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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=354896" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Creek of the Four Graves [Late Version]</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">A settler in the olden times went forth<br>With four of his most bold and trusted men<br>Into the wilderness—went forth to seek<br>New streams and wider pastures for his fast<br>Increasing flocks and herds. O’er mountain routes<br>And over wild wolds clouded up with brush,<br>And cut with marshes perilously deep,—<br>So went they forth at dawn; at eve 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 gleams, like to the Angel’s sword,<br>And flashed upon the windings of a creek<br>That noiseless ran betwixt the pioneers<br>And those new Apennines—ran, shaded o’er<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. <br>Before them, 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 dazzlingly, tingling as if the trees<br>Thrilled to the roots for very happiness. </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>A brisk and crackling fire, which seemed to them,<br>A wilder creature than ’twas elsewhere wont,<br>Because of the surrounding savageness.<br>And as they supped, birds of new shape and plume<br>And wild strange voice came by; and up the steep<br>Between the climbing forest growths they saw<br>Perched on the bare abutments of the hills,<br>Where haply yet some lingering gleam fell through,<br>The wallaroo1 look forth. Eastward at last<br>The glow was wasted into formless gloom,<br>Night’s front; then westward the high massing woods<br>Steeped in a swart but mellow Indian hue,<br>A deep dusk loveliness, lay ridged and heaped,<br>Only the more distinctly for their shade,<br>Against the twilight hearen—a cloudless depth,<br>Yet luminous with 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">At last, the business of the supper done,<br>The echoes of the solitary place<br>Came as in sylvan wonder wide about<br>To hear and imitate the voices strange,<br>Within the pleasant purlieus of the fire<br>Lifted in glee; but to be hushed erelong,<br>As with the darkness of the night there came<br>O’er the adventurers, each and all, some sense<br>Of danger lurking in its forest lairs. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">But, nerved by habit, they all gathered round<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>Drawing rude comfort, round the pleasant light<br>With grave discourse they planned their next day’s deeds.<br>Wearied at length, their couches they prepared<br>Of rushes, and the long green tresses pulled<br>From the bent boughs of the wild willows near;<br>Then the four men stretched out their tired 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>Blended with 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 master, soon they slept,<br>Forgetful of the perilous wilderness<br>That lay around them like a spectral world;<br>And all things slept; the circling forest trees,<br>Their foremost boles carved from a crowded mass<br>Less visible by the watch-fire’s bladed gleams<br>That ran far out in the umbrageous dark<br>Beyond the broad red ring of constant light;<br>And, even the shaded mountains darkly seen,<br>Their bluff brows looming through the stirless air,<br>Looked in their stillness solemnly asleep:<br>Yea, thence surveyed, the universe might have seemed<br>Coiled in vast rest;—only that one dark cloud,<br>Diffused and shapen like a spider huge,<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>Peaceful and wakeful, watched the world below. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Part II.<br>Meanwhile the cloudless eastern heaven had grown<br>More luminous, and now the moon arose<br>Above the hill, when lo! that giant cone<br>Erewhile so dark, seemed inwardly aglow<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 surface as she rose.<br>Then her full light in silvery sequence still<br>Cascading forth from ridgy slope to slope,<br>Chased mass by mass the broken darkness down<br>Into the dense-brushed valleys, where it crouched,<br>And shrank, and struggled, like a dragon-doubt<br>Glooming a lonely spirit. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">His lone watch<br>The master kept, and wakeful looked abroad<br>On all the solemn beauty of the world;<br>And by some sweet and subtle tie that joins<br>The loved and cherished, absent from our side,<br>With all that is serene and beautiful<br>In Nature, thoughts of home began to steal<br>Into his musings—when, on a sudden, hark!<br>A bough cracks loudly in a neighbouring brake!<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>And listened heedfully, till his held breath<br>Became a pang. Nought heard he: silence there<br>Had recomposed her ruffled wings, and now<br>Deep brooded in the darkness; so that he<br>Again mused on, quiet and reassured. