Macpherson had packed up milk, cream, scones, eggs, and butter; and we said good-bye to her and rode away, considerably enlightened as to the other side of life on the Matukituki. “The Gate of Death” looked very grim and awful, but beyond it the mellow sunshine still lay on our valley, though the long shadows from the mountains had crept over its upper end. In a book of Australian verse I came across a poem one day by George Essex Evans, called “The Woman of the West.” It is rather long to quote, but some of it seemed to me just to describe the mistress of the Lone Shieling, and the life there of one who had faced the wilderness:
“In the slab-built, zinc-roofed homestead of some lately taken run,
In the tent beside the ’bankment of a railway just begun,
In the huts on new selections, in the camps of man’s unrest,
On the frontiers of the Nation, live the Women of the West.
“The red sun robs their beauty, and in weariness and pain,
The slow years steal the nameless grace that never comes again;
And there are hours men cannot soothe, and words men cannot say—
The nearest woman’s face may be a hundred miles away.
“The wide bush holds the secret of their longing and desires,
When the white stars in reverence light their holy altar fires,
And silence, like the touch of God, sinks deep into the breast—
Perchance he hears and understands the Women of the West.”
