Christmas Creek
Phantom streams were in the distance -- mocking lights of lake and pool --
Ghosts of trees of soft green lustre -- groves of shadows deep and cool!
Yea, some devil ran before them changing skies of brass to blue,
Setting bloom where curse is planted, where a grass-blade never grew.
Six there were, and high above them glared a wild and wizened sun,
Ninety leagues from where the waters of the singing valleys run.
There before them, there behind them, was the great, stark, stubborn plain,
Where the dry winds hiss for ever, and the blind earth moans for rain!
Ringed about by tracks of furnace, ninety leagues from stream and tree,
Six there were, with wasted faces, working northwards to the sea!
. . . . .
Ah, the bitter, hopeless desert! Here these broken human wrecks
Trod the wilds where sand of fire is with the spiteful spinifex,
Toiled through spheres that no bird knows of, where with fiery emphasis
Hell hath stamped its awful mint-mark deep on every thing that is!
Toiled and thirsted, strove and suffered! ~This~ was where December's breath
As a wind of smiting flame is on weird, haggard wastes of death!
~This~ was where a withered moan is, and the gleam of weak, wan star,
And a thunder full of menace sends its mighty voices far!
~This~ was where black execrations, from some dark tribunal hurled,
Set the brand of curse on all things in the morning of the world!
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