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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=408694" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Old Stone Chimney</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">The rising moon on the peaks was blending<br>Her silver light with the sunset glow,<br>When a swagman came as the day was ending<br>Along a path that he seemed to know.<br>But all the fences were gone or going—<br>The hand of ruin was everywhere;<br>The creek unchecked in its course was flowing,<br>For none of the old clay dam was there. <br>Here Time had been with his swiftest changes,<br>And husbandry had westward flown;<br>The cattle tracks in the rugged ranges<br>Were long ago with the scrub o’ergrown.<br>It must have needed long years to soften<br>The road, that as hard as rock had been;<br>The mountain path he had trod so often<br>Lay hidden now with a carpet green. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">He thought at times from the mountain courses<br>He heard the sound of a bullock bell,<br>The distant gallop of stockmen’s horses,<br>The stockwhip’s crack that he knew so well:<br>But these were sounds of his memory only,<br>And they were gone from the flat and hill,<br>For when he listened the place was lonely,<br>The range was dumb and the bush was still. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">The swagman paused by the gap and faltered,<br>For down the gully he feared to go,<br>The scene in memory never altered—<br>The scene before him had altered so.<br>But hope is strong, and his heart grew bolder,<br>And over his sorrows he raised his head,<br>He turned his swag to the other shoulder,<br>And plodded on with a firmer tread. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ah, hope is always the keenest hearer,<br>And fancies much when assailed by fear;<br>The swagman thought, as the farm drew nearer,<br>He heard the sounds that he used to hear.<br>His weary heart for a moment bounded,<br>For a moment brief he forgot his dread;<br>For plainly still in his memory sounded<br>The welcome bark of a dog long dead. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">A few steps more and his face grew ghostly,<br>Then white as death in the twilight grey;<br>Deserted wholly, and ruined mostly,<br>The Old Selection before him lay.<br>Like startled spectres that paused and listened,<br>The few white posts of the stockyard stood;<br>And seemed to move as the moonlight glistened<br>And paled again on the whitened wood. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And thus he came, from a life long banished<br>To other lands, and of peace bereft,<br>To find the farm and the homestead vanished,<br>And only the old stone chimney left.<br>The field his father had cleared and gardened<br>Was overgrown with saplings now;<br>The rain had set and the drought had hardened<br>The furrows made by a vanished plough. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And this, and this was the longed-for haven<br>Where he might rest from a life of woe;<br>He read a name on the mantel graven—<br>The name was his ere he stained it so.<br>‘And so remorse on my care encroaches—<br>‘I have not suffered enough,’ he said;<br>‘That name is pregnant with deep reproaches—<br>‘The past won’t bury dishonoured dead!’ </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Ah, now he knew it was long years after,<br>And felt how swiftly a long year speeds;<br>The hardwood post and the beam and rafter<br>Had rotted long in the tangled weeds.<br>He found that time had for years been sowing<br>The coarse wild scrub on the homestead path,<br>And saw young trees by the chimney growing,<br>And mountain ferns on the wide stone hearth. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">He wildly thought of the evil courses<br>That brought disgrace on his father’s name;<br>The escort robbed, and the stolen horses,<br>The felon’s dock with its lasting shame.<br>‘Ah, God! Ah, God! is there then no pardon?’<br>He cried in a voice that was strained and hoarse;<br>He fell on the weeds that were once a garden,<br>And sobbed aloud in his great remorse. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">But grief must end, and his heart ceased aching<br>When pitying sleep to his eye-lids crept,<br>And home and friends who were lost in waking,<br>They all came back while the stockman slept.<br>And when he woke on the empty morrow,<br>The pain at his heart was a deadened pain;<br>And bravely bearing his load of sorrow,<br>He wandered back to the world again.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Henry+Lawson">Henry Lawson</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=408694" data-title="Old Stone Chimney de Henry Lawson" data-description="The rising moon on the peaks was blending
Her silver light with the sunset glow,
When a swagman came as the day was ending
Along a path that he seemed to know.
But all the fences were gone or going—
The hand of ruin was everywhere;
The creek unc..."></div>
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