Page:A New Zealand verse (1906).pdf/111

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
While the Billy Boils.
75
Lone whare, on the green hill-side,
From human haunts apart,
Unnoticed by the eye of Pride,
A hallowed spot thou art.
This roof, that ever inward falls,
This shattered door, these mouldering walls,
Once held a human heart.

H. L. Twisleton.

XLII.

While the Billy Boils.

The speargrass crackles under the billy and overhead is
  the winter sun;
There’s snow on the hills, there’s frost in the gully, that
  minds me of things that I’ve seen and done,
Of blokes that I knew, and mates that I’ve worked with,
  and the sprees we had in the days gone by;
And a mist comes up from my heart to my eyelids, I feel
  fair sick and I wonder why.

There is coves and coves! Some I liked partic’lar, and
  some I would sooner I never knowed;
But a bloke can’t choose the chaps that he’s thrown with
  in the harvest paddock or here on the road.
There was chaps from the other side that I shore with
  that I’d like to have taken along for mates,
But we said, “So long!” and we laughed and parted for
  good and all at the station gates.