Up the rocky track from the plain, close under the tawny hill-top
(Where, ’mid the pines and blue-gums, and pink-white foam of an orchard,
A low, red roof peep’d out), came two—a man and a woman.
Slender and straight as a blue-gum, graceful and meant to glitter
But all unglittering, came he! his young head sunken with sorrow,
Guilt weighting his eyes, and his step heavy with shame.
A lark sprang carolling up in the sunny resonant blue space;
He neither saw it, nor heard; but the woman with him, his mother,
Middle-aged, massively-built, but moving with buoyance and spirit,
She was glad with the lark and the light, she tasted the freshness and freedom!
The gorse laughed into her heart, and her soul sang up through the Blue—
Till she turn’d and glanced at her son; then, as after the shine the shadow,
After the shadow the shine, sweeps over the face of the plain,
Over her open face rapidly swept and follow’d
Love, pity and grief—dark dread, bright resolution!
Dumbly they walk’d together, until, at the edge of the pine-grove,
By a great grey rock he paus’d, but she went onward, and in.
6
