Читать книгу The Lonely Crossing And Other Poems - Louisa Lawson - Страница 3

A man on foot came down to the river,

A silent man, on the road alone,

And dropped his swag with a chill-born shiver,

And sat to rest on a wind-worn stone.

He slid then down to the long grass, bending

His arms above as the resting do,

And watched a snow-white chariot trending

Its wind-made way o’er the wedgewood blue.

In it sat one of the fairest ladies

That mind could mould, in a crown of white,

But close beside came a fiend from Hades

In a chariot black as the heart of night.

The man, he sighed as the fiend would clasp her,

Then smiled as the wind by a wise decree

Her white steeds turned to the streets of Jaspar,

And Satan drave to a sin-black sea.

The wattles waved, and their sweet reflection

In crystal fathoms responses made;

The sunlight silted each soft inflection

And fretted with silver the short’ning shade.

A restless fish made the thin reeds shiver,

A waking wind made the willows moan,

But the resting man by the noon-bright river

Lay dreaming on, in the long grass prone.

* * * * *

The bell-bird called to its tardy lover,

The grebe clouds all to the west had sped,

But the river of death had a soul crossed over,

The man with the swag on the bank was dead.