Chapter IV

Do you know the world’s white roof-tree--do you know that windy rift
Where the baffling mountain-eddies chop and change?
Do you know the long day’s patience, belly-down on frozen drift,
While the head of heads is feeding out of range?
It is there that I am going, where the boulders and the snow lie,
With a trusty, nimble tracker that I know.
I have sworn an oath, to keep it on the Horns of Ovis Poli,
And the Red Gods call me out and I must go!

_He must go--go_, etc.

Now the Four-way Lodge is opened--now the Smokes of Council rise--
Pleasant smokes, ere yet ’twixt trail and trail they choose--
Now the girths and ropes are tested: now they pack their last
supplies:
Now our Young Men go to dance before the Trues!
Who shall meet them at those altars--who shall light them to that
shrine?
Velvet-footed, who shall guide them to their goal?
Unto each the voice and vision: unto each his spoor and sign--
Lonely mountain in the Northland, misty sweat-bath ’neath the Line--
And to each a man that knows his naked soul!

White or yellow, black or copper, he is waiting, as a lover,
Smoke of funnel, dust of hooves, or beat of train--
Where the high grass hides the horseman or the glaring flats
discover--
Where the steamer hails the landing, or the surf-boat brings the
rover--
Where the rails run out in sand-drift ...
Quick! ah, heave the camp-kit over!
For the Red Gods make their medicine again!

_And we go--go--go away from here!
On the other side the world we’re overdue!
’Send the road is clear before you when the old
Spring-fret comes o’er you,
And the Red Gods call for you!_

THE TRUCE OF THE BEAR [Page 51]

Yearly, with tent and rifle, our careless white men go
By the pass called Muttianee, to shoot in the vale below.
Yearly by Muttianee he follows our white men in--
Matun, the old blind beggar, bandaged from brow to chin.

Eyeless, noseless, and lipless--toothless, broken of speech.
Seeking a dole at the doorway he mumbles his tale to each;
Over and over the story, ending as he began:
‘Make ye no truce with Adam-zad--the Bear that walks like a man!

‘There was a flint in my musket--pricked and primed was the pan,
When I went hunting Adam-zad--the Bear that stands like a man.
I looked my last on the timber, I looked my last on the snow,
When I went hunting Adam-zad fifty summers ago!

‘I knew his times and his seasons, as he knew mine, that fed
By night in the ripened maizefield and robbed my house of bread;
I knew his strength and cunning, as he knew mine, that crept
At dawn to the crowded goat-pens and plundered while I slept.

‘Up from his stony playground--down from his well-digged lair--
Out on the naked ridges ran Adam-zad the Bear;
Groaning, grunting, and roaring, heavy with stolen meals,
Two long marches to northward, and I was at his heels!

‘Two full marches to northward, at the fall of the second night,
I came on mine enemy Adam-zad all panting from his flight.
There was a charge in the musket--pricked and primed was the pan--
My finger crooked on the trigger--when he reared up like a man.

‘Horrible, hairy, human, with paws like hands in prayer,
Making his supplication rose Adam-zad the Bear!
I looked at the swaying shoulders, at the paunch’s swag and swing,
And my heart was touched with pity for the monstrous, pleading thing.

‘Touched with pity and wonder, I did not fire then ...
I have looked no more on women--I have walked no more with men.
Nearer he tottered and nearer, with paws like hands that pray--
From brow to jaw that steel-shod paw, it ripped my face away!

‘Sudden, silent, and savage, searing as flame the blow--
Faceless I fell before his feet, fifty summers ago.
I heard him grunt and chuckle--I heard him pass to his den,
He left me blind to the darkened years and the little mercy of men.

‘Now ye go down in the morning with guns of the newer style,
That load (I have felt) in the middle and range (I have heard) a mile?
Luck to the white man’s rifle, that shoots so fast and true,
But--pay, and I lift my bandage and show what the Bear can do!’

(Flesh like slag in the furnace, knobbed and withered and grey--
Matun, the old blind beggar, he gives good worth for his pay.)
‘Rouse him at noon in the bushes, follow and press him hard--
Not for his ragings and roarings flinch ye from Adam-zad.

