Click in the field, then press CTRL+C to copy the HTML code
<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=354895" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Creek of the Four Graves</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">I <br>I verse a Settler's tale of olden times <br>One told me by our sage friend, Egremont; <br>Who then went forth, meetly equipt, with four <br>Of his most trusty and adventrous men <br>Into the wilderness - went forth to seek <br>New streams and wider pastures for his fast <br>Augmenting flocks and herds. On foot were all <br>For horses then were beast of too great price <br>To be much ventured on mountain routes, <br>And over wild wolds clouded up with brush, <br>And cut with marshes, perilously deep. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">So went they forth at dawn: and now the sun <br>That rose behind them as they journeyed out, <br>Was firing with his nether rim a range <br>Of unknown mountains that, like ramparts, towered <br>Full in their front, and his last glances fell <br>Into the gloomy forest's eastern glades <br>In golden massses, transiently, or flashed <br>Down to the windings of a nameless Creek, <br>That noiseless ran betwixt the pioneers <br>And those new Apennines - ran, shaded up <br>With boughs of the wild willow, hanging mixed <br>From either bank, or duskily befringed <br>With upward tapering feathery swamp-oaks - <br>The sylvan eyelash always of remote <br>Australian waters, whether gleaming still <br>In lake or pool, or bickering along <br>Between the marges of some eager stream. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Before then, thus extended, wilder grew <br>The scene each moment - and more beautiful! <br>For when the sun was all but sunk below <br>Those barrier mountains, - in the breeze that o'er <br>Their rough enormous backs deep-fleeced with wood <br>Came whispering down, the wide up-slanting sea <br>Of fanning leaves in the descending rays <br>Danced interdazzingly, as if the trees <br>That bore them, were all thrilling, - tingling all <br>Even to the roots for very happiness: <br>So prompted from within, so sentient seemed <br>The bright quick motion - wildly beautiful. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">But when the sun had wholly disappeared <br>Behind those mountains - O what words, what hues <br>Might paint the wild magnificence of view <br>That opened westward! Out extending, lo, <br>The heights rose crowding, with their summits all <br>Dissolving, as it seemed, and partly lost <br>In the exceeding radiancy aloft; <br>And thus transfigured, for awhile they stood <br>Like a great company of Archaeons, crowned <br>With burning diadems, and tented o'er <br>With canopies of purple and of gold! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Here halting wearied, now the sun was set, <br>Our travellers kindled for their first night's camp <br>The brisk and crackling fire, which also looked <br>A wilder creature than 'twas elsewhere wont, <br>Because of the surrounding savageness. <br>And soon in cannikins the tea was made, <br>Fragrant and stong; long fresh-sliced rashers then <br>Impaled on whittled skewers, were deftly broiled <br>On the live embers, and when done, transferred <br>To quadrants from an ample damper cut, <br>Their only trenchers - soon to be dispatched <br>With all the savoury morsels they sustained, <br>By the keen tooth of healthful appitite. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And as they supped, birds of new shape and plume <br>And wild strange voice came by,nestward repairing by, <br>Oft too their wonder; or betwixt the gaps <br>In the ascending forest growths they saw <br>Perched on the bare abutments of the hills, <br>Where haply yet some lingering gleam fell through, <br>The wallaroo look forth: till aastward all <br>The view had wasted into formless gloom, <br>Night's front; and westward, the high massing woods <br>Steeped in a swart but mellowed Indian hue - <br>A deep dusk loveliness, lay ridged and heaped <br>Only the more distinctly for their shade <br>Against the twilight heaven - a cloudless depth <br>Yet luminous with the sunset's fading glow; <br>And thus awhile, in the lit dusk, they seemed <br>To hang like mighty pictures of themselves <br>In the still chambers of some vaster world. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">The silent business of their supper done, <br>The Echoes of the solitary place, <br>Came as in sylvan wonder wide about <br>To hear, and imitate tentatively, <br>Stange voice moulding a strange speech, as then <br>Within the pleasant purlieus of the fire <br>Lifted in glee - but to be hushed erelong, <br>As with the night in kindred darkness came <br>O'er the adventurers, each and all, some sense - <br>Some vague-felt intimation from without, <br>Of danger lurking in its forest lairs. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">But nerved by habit, and all settled soon <br>About the well-built fire, whose nimble tongues <br>Sent up continually a strenuous roar <br>Of fierce delight, and from their fuming pipes <br>Fu11 charged and fragrant with the Indian weed, <br>Drawing rude comfort,- typed without, as 'twere, <br>By tiny clouds over their several heads <br>Quietly curling upward; - thus disposed <br>Within the pleasant firelight, grave discourse <br>of their peculiar business brought to each <br>A steadier mood, that reached into the night. