Squire, groom, and farmer, old man, youth, and
child,
Old dame and maiden— yellow cheek and red;
Rough hearty welcomes, pleasant girlish laughs,
And brave bass voices, chiming in accord,
Mixed with the sound of restless rolling wheels
Suddenly checked; and then the snappish bite
Of ticket-markers, and the rat-tat-tat
Of the quick, restless, subtle telegraph;
And then there came some pretty feathered hats,
With sweet eyes hid in shadow under them,
And stacks of croquet mallets, bows, and shafts,
That make me wish myself a croquet ball,
Still to be trampled on by those dear feet,
Or target to be riven by those darts,
Or, better still, that Jack they praise so much.
And now, as leaning o'er the platform fence,
I look down on the corn-fields round the church,
A strange wild fancy comes as in a dream,
While o'er my head the long wires, like a harp,
Murmur strange secrets not to be divined
By later bards. Suppose, my fancy said,
That death, with all its crape, and mutes, and palls,
Its hearses, mouldy graves, and mossy stones,
And dusty chancel tombs, was done away,
Repealed, annulled; and in its gloomy stead
There reached the doomed man, at the fitting time,
A sable letter bidding him repair,
On such a day, and such an hour, perforce
To such a station, and when he got there,
With kinsmen, friends, and children, and with wife,
At the fixed moment—never failing that—
A supernatural, spirit-driven train
Arrived, in which the same stern inner force
Drove him to mount, waving a calm adieu,
And then, not waiting for more sobs or tears,
The train flew on, threading the tunnel-arch,
Winding round corn-fields, farms, and barley-ricks,
Till in the thicker blue it grew so small,
Then vanished. Thus, as I brooded on,
Up came the northern train, and bore me off
On its swift viewless, airy spirit-wings,
And in a moment rolling seas of gold,
Of brown scorched wheat, rich waving far and free,
High tawny downs, crested with clumps of trees,
The old grey church, the reapers, and the sheaves
Melted to air, and rolling clouds of steam
Compassed me round. And so I dreamed my dream.

A GOLD DIGGER'S NOTES.

ON this bright Australian summer's day why
should I have anything to do but wander away
on some river bank with a gun, or a rod and line,
taking rests in shady places, and watching the
habits of such live things as one may see?
Sometimes a snake gliding through the grass,
and lifting his head up from time to time; then
a turtle, slowly rising to the top of the water,
and paddling away, or basking in one place as
he looks about him, and then going down with
a splash. Next a kangaroo fly (a fly something
like those bright flies that make their nests in
the garden walls at home) will pounce down
among the flies on one's hand or dress, and carry
off a victim; then, some little lizard from under a
loose scale of bark on a gum-tree, and of the same
colour, will dash out and follow his example.
To notice a black band reaching up the same
tree, over the rough brown dead-looking bark
at the bottom, and up the smooth white bark
above, in a wavy line, and at last lost among the
big branches at the top, is very amusing. In
warm weather there is an endless daily and
nightly procession of little black ants, worthy
of note both from their incredible numbers in
swampy places, and from their horrible stench
and taste when crushed. Woe to the man who
leaves his bread, meat, sugar, or anything
eatable within their reach!

Perhaps after watching these things, one looks
up and finds that one has been watched all the
time, either by a big guana, motionless on the
limb of a tree, or by a pair of eagle-hawks
high up in the air, wheeling in their endless
circles, as if they were never tired. A mob
of ducks next come up the river, following
all its bends, and whiz past with straightened
necks as they turn off with one consent, on their
way to some rushy lagoon close by. Now is the
time, down on one's knees, with hat off, gun
ready, and dog crawling behind, one creeps
up as noiselessly as possible to the belt of
rushes which surrounds the lagoon, then rising
gradually, has the pleasure either of seeing
the ducks swimming comfortably along, out of
range, or of getting a raking shot at them,
perhaps killing one, and wounding another.
When the dog goes for the wounded one, it will
swim awhile, thendive. Looking sharply about,
one sees the leaf of some water-plant turn on
edge, and the upper part of a duck's head and
bill appear above the surface. I have known my
retriever, Bess, swim for an hour at such times,
before I could sight and shoot the duck again.

On my occasional shooting excursions last
winter (near Beechworth, Victoria), I saw
several birds that were new to me. One, a
milk-white spoonbill, about thirty inches in
height, and with a bill eight or nine inches in
length. They are very handsome birds. I also
saw, on the muddy side of the swamp, an ibis,
brown with longisli black legs, and long curved
bill. It stood over twenty-four inches high.
The magpies here are different from those in
England. There are two or three sorts of them;
the pied, which are the commonest, always go
in pairs, and make a strange wild sort of
whistling, especially before and during rain.

I was looking after a saw-mill the week
before last, on a creek about twelve miles from
this place; a very lonely spot. I was there for
a friend, who had business elsewhere. All I did
was to attend at times to the steam-engine,
look round the mill to see that all was right,
and keep the books. The rest of the day I
used to go shooting in the swamps, as most of
the bush elsewhere had been burnt. I was
boarded and lodged, and had five guineas for
the week. The lodging I dispensed with, on
account of the fleas, and went to a little
distance to a bark hut, where I found an old
half-crazy convict hut keeper, who used to spin
yarns till I fell asleep on my sheet of bark, and
long after, for anything I know. But he swept
and watered the hut every day, and I was not
eaten up by the fleas.