‘But (pay, and I put back the bandage) this is the time to fear,
When he stands up like a tired man, tottering near and near;
When he stands up as pleading, in wavering, man-brute guise,
When he veils the hate and cunning of the little, swinish eyes;
‘When he shows as seeking quarter, with paws like hands in prayer,
_That_ is the time of peril--the time of the Truce of the Bear!’

Eyeless, noseless, and lipless, asking a dole at the door,
Matun, the old blind beggar, he tells it o’er and o’er;
Fumbling and feeling the rifles, warming his hands at the flame,
Hearing our careless white men talk of the morrow’s game;

Over and over the story, ending as he began:--
‘_There is no truce with Adam-zad, the Bear that looks like a man!_’

THE OLD MEN [Page 57]

_This is our lot if we live so long and labour unto the end--
That we outlive the impatient years and the much too patient friend:
And because we know we have breath in our mouth and think we have
thought in our head,
We shall assume that we are alive, whereas we are really dead._

We shall not acknowledge that old stars fade or alien planets arise
(That the sere bush buds or the desert blooms or the ancient
well-head dries),
Or any new compass wherewith new men adventure ’neath new skies.

We shall lift up the ropes that constrained our youth to bind on our
children’s hands;
We shall call to the water below the bridges to return and replenish
our lands;
We shall harness horses (Death’s own pale horses) and scholarly
plough the sands.

We shall lie down in the eye of the sun for lack of a light on our
way--
We shall rise up when the day is done and chirrup, ‘Behold, it is
day!’
We shall abide till the battle is won ere we amble into the fray.

We shall peck out and discuss and dissect, and evert and extrude to
our mind,
The flaccid tissues of long-dead issues offensive to God and mankind--
(Precisely like vultures over an ox that the Army has left behind).

We shall make walk preposterous ghosts of the glories we once created--
(Immodestly smearing from muddled palettes amazing pigments mismated)
And our friends will weep when we ask them with boasts if our natural
force be abated.

The Lamp of our Youth will be utterly out: but we shall subsist on
the smell of it,
And whatever we do, we shall fold our hands and suck our gums and
think well of it.
Yes, we shall be perfectly pleased with our work, And that is the
perfectest Hell of it!

_This is our lot if we live so long and listen to those who love us--
That we are shunned by the people about and shamed by the Powers
above us.
Wherefore be free of your harness betimes; but being free be assured,
That he who hath not endured to the death, from his birth he hath
never endured!_

THE EXPLORER [Page 61]

‘There’s no sense in going further--it’s the edge of cultivation,’
So they said, and I believed it--broke my land and sowed my crop--
Built my barns and strung my fences in the little border station
Tucked away below the foothills where the trails run out and stop.

Till a voice, as bad as Conscience, rang interminable changes
On one everlasting Whisper day and night repeated--so:
‘Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges--
‘Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!’

So I went, worn out of patience; ’never told my nearest neighbours--
Stole away with pack and ponies--left ’em drinking in the town;
And the faith that moveth mountains didn’t seem to help my labours
As I faced the sheer main-ranges, whipping up and leading down.

March by march I puzzled through ’em, turning flanks and dodging
shoulders,
Hurried on in hope of water, headed back for lack of grass;
Till I camped above the tree-line--drifted snow and naked boulders--
Felt free air astir to windward--knew I’d stumbled on the Pass.

’Thought to name it for the finder: but that night the Norther found
me--
Froze and killed the plains-bred ponies; so I called the camp
Despair
(It’s the Railway Gap to-day, though). Then my Whisper waked to hound
me:--
‘Something lost behind the Ranges. Over yonder. Go you there!’

Then I knew, the while I doubted--knew His Hand was certain o’er me.
Still--it might be self-delusion--scores of better men had died--
I could reach the township living, but ... He knows what terrors tore
me ...
But I didn’t ... but I didn’t. I went down the other side.

Till the snow ran out in flowers, and the flowers turned to aloes,
And the aloes sprung to thickets and a brimming stream ran by;
But the thickets dwined to thorn-scrub, and the water drained to
shallows--
And I dropped again on desert, blasted earth, and blasting sky....

I remember lighting fires; I remember sitting by them;
I remember seeing faces, hearing voices through the smoke;
I remember they were fancy--for I threw a stone to try ’em.
‘Something lost behind the Ranges,’ was the only word they spoke.

