There is a little ferny track that goes,
Fringed with the brier-rose,
Beside the dance of cloud-flung shadows fleet
Across the whispering wheat,
Where lilting winds in lazy ripples play
The long November day.
There the gay blue wren from a bent spray swings
In the green heart of things;
There wings the pallid cuckoo, with a long
Haunting refrain of song,
In lessening echoes where the upland goes,
Calling the spring's sweet close.
I know the starry-eyed clematis trails
Frail fairy wedding veils
Across the shady, narrow trail that leads
Where the tall cocksfoot seeds,
Where eldorados of the capeweed's gold
Are gleaming fold on fold.
There is a little creek that lowly drones
A love song to the stones,
Where shafted sunlight slants amid the boles
By rainbowed waterholes,
Flinging soft traceries of gold and green
The leafy aisles between.
Here have I sought a balm for heart's distress
In the cool wilderness,
Here in the corridors of fern have found
Nothing but holy ground,
Remembering something less of pains and mosses
Deep amid fronds and mosses.
All things seem possible beneath this sky.
Though by and by,
The old forlorn. familiar host of cares
Will creep back unawares,
To-day they are forgotten or but seem
Some foolish far-off dream.
So down the little, wandering track again
I break the bonds of pain
To find the comfort of the mothering wild,
Spent as a homesick child,
Where gathered to her sheltering arms alone
The old bush calls her own.
First published in The Bulletin, 9 September 1926
