294 THE PASTORAL AGE IN AUSTRALASIA 



spirit of it exudes from the ringing verses which every 

 Austrahan knows, or should know, by heart. 



" 'Twas merry in the glowing morn among the gleaming grass. 

 To wander as we've wandered many a mile, 

 And blow the cool tobacco cloud, and watch the white wreaths 



Sitting loosely in the saddle all the while. 

 *Twas merry 'mid the blaokwoods, when we spied the station 

 roofs. 



To wheel the wild scrub cattle at the yard, 

 With a running fire of stockwhips and a fiery run of hoofs ; 



Oh ! the hardest day was never then too hard ! " 



He sings, too, of his chase of the bush-rangers. He 

 recalls the " yarns " spun at the station and the songs 

 there sung, and he muses over the deaths of his old 

 comrades, most of them by such mischances as happen 

 on a station. On a station he desires to be buried. 



" Let me slumber in the hollow where the wattle blossoms wave, 

 With never stone or rail to fence my bed ; 

 Should the sturdy station children pull the bush-flowers on 

 my grave, 

 I may chance to hear them romping overhead." 



The best, perhaps, of the longer Austrahan poems, 

 Convict Once, by Brunton Stephens, has also colonial 

 and, in a manner, station life for its basis, though its 

 theme is one of dark and turbid passion such as is 

 peculiar to no country. The scene of the tragedy is 

 an Australian station, and the two chief actors in it 

 are, the one a female ex-convict, the other the son of a 

 convict. The verse has a brave lilt and a vigorous 

 swing, and the story of a " convict once " — a young 

 woman of twenty-three who has served a term of 

 seven years for some unnamed offence — ^is artistically 

 told, by indirection mainly. Exultant over her re- 

 covered freedom, she resolves to lead a new life, and 

 outwardly she does reform, but the fates, that is, her 

 wildly passionate nature, are against her. Having 

 become a governess on a station, she wilfully diverts 

 to herself the love of the son of another station -holder 



