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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=354893" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Bush Fire</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">“’TIS nine o’clock:—to bed!” cried Egremont,<br>Who with his youthful household (for ’tis now<br>Long since) inhabited a lonely home<br>In the Australian wilderness, that then<br>As with an unshorn fleece of gloomy wood<br>Robed the vast bulk of all the mighty Isle.<br>But ere retiring finally, he went<br>Forth as his wont was, to survey the night.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">’Twas clear and silent: and the stirless woods<br>Seemed dreaming in the witch-light of the moon<br>As like a boat of stained pearl, she hung<br>Amid the ridges of a wavy cloud—<br>The only cloud in heaven. While Egremont<br>Looked thus abroad observingly, he marked<br>All around him, listing the horizon’s verge,<br>A broad unusual upward glaring gleam,<br>Such a drear radiance as the setting sun<br>Effuses when the atmosphere is stormy.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">What this might be he wondered—but not long;<br>Divining soon the cause—a vast Bush Fire!<br>But deeming it too distant yet for harm,<br>During the night betiding, to repose<br>With his bed-faring household he retired.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Sound was their sleep: for honesty of life<br>Is somewhat lumpish when ’tis once a-bed.<br>And now the darkness of the night was past,<br>When with the dreams of Egremont, a strange<br>And momently approaching roar began<br>To mingle and insinuate through them more<br>And more of its own import, till a Fire<br>Huge as the world was their sole theme: and then<br>He started from his sleep to find the type<br>A warning! for what else however terrible,<br>Might breathe with a vitality so fierce<br>As that which reigned without?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Scarce did he wait<br>To clothe himself ere forth he rushed; and lo,<br>Within the circling forest he beheld<br>A vast and billowy belt of writhing fire,<br>That shed a wild and lurid splendour up<br>Against the whitening dawn, come raging on!<br>Raging and roaring as with ten thousand tongues<br>That prophesied destruction. On it came,<br>A dreadful apparition—such as Fear<br>Conceives when dreaming of the front of hell!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">No time was there to lose. “Up—up!” he cried<br>To all the house. Instantly all within<br>Was haste and wonder, and in briefest space<br>The whole-roused family were staring out<br>In speechless admiration, such as kept<br>Even Terror dormant;—till more urgently<br>The voice of Egremont again was heard:—<br>“Lose not a moment! Follow me at once,<br>Each with whatever he can grasp of use<br>And carry unincumbered!”</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Right before,<br>A narrow strip of clearing 1 like a glade<br>Stretched out tow’rds a bald summit. Thitherward<br>The perilled people now were hurrying all,<br>While in their front, beneath the ridge, a dense<br>Extent of brushwood into which the Fire’s<br>Bright teeth were eating hungrily, still brought<br>The danger nearer! Shall they reach that hill<br>Unscathed, their only refuge? Will they speed<br>Past the red-rushing peril? Onward yet!<br>And onward!—till at length the summit’s gained,<br>And halting, they look back—in safety all,<br>Though breathless.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But no sooner had they past<br>That fearful brush, than a vast swathe of flame<br>Lifted and hurried forward by the wind<br>Over their very passage track, was pitched<br>With a loud thud like thunder into it—<br>With such a thud as the sea-swell gives up<br>From under the ledges of some hanging cliff!<br>And in an instant all its depth of shade<br>Was as a lake of hell! And hark! as then,<br>Even like a ghastly pyramid its mass<br>Of flames went surging up—up with them still<br>A cry of mortal agony was heard<br>Ascending, all so terrible, indeed,<br>That they who heard it, never, until then,<br>Might deem a voice so earnest in its fear,<br>So strenuous in its anguish could have being<br>In the live bosom of the suffering Earth!<br>But soon did they divine, even to their loss,<br>Its import:—there a giant steed, their best,<br>Had taken refuge, there to die!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">All grouped<br>In safety now upon that hill’s bare top—<br>Egremont and his household looked abroad,<br>Astonished at the terrors of the time!<br>Soon sunk their rooftree in the fiery surge,<br>Which entering next a high-grassed bottom, thick<br>With bark-ringed trees all standing bleak and leafless,<br>Tenfold more terrible in its ravage grew,<br>Upclimbing to their very tops! As when<br>Upon some day of national festival,<br>From the tall spars of the ship-crowded port<br>Innumerous flags in one direction all<br>Tongue outward, writhing in the wind: even so,<br>From those dry boles where still the dead bark clings<br>And from their multifarious mass above<br>Of leafless boughs, myriads of flaming tongues<br>Lick upward, or aloft in narrowing flakes<br>Stream out,—and thence upon the tortured blast<br>Bicker and flap in one inconstant blaze!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Scared forward by the roaring of the Fire,<br>A flight of parrots o’er the upper ridge<br>Comes whizzing, and then sweeping down, alights<br>Amid the oaks that fringe the base of yon<br>Precipitous terrace, being deterred from still<br>Proceeding by the smoke uprolled in front<br>Like a dim-moving range of spectral mountains.<br>There they abide, and listen in their fear<br>To the tremendous riot of the flames<br>Beyond the ridge line, that keep nearing fast<br>Though yet unseen from thence—unseen, till now<br>Furiously seizing on the withered grove<br>That tops the terrace, all whose spiry shafts<br>Rush upward, and then culminating, bend<br>Sheer o’er the oaks wherein the birds are lodged.<br>All are in flight at once, but from above<br>As suddenly, a mightier burst of flame<br>Outsheeteth o’er them!—Down they dip, but it<br>Keeps swooping with them even to the ground—<br>Where, in a moment after, all are seen<br>To writhe convulsed—blasted and plumeless all!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Thus through the day the conflagration raged:<br>And when the wings of night o’erspread the scene,<br>Not even their starry blazonry wore such<br>An aggregated glory to the eye,<br>As did the blazing dead wood of the forest—<br>On all hands blazing! Mighty sapless gums<br>Amid their living kindred, stood all fire—<br>Boles, branches, all!—like flaming ghosts of trees,<br>Come from the past within the whiteman’s pale<br>To typify a doom. Such was the prospect:<br>Illuminated cities were but jests<br>Compared to it for splendor. But enough!<br>Where are the words to paint the million shapes<br>And unimaginable freaks of Fire,<br>When holding thus its monster carnival<br>In the primeval forest all night long?</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Charles+Harpur">Charles Harpur</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=354893" data-title="The Bush Fire de Charles Harpur" data-description="“’TIS nine o’clock:—to bed!” cried Egremont,
Who with his youthful household (for ’tis now
Long since) inhabited a lonely home
In the Australian wilderness, that then
As with an unshorn fleece of gloomy wood
Robed the vast bulk of all ..."></div>
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