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">The simple subject to their minds at length <br>Fully discussed, their couches they prepared <br>Of rushes, and the long green tresses pulled <br>Down from the boughs of the wild willows near. <br>The four, as prearranged, stretched out their limbs <br>Under the dark arms of the forest trees <br>That mixed aloft, high in the starry air, <br>In arcs and leafy domes whose crossing curves <br>And roof-like features, - blurring as they ran <br>Into some denser intergrowth of sprays, - <br>Were seen in mass traced out against the clear <br>Wide gaze of heaven; and trustful of the watch <br>Kept near them by their thoughtful Master, soon <br>Drowsing away, forgetful of their toil, <br>And of the perilous vast wilderness <br>That lay around them like a spectral world, <br>Slept, breathing deep; - whilst all things there as well <br>Showed slumbrous, - yea, the circling forest trees, <br>Their foremost holes carved from a crowded mass <br>Less visible, by the watchfire's bladed gleams, <br>As quick and spicular, from the broad red ring <br>Of its more constant light they ran in spurts <br>Far out and under the umbrageous dark; <br>And even the shaded and enormous mounts, <br>Their bluff brows grooming through the stirless air, <br>Looked in their quiet solemnly asleep: <br>Yea, thence surveyed, the Universe might have seemed <br>Coiled in vast rest, - only that one dim cloud, <br>Diffused and shapen like a huge spider, <br>Crept as with scrawling legs along the sky; <br>And that the stars, in their bright orders, still <br>Cluster by cluster glowingly revealed <br>As this slow cloud moved on, - high over all, - <br>Looked wakeful - yea, looked thoughtful in their peace. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">II </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Meanwhile the cloudless eastem heaven had grown <br>More and more luminous - and now the Moon <br>Up from behind a giant hill was seen <br>Conglobing, till - a mighty mass - she brought <br>Her under border level with its cone, <br>As thereon it were resting: when, behold <br>A wonder! Instantly that cone's whole bulk <br>Erewhile so dark, seemed inwardly a-glow <br>With her instilled irradiance; while the trees <br>That fringed its outline, - their huge statures dwarfed, <br>By distance into brambles, and yet all <br>Clearly defined against her ample orb, - <br>Out of its very disc appeared to swell <br>In shadowy relief, as they had been <br>All sculptured from its substance as she rose. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Thus o'er that dark height her great orb arose, <br>Till her full light, in silvery sequence still <br>Cascading forth from ridgy slope to slope, <br>Like the dropt foldings of a lucent veil, <br>Chased mass by mass the broken darkness down <br>Into the dense-brushtd valleys, where it crouched, <br>And shrank, and struggled, like a dragon doubt <br>Glooming some lonely spirit that doth still <br>Resist the Truth with obstinate shifts and shows, <br>Though shining out of heaven, and from defect <br>Winning a triumph that might else not be. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">There standing in his lone watch, Egremont <br>On all this solemn beauty of the world, <br>Looked out, yet wakeful; for sweet thoughts of home <br>And all the sacred charities it held, <br>Ingathered to his heart, as by some nice <br>And subtle interfusion that connects <br>The loved and cherished (then the most, perhaps, <br>When absent, or when passed, or even when lost) <br>With all serene and beautiful and bright <br>And lasting things of Nature. So then thought <br>The musing Egremont: when sudden - hark! <br>A bough crackt loudly in a neighboring brake, <br>And drew at once, as with alarum, all <br>His spirits thitherward in wild surmise. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">But summoning caution, and back stepping close <br>Against the shade-side of a bending gum, <br>With a strange horror gathering to his heart, <br>As if his blood were charged with insect life <br>And writhed along in clots, he stilled himself, <br>Listening long and heedfully, with head <br>Bent forward sideways, till his held breath grew <br>A pang, and his ears rung. But Silence there <br>Had recomposed her ruffled wings, and now <br>Brooded it seemed even stillier than before, <br>Deep nested in the darkness: so that he <br>Unmasking from the cold shade, grew erelong <br>More reassured from wishing to be so, <br>And to muse, Memory's suspended mood, <br>Though with an effort, quietly recurred. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">But there again - crack upon crack! And hark! <br>O Heaven! have Hell's worst fiends burst howling up <br>Into the death-doom'd world? Or whence, if not <br>From diabolic rage, could surge a yell <br>So horrible as that which now affrights <br>The shuddering dark! Beings as fell are near! <br>Yea, Beings, in their dread inherited hate <br>And deadly enmity, as vengeful, come <br>In vengeance! For behold, from the long grass <br>And nearer brakes, a semi-belt of stript <br>And painted Savages divulge at once <br>Their bounding forms! - full in the flaring light <br>Thrown outward by the fire, that roused and lapped <br>The rounding darkness with its ruddy tongues <br>More fiercely than before, - as though even it <br>Had felt the sudden shock the air received <br>From those dire cries, so terrible to hear! