The Wail in the Native Oak
Where the lone creek, chafing nightly in the cold and sad moonshine,
Beats beneath the twisted fern-roots and the drenched and dripping vine;
Where the gum trees, ringed and ragged, from the mazy margins rise,
Staring out against the heavens with their languid gaping eyes;
There I listened - there I heard it! Oh, that melancholy sound,
Wandering like a ghostly whisper, through the dreaming darkness round!
Wandering, like a fearful warning, where the withered twilight broke
Through a mass of mournful tresses, drooping down the Native Oak. 'This might be a loving exile, full with faded thoughts returned,
Seeking for familiar faces, friends for whom he long had yearned.
Here his fathers must have sojourned - here his people may have died,
Or, perchance, to distant forests all were scattered far and wide.
So he moans and so he lingers! weeping o'er the wasted wild;
Weeping o'er the desolation, like a lost, benighted child!
So he moans, and so he lingers! Hence these fitful, fretful sighs,
Deep within the oak tree solemn! Hence these weary, weary cries!