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">But there again—crack upon crack! Awake!<br>O heaven! have hell’s worst fiends burst howling up<br>Into the death-doomed 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>Awful, vengeful as hell’s worst fiends, are come<br>In vengeance! For behold from the long grass<br>And nearer brakes arise the bounding forms<br>Of painted savages, full in the light<br>Thrown outward by the fire, that roused and lapped.<br>The rounding darknesswith its ruddy tongues<br>More fiercely than before, as though even it<br>Had felt the sudden shock the air received<br>From those terrific cries. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">On then they came<br>And rushed 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, rose up,<br>Rose 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 still to come,<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 death’s 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>So though the shadows of untimely death,<br>Inevitably under every stroke<br>But thickened more and more, against them still<br>The poor wretch struggled, nor would cease until<br>One last great blow, dealt down upon his head<br>As if in mercy, gave him to the dust,<br>With all his many woes and frustrate hopes. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">The master, chilled with horror, saw it all;<br>From instinct more than conscious thought he raised<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>Men whose wild speech no word for mercy hath!<br>And as he fled the forest beasts as well<br>In general terror through the brakes ahead<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 light rapid dig ,<br>Of many feet—nearer and nearer still. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Part III<br>So went the chase. Now at a sudden turn<br>Before him lay the steep-banked mountain creek;<br>Still on he kept perforce, and from a rock<br>That beaked the bank, a promontory bare,<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>Then wading through the ruffled waters, forth<br>He sprang, and seized a snake-like root that from<br>The opponent bank protruded, clenching there<br>His cold hand like a clamp of steel; and thence<br>He swung his dripping form aloft, the blind<br>And breathless haste of one who flies for life<br>Urging him on; up the dark ledge he climbed,<br>When in its face—O 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>There 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>Over the dark and clammy cave below,<br>Twisted like knotted snakes.<br>’Neath these he crept,<br>Just as the dark forms of his hunters thronged<br>The steep bold rock whence he before had plunged. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Duskily visible beneath the moon<br>They paused a space, to mark what bent his course<br>Might take beyond the stream. But now no form<br>Amongst the moveless fringe of fern was seen<br>To shoot up from its outline, ’mid the boles<br>And mixing 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>Therefore they augured that their prey was yet<br>Within the nearer distance, and they all<br>Plunged forward till the fretted current boiled<br>Amongst their crowding forms from bank to bank<br>And searching thus the stream across, and then<br>Along the ledges, combing down 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 cave! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Keen was their search but vain,<br>There grouped in dark knots standing in the stream<br>That glimmered past them moaning as it went,<br>They marvelled; passing strange to them it seemed<br>Some old mysterious fable of their race,<br>That brooded o’er the valley and the creek,<br>Returned upon their minds, and fear-struck all<br>And silent, they withdrew. And when the sound<br>Of their retreating steps had died away,<br>As back they hurried to despoil the dead<br>In the stormed camp, then rose the fugitive,<br>Renewed his flight, nor rested from it, till<br>He gained the shelter of his longed-for home.<br>And in that glade, far in the doomful wild,<br>In sorrowing record of an awful hour<br>Of human agony and loss extreme,<br>Untimely spousals with a desert death,<br>Four grassy mounds are there beside the creek,<br>Bestrewn with sprays and leaves from the old trees<br>Which moan the ancient dirges that have caught<br>The heed of dying ages, and for long<br>The traveller passing then in safety there<br>Would call the place—The Creek of the Four Graves.</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=354896" data-title="The Creek of the Four Graves [Late Version] de Charles Harpur" data-description="A settler in the olden times went forth
With four of his most bold and trusted men
Into the wilderness—went forth to seek
New streams and wider pastures for his fast
Increasing flocks and herds. O’er mountain routes
And over wild wolds clouded..."></div>
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