THE OLD PLACE.

Evening Post, Volume LXIV, Issue LXIV, 13 September 1902, Page 3 (Supplement)

THE OLD PLACE.

So the, last day's come at last, the- close of my fifteen year — The end ot iho hope, an' the struggles on' messes I've put in heie. All of the shearings over, the iinal musteriug done, — Eleven hundred an' fifty for the incoming nwn, near on. Over tive thousand I drove 'em, mob by --' "mob, down the coast. ; Eleven-fifty in fifteen year ... .it isn't much of a boast. Oh, it's a bad old place! Blown out ' o' your bed half the nights, 'And in summer the grass burnt shiny an' bare as your hu"id, on the heights ; The ore»k dried up by November, and in May a thundering roar That tarries down toll o' your stock to salt 'em whole on the shore. JOlear'd I have, aud I've clear'd an' olear'd, yet everywhere, slap in your face, , Briar, tauhinu, an' ruin ! — God ! it's a brute of a. place. m , . An' the house got burnt which I f built myself, with all that worry and \ pride ; rhere the Missua was always homesick, and where bhe took fever, and died. Yes, well I I'm leaving the place.. 'Apples look red on that bough. I set the slips with my own hand. Well — they're the other man's now. The breezy bluff; an' the clover that smells so over the land, Drowning the reek o' the rubbish, thnt plucks the profit out o' your bond ; That bit of bush paddock I fall'd mybolf, an' watched/ each year, come clean (Don't it look fresh in the tawny? A scrap of Old-Country green) ; An' thi» air, all healthy with sun an' ■alt, an' bright with purity; An' the glossy karnkas there, twinkling* to the big blue twinkling sea; Ay, the broad biue sea be>ono, un the gem-clear- cove below, [Where my boat, I'll never handle again, sits rocking to an' fro ; There's the last look to all 1 an' now for the last upon - ;This room,' where Hetty was born, an' (my Mary died, an' John . . . v , . Well! I'm leaving the y poor old place, and it cuts as keen as a knife ; 'ffhe place that's broken my heart — The place whew I've lived my life. *-B. E. Baughan, New Zealand, in the - Spectator.