While The Billy BoilsSearchA league o’ brown with lights o’ gold,And, ’gainst blue sky’s resistance,Far hilltops gleaming white and coldAcross the purple distance!
Beyond the hum of city streets,Their strife and stress and scorning,Again through worn world-pulses beatsThe magic of the morning.
I see the lone hawk wheeling high,The blown, brown reed-beds shiver,And faint and far the hills that lieBeyond the Crooked River.
O haunted hills! O holy hills!Where wizard lights are streamingO’er Youth’s enchanted window sillsFrom hinter-skies of dreaming;
Whereon we heard in hushed respiteOf Echo’s elfin laughterFaint footsteps of the InfiniteOn floors of His Hereafter.
O hills behind the hollow darkWhere human wisdom falters,And Hate keeps vigil, stern and stark,By Custom’s petty altars!
It seems so long since life was loveFrom God’s heart brimming over,The lark-song in the blue above,The brown bee ’mong the clover:
So long, by drifting dawns and darksSince — (Christ! Thy creed grows colder!)God lived among the ironbarksOn Lookout’s ragged shoulder.
What tho’ since then (Ah, ruthless change!)On charts of land Australian,They’ve writ my hills a mountain rangeWith title cold and alien!
“Australian Alps?” No pulses leapTo greet that title olden,Where hushed in memoried twilight sleepLife’s glamoured things and golden.
“Australian Alps?” Nay, nay, there thrillsThrough Memory skies a-quiverThe glory of my hills — “the hillsBeyond the Crooked River.”