I remember going crazy. I remember that I knew it
When I heard myself hallooing to the funny folk I saw.
Very full of dreams that desert: but my two legs took me through it ...
And I used to watch ’em moving with the toes all black and raw.

But at last the country altered--White man’s country past disputing--
Rolling grass and open timber, with a hint of hills behind--
There I found me food and water, and I lay a week recruiting,
Got my strength and lost my nightmares. Then I entered on my find.

Thence I ran my first rough survey--chose my trees and blazed and
ringed ’em--
Week by week I pried and sampled--week by week my findings grew.
Saul he went to look for donkeys, and by God he found a kingdom!
But by God, who sent His Whisper, I had struck the worth of two!

Up along the hostile mountains, where the hair-poised snow-slide
shivers--
Down and through the big fat marshes that the virgin ore-bed
stains,
Till I heard the mile-wide mutterings of unimagined rivers,
And beyond the nameless timber saw illimitable plains!

’Plotted sites of future cities, traced the easy grades between ’em;
Watched unharnessed rapids wasting fifty thousand head an hour;
Counted leagues of water-frontage through the axe-ripe woods that
screen ’em--
Saw the plant to feed a people--up and waiting for the power!

Well I know who’ll take the credit--all the clever chaps that
followed--
Came, a dozen men together--never knew my desert fears;
Tracked me by the camps I’d quitted, used the water-holes I’d
hollowed.
They’ll go back and do the talking. They’ll be called the
Pioneers!

They will find my sites of townships--not the cities that I set
there.
They will rediscover rivers--not my rivers heard at night.
By my own old marks and bearings they will show me how to get there,
By the lonely cairns I builded they will guide my feet aright.

Have I named one single river? Have I claimed one single acre?
Have I kept one single nugget--(barring samples)? No, not I.
Because my price was paid me ten times over by my Maker.
But you wouldn’t understand it. You go up and occupy.

Ores you’ll find there; wood and cattle; water-transit sure and
steady
(That should keep the railway rates down), coal and iron at your
doors.
God took care to hide that country till He judged His people ready,
Then He chose me for His Whisper, and I’ve found it, and it’s yours!

Yes, your ‘Never-never country’--yes, your ‘edge of cultivation’
And ‘no sense in going further’--till I crossed the range to see.
God forgive me! No, _I_ didn’t. It’s God’s present to our nation.
Anybody might have found it but--His Whisper came to Me!

THE WAGE-SLAVES [Page 70]

Oh glorious are the guarded heights
Where guardian souls abide--
Self-exiled from our gross delights--
Above, beyond, outside:
An ampler arc their spirit swings--
Commands a juster view--
We have their word for all these things,
Nor doubt their words are true.

Yet we the bondslaves of our day,
Whom dirt and danger press--
Co-heirs of insolence, delay,
And leagued unfaithfulness--
Such is our need must seek indeed
And, having found, engage
The men who merely do the work
For which they draw the wage.

From forge and farm and mine and bench,
Deck, altar, outpost lone--
Mill, school, battalion, counter, trench,
Rail, senate, sheepfold, throne--
Creation’s cry goes up on high
From age to cheated age:
‘Send us the men who do the work
For which they draw the wage.’

Words cannot help nor wit achieve,
Nor e’en the all-gifted fool,
Too weak to enter, bide, or leave
The lists he cannot rule.
Beneath the sun we count on none
Our evil to assuage,
Except the men that do the work
For which they draw the wage.

When through the Gates of Stress and Strain
Comes forth the vast Event--
The simple, sheer, sufficing, sane
Result of labour spent--
They that have wrought the end unthought
Be neither saint nor sage,
But men who merely did the work
For which they drew the wage.

Wherefore to these the Fates shall bend
(And all old idle things--)
Wherefore on these shall Power attend
Beyond the grasp of kings:
Each in his place, by right, not grace,
Shall rule his heritage--
The men who simply do the work
For which they draw the wage.

Not such as scorn the loitering street,
Or waste to earn its praise,
Their noontide’s unreturning heat
About their morning ways:
But such as dower each mortgaged hour
Alike with clean courage--
Even the men who do the work
For which they draw the wage--
Men like to Gods that do the work
For which they draw the wage--
Begin--continue--close the work
For which they draw the wage!

THE BURIAL [Page 74]