Classic Poem

From the far off back block country,
Where the scorching heat-wave sings,
And the drought fiends, thirst and fever.
Death's dread scythe o'er Nature swings.

Comes a piteous cry for succour,
For the feeble and the spent,
From the homestead and the humpy,
From the bark hut and the tent.

Where the fever-smitten shepherd
Moans unheeded in his sleep,
While the baby burthened woman
Drags behind the crawling sheep.

For the sheep are of more value,
Than are human beings there.
And the stocks of wealthy owners
Have the best of human care.

And the world is far too busy
Worshipping the Calf of Gold,
To give heed or even pity
To the suffering and the old.

Oh! I shudder as I picture
What remembrance brings to me,
Of the awful human suffering
That it has been mine to see.

Once I found a feeble mother
In a lonely bush-hut bed,
With her first born and its father,
Both beside her cold and dead.

And I might have passed the holding,
Where the leading pathways trend,
But I heard the dismal howling
Of the old dog for his friend.

But a voice is hovering round me,
And it wakes within my breast,
Hope of rescue for the sinking,
When the nurses travel west.

There to soothe with gentle fingers,
Weary convalescents' pain,
And where only faint breath lingers,
Fan it back to strength again.

And the children—oh! the children,
Drooping in the light of day,
They will, 'neath her careful tending,
Live and blossom, love and stay.

And the rose of health will revel
Where the pallid cheek prevails,
In the glad day of the coming
Of the flight of nightingales.