THE OLD WHIM-HORSE
by Edward Dyson
He’s an old grey horse, with his head bowed sadly;
and with dim old eyes and a queer roll aft,
with the off-fore sprung and the hind screwed badly;
and he bears all over the brands of graft;
and he lifts his head from the grass to wonder
why by night and day now the whim is still,
why the silence is, and the stamper’s thunder
sounds forth no more form the shattered mill.
In the whim he worked when the night-winds bellowed
on the riven summit of Giant’s Hand;
and by day when prodigal Spring had yellowed
all the wide, long sweep of enchanted land.
He knew his shift and the whistle’s warning;
and he knew the calls of the boys below,
through the years, unbidden, at night or morning
he had taken his place by the old whim-bow.
But the whim stands still and the wheeling swallow
in the silent shaft hangs her home of clay;
and the lizards flirt and the swift snakes follow
o’er the grass-grown brace in the summer day;
and the corn springs high in the cracks and corners
of the forge and down where the timber lies;
and the crows are perched like a band of mourners
on the broken hut on the Hermit’s Rise.
All the hands have gone, for the rich reef paid out;
and the company waits for the calls to come in;
but the old grey horse, like the claim is played out;
and no market’s near for his hooves and skin.
So they let him live and they left him grazing
by the creek; and oft in the evening dim
I have seen him stand on the rises gazing
at the ruined brace and the rotting whim.
The floods rush by in the gully under;
and the lightnings lash at the shrinking trees,
or the cattle down from the ranges blunder
as the fires drive by on the summer breeze.
Still the feeble horse at the right hour wanders
to the lonely ring, though the whistle’s dumb;
and with hanging head by the bow he ponders
where the whim-boy’s gone – why the shifts don’t come.
But there comes a night when he sees lights glowing
in the roofless huts and the ravaged mill,
when he hears again the stampers going
though the huts are dark and the stampers still,
when he sees the steam to the black roof clinging
as it’s shadows roll in the silver sands;
and he knows the voice of his driver singing;
and the knocker’s clang where the braceman stand.
See the old horse take, like a creature dreaming,
on the ring, once more his accustomed place;
but the moonbeams full on the ruins streaming
show the scattered timbers and the grass-grown brace.
Yet he hears the sled in the smithy falling;
and the empty truck as it rattles back;
and the boy who stands by the anvil, calling;
and he turns and backs and he “takes up slack”.
When the old drum creaks; and the shadows shiver,
as the wind sweeps by and the hut doors close;
and the bats dip down in the shaft or quiver
in the ghostly light, round the grey horse goes;
and he feels the strain on his untouched shoulder,
hears again the voice that was dear to him,
sees the form he knew – and his heart grows bolder
as he works his shift by the broken whim.
He hears in the sluices the water rushing
as the buckets drain and the doors fall back.
When the early dawn in the east is blushing,
he is limping still round the old, old track.
Now he pricks his ears, with a neigh replying
to a call unspoken, with eyes aglow;
and he sways and sinks in the circle, dying,
from the ring no more will the old horse go.
In the gully green, where the dam lies gleaming
and the bush creeps back on a worked-out claim;
and the sleepy crows in the sun sit dreaming
on the timbers grey and a charred hut frame,
where the legs slant down, and the hare is squatting
in the high, rank grass by the dried-up course,
nigh a shattered drum and a king-post rotting
are the bleaching bones of the old grey horse.
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