Here are the humping plains, treeless, pale brown,
Where half-grown hills romp roundly, up and down,
And fat, white clouds dapple the rippling miles
With great deep-coloured shadows. In long files
The sheep move down to water where a spring
Gushes beneath two willow trees which bring
A patch of deep shade to long, summer days.
Against the far-off mountains, piles a haze,
The blueness of great distance, thick below
The pricking peaks that summer caps with snow;
And winter cloaks the whole long range with white,
From Canberra to Mount Kosciusko's height.
And on, beyond the mountains, travellers say
Plains wider far than these, stretch west, away
Right to the setting sun; I do not know.
I only love to see these grasses blow
Shyly beneath the truant summer breeze
Slipped inland from his lonely eastern seas;
Then, as a mob of sheep at break of day
Move off from camp, the slow clouds gather way
Before the little sea wind; and along
The happy earth the shadows slide, and pass
Into the dipping hollows, and along
The wide-flung purple of the cork-screw grass.
