A VOYAGE IN THE DARK 



burst from springing and swaying wild 

 rice stalks, all of which I saw through 

 the blackness illumined for an instant 

 by memory, — the dusky cloud uprising 

 like the smoke of an explosion, the bent 

 rice springing up beneath its lifted bur- 

 den, the dull-witted or greedy laggards 

 dribbling upward to join the majority. 

 My companions exclaimed in one voice at 

 the rare sight of a white bird in the flock, 

 and by the same light of memory I also 

 saw it as I saw one in an autumn forty 

 years ago, when, with my comrade of 

 those days, I came "daown the crik" 

 duck - shooting, or trolling as to - day. 

 Again and again we saw this phenomenal 

 bird like a white star twinkling through 

 a murky cloud. The fitful gleam was 

 seen day after day, till the north wind 

 blew him and his cloud away southward. 

 The pother of the blackbirds overhead 

 disturbed the meditations of a bittern, 

 who, with an alarmed croak, jerked his 

 ungainly form aloft in a flurry of awk- 

 ward wing - beats, and went sagging 

 across the marshes in search of safer 

 seclusion. I wished that he might find 

 it, and escape the ruthless gunners that 



120 