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">A moment in wild agitation seen <br>Thus, as they bounded up, on then they came <br>Closing, with weapons brandished high, and so <br>Rushed in upon the sleepers! three of whom <br>But started, and then weltered prone beneath <br>The first fell blow dealt down on each by three <br>Of the most stalwart of their pitiless foes! <br>But One again, and yet again, heaved up - <br>Up to his knees, under the crushing strokes <br>Of huge-clubbed nulla-nullas, till his own <br>Warm blood was blinding him! For he was one <br>Who had with Misery nearly all his days <br>Lived lonely, and who therefore, in his soul <br>Did hunger after hope, and thirst for what <br>Hope still had promised him, - some taste at least <br>Of human good however long deferred, <br>And now he could not, even in dying, loose <br>His hold on life's poor chances of tomorrow - <br>Could not but so dispute the terrible fact <br>Of death, e'en in Death's presence! Strange it is: <br>Yet oft 'tis seen that Fortune's pampered child <br>Consents to his untimely power with less <br>Reluctance, less despair, than does the wretch <br>Who hath been ever blown about the world <br>The straw-like sport of Fate's most bitter blasts, <br>Vagrant and tieless; - ever still in him <br>The craving spirit thus grieves to itself: </div><div style="margin:10px 0">'I never yet was happy - never yet <br>Tasted unmixed enjoyment, and I would <br>Yet pass on the bright Earth that I have loved <br>Some season, though most brief, of happiness; <br>So should I walk thenceforward to my grave, <br>Wherever in her green maternal breast <br>It might await me, more than now prepared <br>To house me in its gloom, - resigned at heart, <br>Subjected to its certainty and soothed <br>Even by the consciousness of having shaped <br>Some personal good in being; - strong myself, <br>And strengthening others. But to have lived long years <br>Of wasted breath, because of woe and want, <br>And disappointed hope, - and now, at last, <br>To die thus desolate, is horrible!' </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And feeling thus through many foregone moods <br>Whose lives had in the temper of his soul <br>All mixed, and formed one habit, - that poor man, <br>Though the black shadows of untimely death, <br>Inevitably, under every stroke, <br>But thickened more and more, - against them still <br>Upstruggled, nor would cease: until one last <br>Tremendous blow, dealt down upon his head <br>As if in mercy, gave him to the dust <br>With all his many woes and frustrate hope. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Struck through with a cold horror, Egremont, <br>Standing apart, - yea, standing as it were <br>In marble effigy, saw this, saw all! <br>And when outthawing from his frozen heart <br>His blood again rushed tingling - with a leap <br>Awaking from the ghastly trance which there <br>Had bound him, as with chill petrific bonds, <br>He raised from instinct more than conscious thought <br>His death-charged tube, and at that murderous crew <br>Firing! saw one fall ox-like to the earth; - <br>Then turned and fled. Fast fled he, but as fast <br>His deadly foes went thronging on his track! <br>Fast! for in full pursuit, behind him yelled <br>Wild men whose wild speech had no word for mercy! <br>And as he fled, the forest beasts as well, <br>In general terror, through the brakes a-head <br>Crashed scattering, or with maddening speed athwart <br>His course came frequent. On - still on he flies - <br>Flies for dear life! and still behind him hears <br>Nearer and nearer, the so rapid dig <br>Of many feet, - nearer and nearer still. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">III </div><div style="margin:10px 0">So went the chase! And now what should he do? <br>Abruptly turning, the wild Creek lay right <br>Before him! But no time was there for thought: <br>So on he kept, and from a bulging rock <br>That beaked the bank like a bare promontory, <br>Plunging right forth and shooting feet-first down, <br>Sunk to his middle in the flashing stream - <br>In which the imaged stars seemed all at once <br>To burst like rockets into one wide blaze <br>Of intewrithing light. Then wading through <br>The ruffled waters, forth he sprang and seized <br>A snake-like root that from the opponent bank <br>Protruded, and round which his earnest fear <br>Did clench his cold hand like a clamp of steel, <br>A moment, - till as swiftly thence he swung <br>His dripping form aloft, and up the dark <br>O'erjutting ledge, went clambering in the blind <br>And breathless haste of one who flies for life: <br>When its face - 0 verily our God <br>Hath those in his peculiar care for whom <br>The daily prayers of spotless Womanhood <br>And helpless Infancy, are offered up! - <br>When in its face a cavity he felt, <br>The upper earth of which in one rude mass <br>Was held fast bound by the enwoven roots <br>Of two old trees, - and which, beneath the mould, <br>Just o'er the clammy vacancy below, <br>Twisted and lapped like knotted snakes, and made <br>A natural loft-work. Under this he crept, <br>Just as the dark forms of his hunters thronged <br>The bulging rock whence he before had plunged. