While The Billy BoilsSearch'Tis a song of the Never Never land—Set to the tune of a scorching gale On the sandhills red, When the grasses deadLoudly rustle, and bow the headTo the breath of its dusty hail:
Where the cattle trample a dusty padAcross the never-ending plain,And come and goWith muttering lowIn the time when the rivers cease to flow,And the Drought King holds his reign;
When the fiercest piker who ever turnedWith lowered head in defiance proud, Grown gaunt and weak, Release doth seekIn vain from the depths of the slimy creek—His sepulchre and his shroud;
His requiem sung by an insect host,Born of the pestilential air, That seethe and swarm In hideous formWhere the stagnant waters lie thick and warm,And Fever lurks in his lair:
Where a placid, thirst-provoking lakeClear in the flashing sunlight lies— But the stockman knows No water flowsWhere the shifting mirage comes and goesLike a spectral paradise;
And, crouched in the saltbush' sickly shade,Murmurs to Heaven a piteous prayer: 'O God! must I Prepare to die?'And, gazing up at the brazen sky,Reads his death-warrant there.
Gaunt, slinking dingoes snap and snarl,Watching his slowly-ebbing breath; Crows are flying, Hoarsely cryingBurial service o'er the dying—Foul harbingers of Death.
Full many a man has perished there,Whose bones gleam white from the waste of sand— Who left no name On the scroll of Fame,Yet died in his tracks, as well becameA son of that desert land.