudly rustle, and bow the head <br />To the breath of its dusty hail: <br /> <br />Where the cattle trample a dusty pad <br />Across the never-ending plain, <br />And come and go <br />With muttering low <br />In the time when the rivers cease to flow, <br />And the Drought King holds his reign; <br /> <br />When the fiercest piker who ever turned <br />With lowered head in defiance proud, <br />Grown gaunt and weak, <br />Release doth seek <br />In vain from the depths of the slimy creek— <br />His sepulchre and his shroud; <br /> <br />His requiem sung by an insect host, <br />Born of the pestilential air, <br />That seethe and swarm <br />In hideous form <br />Where the stagnant waters lie thick and warm, <br />And Fever lurks in his lair: <br /> <br />Where a placid, thirst-provoking lake <br />Clear in the flashing sunlight lies— <br />But the stockman knows <br />No water flows <br />Where the shifting mirage comes and goes <br />Like a spectral paradise; <br /> <br />And, crouched in the saltbush' sickly shade, <br />Murmurs to Heaven a piteous prayer: <br />‘O God! must I <br />Prepare to die?' <br />And, gazing up at the brazen sky, <br />Reads his death-warrant there. <br /> <br />Gaunt, slinking dingoes snap and snarl, <br />Watching his slowly-ebbing breath; <br />Crows are flying, <br />Hoarsely crying <br />Burial service o'er the dying— <br />Foul harbingers of Death. <br /> <br />Full many a man has perished there, <br />Whose bones gleam white from the waste of sand— <br />Who left no name <br />On the scroll of Fame, <br />Yet died in his tracks, as well became <br />A son of that desert land.<br /><br />Barcroft Henry Thomas Boake<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/from-the-far-west/
