# The Poems of Henry Kendall/On the Paroo

Sydney: Angus & Robertson Ltd., pages 126–129
ON THE PAROO
As when the strong stream of a wintering sea Rolls round our coast, with bodeful breaks of storm, And swift salt rain, and bitter wind that saith Wild things and woeful of the White South Land Alone with God and silence in the cold— As when this cometh, men from dripping doors ​Look forth, and shudder for the mariners Abroad, so we for absent brothers looked In days of drought, and when the flying floods Swept boundless; roaring down the bald, black plains Beyond the farthest spur of western hills.
For where the Barwon cuts a rotten land, Or lies unshaken, like a great blind creek, Between hot mouldering banks, it came to this, All in a time of short and thirsty sighs, That thirty rainless months had left the pools And grass as dry as ashes: then it was Our kinsmen started for the lone Paroo, From point to point, with patient strivings, sheer Across the horrors of the windless downs, Blue gleaming like a sea of molten steel.
But never drought had broke them: never flood Had quenched them: they with mighty youth and health, And thews and sinews knotted like the trees— They, like the children of the native woods, Could stem the strenuous waters, or outlive The crimson days and dull, dead nights of thirst Like camels: yet of what avail was strength Alone to them—though it was like the rocks On stormy mountains—in the bloody time When fierce sleep caught them in the camps at rest, And violent darkness gripped the life in them And whelmed them, as an eagle unawares Is whelmed and slaughtered in a sudden snare.
All murdered by the blacks; smit while they lay In silver dreams, and with the far, faint fall Of many waters breaking on their sleep! Yea, in the tracts unknown of any man Save savages—the dim-discovered ways Of footless silence or unhappy winds— The wild men came upon them, like a fire Of desert thunder; and the fine, firm lips That touched a mother's lips a year before, ​And hands that knew a dearer hand than life, Were hewn—a sacrifice before the stars, And left with hooting owls and blowing clouds, And falling leaves and solitary wings!
Aye, you may see their graves—you who have toiled And tripped and thirsted, like these men of ours; For, verily, I say that not so deep Their bones are that the scattered drift and dust Of gusty days will never leave them bare. O dear, dead, bleaching bones! I know of those Who have the wild, strong will to go and sit Outside all things with you, and keep the ways Aloof from bats, and snakes, and trampling feet That smite your peace and theirs—who have the heart, Without the lusty limbs, to face the fire And moonless midnights, and to be, indeed, For very sorrow, like a moaning wind In wintry forests with perpetual rain.
Because of this—because of sisters left With desperate purpose and dishevelled hair, And broken breath, and sweetness quenched in tears— Because of swifter silver for the head, And furrows for the face—because of these That should have come with age, that come with pain— O Master! Father! sitting where our eyes Are tired of looking, say for once are we— Are we to set our lips with weary smiles Before the bitterness of Life and Death, And call it honey, while we bear away A taste like wormwood?
Turn thyself, and sing— Sing, Son of Sorrow! Is there any gain For breaking of the loins, for melting eyes, And knees as weak as water?—any peace, Or hope for casual breath and labouring lips, For clapping of the palms, and sharper sighs Than frost; or any light to come for those Who stand and mumble in the alien streets With heads as grey as Winter?—any balm For pleading women, and the love that knows Of nothing left to love?
​They sleep a sleep Unknown of dreams, these darling friends of ours. And we who taste the core of many tales Of tribulation—we whose lives are salt With tears indeed—we therefore hide our eyes And weep in secret, lest our grief should risk The rest that hath no hurt from daily racks Of fiery clouds and immemorial rains.