Birket Foster's pictures of English landscape . de upon her face. But now there lies between us—my early love and me— Six feet of churchyard mould, and four thousand miles of sea : I am a grizzled stock-man, here on the Murray plains, And the grave of her I love is green with Englands soft spring rains. Sometimes upon the Murrays side, under the blue gums shade, I think I see the old ferry-punt, with her nose in the rushes laid, But when I look about me the fancy fades away, The wattles stand where the Dutch elms stood, and a blue sky for a grey. At night by the stock-hut fire, with no childre
Birket Foster's pictures of English landscape . de upon her face. But now there lies between us—my early love and me— Six feet of churchyard mould, and four thousand miles of sea : I am a grizzled stock-man, here on the Murray plains, And the grave of her I love is green with Englands soft spring rains. Sometimes upon the Murrays side, under the blue gums shade, I think I see the old ferry-punt, with her nose in the rushes laid, But when I look about me the fancy fades away, The wattles stand where the Dutch elms stood, and a blue sky for a grey. At night by the stock-hut fire, with no children round my knee,I think of the life we hoped to live, before I crossed the sea ;And Im glad the time draws near that will join our hearts again,In the land the good book tells of, where no parting is nor pain;That quicker than that ferry-punt from bank to bank shot oer,Will bring me where shes waiting upon the further shore ;Where I shall see her standing beside the landing-place,With a wondrous light about her, and no shade upon her 28 XXIX. THE COTTAGE ON THE BEACH. Thkotjgh the red corn-fields to the sheep-fed downs,Athwart the rounded downs, by the deep chine, Whose trees slope from the sea their wind-shorn crowns,And inland lean, as sickening of the brine, You reach, below the scarp of the chalk hills,A sea-cot, with the tide hard at its door, And the blown sand white od its window-sills,And smell and smack of sea from roof to floor; As if some stranded hull to house had grown,And might up-anchor still, and float away, When highest spring-tides to its doorway blownShould call it seaward, in salt gusts of spray. Heaps of sea-gear lie round : a boat-roofed shed ; Quaint wicker-traps> and ropes sea-bleached, and floatsBordering pitch-brown nets, clean sails outspread, And idle oars resting on idle boats. Its babes have made their playmate of the seaThat kisses their brown feet, and on the shore, Her jetsam of strange shells and weeds spreads free,Binding their y
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