[edit] Queensland

THE last lone ride - l live it again:
Lost, alone on the drought-swept plain,
The grey-green gone from the scattered scrub
The frogs stink, dead in the dry creek mud;
Away in the sky on southward flight,
Far-specking the wastes of blinding light,
The parrots are curling their glittering wings,
Soft-croaking their dismal mutterings,
By the small hot sun in fleets they pass
Where the wide sky flames like molten glass -
On crawls the horse o'er the trackless track -
The rider scorched on its blistered back,
Two castaways on wide waveless seas!



'Tis night - overhead the bright stars creep,
He lies with his one friend down for sleep:
And the months and the years have since rolled by,
And the horse and the master still there lie:
Where the eyes of hope on hope peered thro'
A green shoot peeped, a Bush flower blew.
Such as we found them, side by side
Two skeletons white, just as they died.
Even the old gum trees stirred, moaned, and sighed:
Our hearts were heavy as on we went,
For a thin arm-bone was softly bent
Curled round the neck of the big comrade
Telling, in death, how, both, waylaid,
Had slept there under the drought-swept sky.
And still out there the white bones lie.

Miles, miles away rise gaunt gum trees
Like derelicts old, with sailless mast
Cast on the rocks by the drought's hot blast.
The sun goes down, on the dim skyline
Faint-twinkles once, like a goblet of wine
Held over a dead world's hazy rim -
And the lost man's eyes gaze far, aswim
As the tide of dark rolls over him!
There's hope, lo, a tiny cloud doth rise,
Like a raft on the seas of lost emprise,
Toils slowly across the noiseless skies -
Creeps down to a speck on the other side.
He is left alone on the desert wide.




(from 'Torn Sails and Sunset' by Arnold Safroni Middleton, circa 1943)