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| SIMSON settled in the timber when his arm was strong and true, | |
| And his form was straight and limber; and he wrought the long day through | |
| In a struggle, single-handed, and the trees fell slowly back, | |
| Twenty thousand giants banded ’gainst a solitary jack. | |
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| Through the fiercest days of summer you might hear his keen axe ring | 5 |
| And re-echo in the ranges, hear his twanging crosscut sing; | |
| There the great gums swayed and whispered, and the birds were skyward blown, | |
| As the circling hills saluted o’er a bush king overthrown. | |
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| Clearing, grubbing, in the gloaming, strong in faith the man descried | |
| Heifers sleek and horses roaming in his paddocks green and wide, | 10 |
| Heard a myriad corn-blades rustle in the breeze’s soft caress, | |
| And in every thew and muscle felt a joyous mightiness. | |
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| So he felled the stubborn forest, hacked and hewed with tireless might, | |
| And a conqueror’s peace went with him to his fern-strewn bunk at night: | |
| Forth he strode next morn, delighting in the duty to be done, | 15 |
| Whistling shrilly to the magpies trilling carols to the sun. | |
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| Back the clustered scrub was driven, and the sun fell on the lands, | |
| And the mighty stumps were riven ’tween his bare, brown, corded hands. | |
| One time flooded, sometimes parching, still he did the work of ten, | |
| And his dog-leg fence went marching up the hills and down again. | 20 |
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| By the stony creek, whose tiny streams slid o’er the sunken boles | |
| To their secret, silent meetings in the shaded waterholes, | |
| Soon a garden flourished bravely, gemmed with flowers, and cool and green, | |
| While about the hut a busy little wife was always seen. | |
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| Came a day at length when, gazing down the paddock from his door, | 25 |
| Simson saw his horses grazing where the bush was long before, | |
| And he heard the joyous prattle of his children on the rocks, | |
| And the lowing of the cattle, and the crowing of the cocks. | |
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| There was butter for the market, there was fruit upon the trees, | |
| There were eggs, potatoes, bacon, and a tidy lot of cheese; | 30 |
| Still the struggle was not ended with the timber and the scrub, | |
| For the mortgage is the toughest stump the settler has to grub. | |
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| But the boys grew big and bolder—one, a sturdy, brown-faced lad, | |
| With his axe upon his shoulder, loved to go to work ‘like dad’, | |
| And another in the saddle took a bush-bred native’s pride, | 35 |
| And he boasted he could straddle any nag his dad could ride. | |
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| Though the work went on and prospered there was still hard work to do; | |
| There were floods, and droughts, and bush-fires, and a touch of pleuro too; | |
| But they laboured, and the future held no prospect to alarm— | |
| All the settlers said: ‘They’re stickers up at Peter Simson’s farm.’ | 40 |
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| One fine evening Pete was resting in the hush of coming night, | |
| When his boys came in from nesting with a clamorous delight; | |
| Each displayed a tiny rabbit, and the farmer eyed them o’er,— | |
| Then he stamped—it was his habit—and he smote his knee and swore. | |
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| Two years later Simson’s paddock showed dust-coloured, almost bare, | 45 |
| And too lean for hope of profit were the cows that pastured there; | |
| And the man looked ten years older. Like the tracks about the place, | |
| Made by half a million rabbits, were the lines on Simson’s face. | |
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| As he fought the bush when younger, Simson stripped and fought again, | |
| Fought the devastating hunger of the plague with might and main, | 50 |
| Neither moping nor despairing, hoping still that times would mend, | |
| Stubborn-browed and sternly facing all the trouble Fate could send. | |
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| One poor chicken to the acre Simson’s land will carry now. | |
| Starved, the locusts have departed; rust is thick upon the plough; | |
| It is vain to think of cattle, or to try to raise a crop, | 55 |
| For the farmer has gone under, and the rabbits are on top. | |
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| So the strong, true man who wrested from the bush a homestead fair | |
| By the rabbits has been bested; yet he does not know despair— | |
| Though begirt with desolation, though in trouble and in debt, | |
| Though his foes pass numeration, Peter Simson’s fighting yet! | 60 |
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| He is old too soon and failing, but he’s game to start anew, | |
| And he tells his hopeless neighbours ‘what the Gov’mint’s goin’ to do’. | |
| Both his girls are in the city, seeking places with the rest, | |
| And his boys are tracking fortune in the melancholy West. | |
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