Читать книгу Poetical Works of Henry Lawson - Henry Lawson - Страница 38

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Out west, where the stars are brightest,

Where the scorching north wind blows,

And the bones of the dead gleam whitest

And the sun on a desert glows—

Yet within the selfish kingdom

Where man starves man for gain,

Where white men tramp for existence—

Wide lies the Great Grey Plain.

No break in its awful horizon,

No blur in the dazzling haze,

Save where by the bordering timber

The fierce, white heat-waves blaze,

And out where the tank-heap rises

Or looms when the sunlights wane,

Till it seems like a distant mountain

Low down on the Great Grey Plain.

From the camp, while the rich man’s dreaming,

Come the “traveller” and his mate,

In the ghastly daybreak seeming

Like a swagman’s ghost out late;

And the horseman blurs in the distance,

While still the stars remain,

A low, faint dust-cloud haunting

His track on the Great Grey Plain.

And all day long from before them

The mirage smokes away—

That daylight ghost of an ocean

Creeps close behind all day

With an evil, snake-like motion,

As the waves of a madman’s brain:

’Tis a phantomnotlike water Out there on the Great Grey Plain.

There’s a run on the Western limit

Where a man lives like a beast,

And a shanty in the mulga

That stretches to the East;

And the hopeless men who carry

Their swags and tramp in pain—

The footmen must not tarry

Out there on the Great Grey Plain.

Out West, where the stars are brightest,

Where the scorching north wind blows,

And the bones of the dead seem whitest,

And the sun on a desert glows—

Out back in the hungry distance

That brave hearts dare in vain—

Where swagmen tramp for existence—

There lies the Great Grey Plain.