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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=419047" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Dukite Snake</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Well, mate, you’ve asked about a fellow<br>You met to-day, in a black-and-yellow<br>Chain-gang suit, with a peddler’s pack,<br>Or with some such burden, strapped to his back.<br>Did you meet him square? No, passed you by?<br>Well, if you had, and had looked in his eye,<br>You’d have felt for your irons then and there;<br>For the light in his eye is a madman’s glare.<br>Ay, mad, poor fellow! I know him well,<br>And if you’re not sleepy just yet, I’ll tell<br>His story,—a strange one as ever you heard<br>Or read; but I’ll vouch for it, every word.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">You just wait a minute, mate: I must see<br>How that damper’s doing, and make some tea.<br>You smoke? That’s good; for there’s plenty of weed<br>In that wallaby skin. Does your horse feed<br>In the hobbles? Well, he’s got good feed here,<br>And my own old bush mare won’t interfere.<br>Done with that meat? Throw it there to the dogs,<br>And fling on a couple of banksia logs.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And now for the story. That man who goes<br>Through the bush with the pack and the convict’s clothes<br>Has been mad for years; but he does no harm,<br>And our lonely settlers feel no alarm<br>When they see or meet him. Poor Dave Sloane<br>Was a settler once, and a friend of my own.<br>Some eight years back, in the spring of the year,<br>Dave came from Scotland, and settled here.<br>A splendid young fellow he was just then,<br>And one of the bravest and truest men<br>That I ever met: he was kind as a woman<br>To all who needed a friend, and no man—<br>Not even a convict—met with his scorn,<br>For David Sloane was a gentleman born.<br>Ay, friend, a gentleman, though it sounds queer:<br>There’s plenty of blue blood flowing out here,<br>And some younger sons of your “upper ten”<br>Can be met with here, first-rate bushmen.<br>Why, friend, I—Bah! curse that dog! you see<br>This talking so much has affected me.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Well, Sloane came here with an axe and a gun;<br>He bought four miles of a sandal-wood run.<br>This bush at that time was a lonesome place,<br>So lonesome the sight of a white man’s face<br>Was a blessing, unless it came at night,<br>And peered in your hut, with the cunning fright<br>Of a runaway convict; and even they<br>Were welcome, for talk’s sake, while they could stay.<br>Dave lived with me here for a while, and learned<br>The tricks of the bush,—how the snare was laid<br>In the wallaby track, how traps were made,<br>How ’possums and kangaroo rats were killed,<br>And when that was learned, I helped him to build<br>From mahogany slabs a good bush hut,<br>And showed him how sandal-wood logs were cut.<br>I lived up there with him days and days,<br>For I loved the lad for his honest ways.<br>I had only one fault to find: at first<br>Dave worked too hard; for a lad who was nursed,<br>As he was, in idleness, it was strange<br>How he cleared that sandal-wood off his range.<br>From the morning light till the light expired<br>He was always working, he never tired;<br>Till at length I began to think his will<br>Was too much settled on wealth, and still<br>When I looked at the lad’s brown face, and eye<br>Clear open, my heart gave such thought the lie.<br>But one day—for he read my mind—he laid<br>His hand on my shoulder: “Don’t be afraid,”<br>Said he, “that I’m seeking alone for pelf.<br>I work hard, friend; but ’tis not for myself.”</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And he told me then, in his quiet tone,<br>Of a girl in Scotland, who was his own,—<br>His wife,—’twas for her: ’twas all he could say,<br>And his clear eye brimmed as he turned away.<br>After that he told me the simple tale:<br>They had married for love, and she was to sail<br>For Australia when he wrote home and told<br>The oft-watched-for story of finding gold.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In a year he wrote, and his news was good:<br>He had bought some cattle and sold his wood.<br>He said, “Darling, I’ve only a hut,—but come.”<br>Friend, a husband’s heart is a true wife’s home;<br>And he knew she’d come. Then he turned his hand<br>To make neat the house, and prepare the land<br>For his crops and vines; and he made that place<br>Put on such a smiling and homelike face,<br>That when she came, and he showed her round<br>His sandal-wood and his crops in the ground,<br>And spoke of the future, they cried for joy,<br>The husband’s arm clasping his wife and boy.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Well, friend, if a little of heaven’s best bliss<br>Ever comes from the upper world to this,<br>It came into that manly bushman’s life,<br>And circled him round with the arms of his wife.