Thomas Henry Kendall

“ While all the swamps were rotten; while the flats
Were baked and broken; when the clayey rifts
Yawned wide, half-choked with drifted herbage past,
Spontaneous flames would burst from thence and race
Across the prairies all day long. ”

“ And heat there came across the midnight ways
Abundant comfort, with upgathered clouds
And runnels babbling of a plenteous fall.
So comes the southern gale at evenfall
(The swift brick-fielder of the local folk) ,
About the streets of Sydney, when the dust
Lies burnt on glaring windows, and the men
Look forth from doors of drouth and drink the change
With thirsty haste, and that most thankful cry
Of "Here it is—the cool, bright, blessed rain!"
The hut, I say, was built of bark and slabs,
And stood, the centre of a clearing, hemmed
By hurdle-yards, and ancients of the blacks ”

“ And lighted, langhing, on the shepherd's hut,
And roused the widow from a swoon like death.
This day, and after it was noised abroad
By blacks, and straggling horsemen on the roads,
That he was dead "who had been sick so long,"
There flocked a troop from far-surrounding runs,
To see their neighbour, and to bury him ”