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Duskily visible, thereon a space <br>They paused to mark what bent his course might take <br>Over the farther bank, thereby intent <br>To hold upon the chase, which way soe'er <br>It might incline, more surely. But no form <br>Amongst the moveless fringe of fern was seen <br>To shoot up from its outline, - up and forth <br>Into the moonlight that lay bright beyond <br>In torn and shapless blocks, amid the boles <br>And mxing shadows of the taller trees, <br>All standing now in the keen radiance there <br>So ghostly still, as in a solemn trance, <br>But nothing in the silent prospect stirred - <br>No fugitive apparition in the view <br>Rose, as they stared in fierce expectancy: <br>Wherefore they augured that their prey was yet <br>Somewhere between, - and the whole group with that <br>Plunged forward, till the fretted current boiled <br>Amongst their crowd'ing trunks from bank to bank; <br>And searching thus the stream across, and then <br>Lengthwise, along the ledges, - combing down <br>Still, as they went, with dripping fingers, cold <br>And cruel as inquisitive, each clump <br>Of long-flagged swamp-grass where it flourished high, - <br>The whole dark line passed slowly, man by man, <br>Athwart the cavity - so fearfully near, <br>That as they waded by the Fugitive <br>Felt the strong odour of their wetted skins <br>Pass with them, trailing as their bodies moved <br>Stealthily on, coming with each, and going. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">But their keen search was keen in vain. And now <br>Those wild men marvelled, - till, in consultation, <br>There grouped in dark knots standing in the stream <br>That glimmered past them, moaning as it went, <br>His Banishment, so passing strange it seemed, <br>They coupled with the mystery of some crude <br>Old fable of their race; and fear-struck all, <br>And silent, then withdrew. And when the sound <br>Of their receding steps had from his ear <br>Died off, as back to the stormed Camp again <br>They hurried to despoil the yet warm dead, <br>Our Friend slid forth, and springing up the bank. <br>Renewed his flight, nor rested from it, till <br>He gained the welcoming shelter of his Home. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Return we for a moment to the scene <br>Of recent death. There the late flaring fire <br>Now smouldered, for its brands were strewn about, <br>And four stark corses plundered to the skin <br>And brutally mutilated, seemed to stare <br>With frozen eyeballs up into the pale <br>Round visage of the Moon, who, high in heaven, <br>With all her stars, in golden bevies, gazed <br>As peacefully down as on a bridal there <br>Of the warm Living - not, alas! on them <br>Who kept in ghastly silence through the night <br>Untimely spousals with a desert death. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">0 God! and thus this lovely world hath been <br>Accursed forever by the bloody deeds <br>Of its prime Creature - Man. Erring or wise, <br>Savage or civilised, still hath he made <br>This glorious residence, the Earth, a Hell <br>Of wrong and robbery and untimely death! <br>Some dread Intelligence opposed to Good <br>Did, of a surety, over all the earth <br>Spread out from Eden - or it were not so! <br>For see the bright beholding Moon, and all <br>The radiant Host of Heaven, evince no touch <br>Of sympathy with Man's wild violence; - <br>Only evince in their calm course, their part <br>In that original unity of Love, <br>Which, like the soul that dwelleth in a harp, <br>Under God's hand, in the beginning, chimed <br>The sabbath concord of the Universe; <br>And look on a gay clique of maidens, met <br>In village tryst, and interwhirling all <br>In glad Arcadian dances on the green - <br>Or on a hermit, in his vigils long, <br>Seen kneeling at the doorway, of his cell - <br>Or on a monster battlefield where lie <br>In swelterin heaps, the dead and dying both, <br>On the cold gory grounds - as they that night <br>Looked in bright peace, down on the doomful Wild. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Afterwards there, for many changeful years, <br>Within a glade that sloped into the bank <br>Of that wild mountain Creek - midway within, <br>In partial record of a terrible hour <br>Of human agony and loss extreme, <br>Four grassy mounds stretched lengthwise side by side, <br>Startled the wanderer; - four long grassy mounds <br>Bestrewn with leaves, and withered spraylets, stript <br>By the loud wintry wing gales that roamed <br>Those solitudes, from the old trees which there <br>Moaned the same leafy dirges that had caught <br>The heed of dying Ages: these were all; <br>And thence the place was long by travellers called <br>The Creek of the Four Graves. Such was the Tale <br>Egremont told us of the wild old times. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"></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>
<img src="https://www.citatepedia.ro/g/32share.png" style="float:left" alt="Share">
<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=354895" data-title="The Creek of the Four Graves de Charles Harpur" data-description="I 
I verse a Settler's tale of olden times 
One told me by our sage friend, Egremont; 
Who then went forth, meetly equipt, with four 
Of his most trusty and adventrous men 
Into the wilderness - went forth to seek 
New streams and wider pastures f..."></div>
</div>
</div>