TUSSOCK AND ASPHALT RHYMES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2258, 10 June 1897, Page 47

TUSSOCK A ND ASPHALT RHYMES.

By David M'Kee Wuight.

17— THE OLD RABBITING DATS. They tell me that Harry's up-country, at work on tho station agaiu, Where the bud still remembers to shine, and the mornings are crisp on the plain. There's a dull, heavy sky overhead, and I look through the smoke to the bay, Where a corner of water is framed by the houses and roofs in (he way. The lexicon frown 3on my left and the grammar has taken to sneer Wheu I let my thoughts -wander away to tho places that Harry is near. They haven'fc got classical names — " Goat Creek " and "Jock's Gully " and all — And the old chimneys dotting the flat undermined by the rats for a fall. Bat I think of the days when a tent made a home here and there in the scrub — A little world all of our own — eight rnilea from a chtnch or a "pub." And the men — oh, the men that were there I — big hearts and strong hands, that we knew ; Heathens all, but they somehow did things! that would honour a Christian to do. The summers of heat and of wind, and the changes that made the long day, The dew in the early dawn, on the river flat 3 * mi&ty and grey, The cobwebs, like trappings of pearl, that jewelled the sciub-bushcs over, The toi-fcoi that slept by the stream, and the hoggets down-stringing through clover, The crack of a whip on the hills that told of a mustering morn, And the settlement far on the plain, with the green of its paddocks of corn — It all comes back to me cow, like & dream of an older time — A break in the stream of life that belonged to the old world's prime. For the waves of progress rolled around like a i swelling sea, j And we lived the hunter life of the days when the world was free ; For the throb of the great world's heart we felt to be far away As we watched the deeds of the world like men and nations at play. They are gone — and why should we murmur ? — the days of that empty life : The days of the trap and the mattock, the days of the rabbiting knife. The rabbits ate with us still, but the years have worked a change — New methods, new manners, new men oa the flat and the mountain range. But the chimneys dotting the flat will telt their Btory for long Of a life that was fresh and fair and of men that were true and strong. Dunedin, May 1897.