Page:A New Zealand verse (1906).pdf/109
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The Old Place.
73
Clear’d I have, and I’ve clear’d an’ clear’d, yet everywhere, slap in your face,Briar, tauhinu, an’ ruin! God! it’s a brute of a place.. . . An’ the house got burnt which I built, myself, with all that worry and pride;Where the Missus was always homesick, and where she took fever, and died.
Yes, well! I’m leaving the place. Apples look red on that bough.I set the slips with my own hand. Well—they’re the other man’s now.The breezy bluff: an’ the clover that smells so over the land,Drowning the reek of the rubbish, that plucks the profit out o’ your hand:That bit o’ Bush paddock I fall’d myself, an’ watched, each year, come clean(Don’t it look fresh in the tawny? A scrap of Old-Country green):This air, all healthy with sun an’ salt, an’ bright with purity:An’ the glossy karakas there, twinkling to the big blue twinkling sea:Ay, the broad blue sea beyond, an’ the gem-clear cove below,Where the boat I’ll never handle again, sits rocking to and fro:There’s the last look to it all! an’ now for the last uponThis room, where Hetty was born, an’ my Mary died, an’ John . . .Well, I’m leaving the poor old place, and it cuts as keen as a knife; The place that’s broken my heart—the place where I’ve lived my life.