Classic Poem

So the last day 's come at last, the close of my fifteen year —
The end of the hope, an' the struggles, an' messes I've put in here.
All of the shearings over, the final mustering done, —
Eleven hundred an' fifty for the incoming man, near on.
Over five thousand I drove 'em, mob by mob, down the coast;
Eleven-fifty in fifteen year . . . it isn't much of a boast.
Oh, it 's a bad old place! Blown out o' your bed half the nights,
And in the summer the grass burnt shiny an' bare as your hand, on the heights:
The creek dried up by November, and in May a thundering roar
That carries down toll o' your stock to salt 'em whole on the shore.
Clear'd I have, and I've clear'd an' clear'd, yet everywhere, slap in your face,
Briar, tauhinu, an' ruin! God! it 's a brute of a place.
. . . An' the house got burnt which I built, myself, with all that worry and pride;
Where the Missus was always homesick, and where she took fever, and died.

Yes, well! I'm leaving the place. Apples look red on that bough.
I set the slips with my own hand. Well — they're the other man's now.
The breezy bluff: an' the clover that smells so over the land,
Drowning the reek o' the rubbish, that plucks the profit out o' your hand:
That bit o' Bush paddock I fall'd myself, an' watch'd, each year, come clean
(Don't it look fresh in the tawny? A scrap of Old-Country green):
This air, all healthy with sun an' salt, an' bright with purity:
An' the glossy karakas there, twinkling to the big blue twinkling sea:
Aye, the broad blue sea beyond, an' the gem-clear cove below,
Where the boat I'll never handle again, sits rocking to and fro:
There 's the last look to it all! an' now for the last upon
This room, where Hetty was born, an' my Mary died, an' John . . .
Well! I'm leaving the poor old place, and it cuts as keen as a knife;
The place that 's broken my heart — the place where I've lived my life.