‘The ladies are coming,’ the super saysTo the shearers sweltering there,And ‘the ladies’ means in the shearing shed:‘Don’t cut ’em too bad. Don’t swear.’The ghost of a pause in the shed’s rough heart,And lower is bowed each head;And nothing is heard, save a whispered word,And the roar of the shearing-shed.
The tall, shy rouser has lost his wits,And his limbs are all astray;He leaves a fleece on the shearing-board,And his broom in the shearer’s way.There’s a curse in store for that jackarooAs down by the wall he slants—And the ringer bends with his legs askewAnd wishes he’d ‘patched them pants.
They are girls from the city. (Our hearts rebelAs we squint at their dainty feet.)And they gush and say in a girly wayThat ‘the dear little lambs’ are ‘sweet.’And Bill, the ringer, who’d scorn the useOf a childish word like ‘damn,’Would give a pound that his tongue were looseAs he tackles a lively lamb.
Swift thoughts of homes in the coastal towns—Or rivers and waving grass—And a weight on our hearts that we cannot defineThat comes as the ladies pass.But the rouser ventures a nervous digIn the ribs of the next to him;And Barcoo says to his pen-mate: ‘TwigThe style of the last un, Jim.’
Jim Moonlight gives her a careless glance—Then he catches his breath with pain—His strong hand shakes and the sunlights danceAs he bends to his work again.But he’s well disguised in a bristling beard,Bronzed skin, and his shearer’s dress;And whatever Jim Moonlight hoped or fearedWere hard for his mates to guess.
Jim Moonlight, wiping his broad, white brow,Explains, with a doleful smile:‘A stitch in the side,’ and ‘he’s all right now’—But he leans on the beam awhile,And gazes out in the blazing noonOn the clearing, brown and bare—She has come and gone, like a breath of June,In December’s heat and glare.
The bushmen are big rough boys at the best,With hearts of a larger growth;But they hide those hearts with a brutal jest,And the pain with a reckless oath.Though the Bills and Jims of the bush-bard singOf their life loves, lost or dead,The love of a girl is a sacred thingNot voiced in a shearing-shed.