<br>God bless that bright memory! Even to me,<br>A rough, lonely man, did she seem to be,<br>While living, an angel of God’s pure love,<br>And now I could pray to her face above.<br>And David he loved her as only a man<br>With a heart as large as was his heart can.<br>I wondered how they could have lived apart,<br>For he was her idol, and she his heart.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Friend, there isn’t much more of the tale to tell:<br>I was talking of angels awhile since. Well,<br>Now I’ll change to a devil,—ay, to a devil!<br>You needn’t start: if a spirit of evil<br>Ever came to this world its hate to slake<br>One mankind, it came as a Dukite Snake.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Like? Like the pictures you’ve seen of Sin,<br>A long red snake,—as if what was within<br>Was fire that gleamed through his glistening skin.<br>And his eyes!—if you could go down to hell<br>And come back to your fellows here and tell<br>What the fire was like, you could find no thing,<br>Here below on the earth, or up in the sky,<br>To compare it to but a Dukite’s eye!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Now, mark you, these Dukites don’t go alone:<br>There’s another near when you see but one;<br>And beware you of killing that one you see<br>Without finding the other; for you may be<br>More than twenty miles from the spot that night,<br>When camped, but you’re tracked by the lone Dukite,<br>That will follow your trail like Death or Fate,<br>And kill you as sure as you killed its mate!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Well, poor Dave Sloane had his young wife here<br>Three months,—’twas just this time of the year.<br>He had teamed some sandal-wood to the Vasse,<br>And was homeward bound, when he saw in the grass<br>A long red snake: he had never been told<br>Of the Dukite’s ways,—he jumped to the road,<br>And smashed its flat head with the bullock-goad!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He was proud of the red skin, so he tied<br>Its tail to the cart, and the snake’s blood dyed<br>The bush on the path he followed that night.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He was early home, and the dead Dukite<br>Was flung at the door to be skinned next day.<br>At sunrise next morning he started away<br>To hunt up his cattle. A three hours’ ride<br>Brought him back: he gazed on his home with pride<br>And joy in his heart; he jumped from his horse<br>And entered—to look on his young wife’s corse,<br>And his dead child clutching his mother’s clothes<br>As in fright; and there, as he gazed, arose<br>From her breast, where ’twas resting, the gleaming head<br>Of the terrible Dukite, as if it said,<br>“I’ve had vengeance, my foe: you took all I had.”</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And so had the snake—David Sloane was mad!<br>I rode to his hut just by chance that night,<br>And there on the threshold the clear moonlight<br>Showed the two snakes dead. I pushed in the door<br>With an awful feeling of coming woe:<br>The dead was stretched on the moonlit floor,<br>The man held the hand of his wife,—his pride,<br>His poor life’s treasure,—and crouched by her side.<br>O God! I sank with the weight of the blow.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I touched and called him: he heeded me not,<br>So I dug her grave in a quiet spot,<br>And lifted them both,—her boy on her breast,—<br>And laid them down in the shade to rest.<br>Then I tried to take my poor friend away,<br>But he cried so woefully, “Let me stay<br>Till she comes again!” that I had no heart<br>To try to persuade him then to part<br>From all that was left to him here,—her grave;<br>So I stayed by his side that night, and, save<br>One heart-cutting cry, he uttered no sound,—<br>O God! that wail—like the wail of a hound!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">’Tis six long years since I heard that cry,<br>But ’twill ring in my ears till the day I die.<br>Since that fearful night no one has heard<br>Poor David Sloane utter sound or word.<br>You have seen to-day how he always goes:<br>He’s been given that suit of convict’s clothes<br>By some prison officer. On his back<br>You noticed a load like a peddler’s pack?<br>Well, that’s what he lives for: when reason went,<br>Still memory lived, for the days are spent<br>In searching for Dukites; and year by year<br>That bundle of skins is growing. ’Tis clear<br>That the Lord out of evil some good still takes;<br>For he’s clearing this bush of the Dukite snakes.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=John+Boyle+O%27Reilly">John Boyle O'Reilly</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=419047" data-title="The Dukite Snake de John Boyle O'Reilly" data-description="Well, mate, you’ve asked about a fellow
You met to-day, in a black-and-yellow
Chain-gang suit, with a peddler’s pack,
Or with some such burden, strapped to his back.
Did you meet him square? No, passed you by?
Well, if you had, and had looked ..."></div>
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