A Ballad of the Road (1931)

It knows the never sleeping lanes

Where sunless creatures dwell;

The iron-welded doors of wealth

The old road knoweth well.

It hears the sun-browned sailors speak

The tongues of many climes

And hour by hour its stones give back

The note of city chimes.

It knows the commerce-crowded quay,

The traffic of the mart ;

It threads a lean and crabbed course

Across! the city's heart.

And where are lawns and bowered trees,

And villas row by row,

It wound through Virgin wilderness

A hundred years ago.

Where league by league to west it lies,

In smoke and evening haze,

I love to people it with ghosts

Of old Colonial days.

Lo ! here among the mighty boles

The firelight flickered red,

And wreathing low behind the boughs

The evening camp smoke spread.

And here, where sun and shadows knit

Their spell by dip and stream,

With crackling whip and haze of dust

Crept on the lumbering team.

Where meeting o'er the narrow track

The giant trees encroach,

Bold Donohoe and comrades twain

Held up the Sydney coach.

I hear the tramp of Shackled feet

With shuffling tread and slow.

The clank of merry cavalcades

A hundred years ago.

And here, where broad and timbered parks

Still shelter massive walls,

Were twinkling casements all aglow,

And gaily lighted halls ;

And sound of music and of dance,

With festival and glow,

And coaches bore their silken freights

A hundred years ago.

I hear. across the evening air

The traffic's constant hum,

The murmur of the busy wheels,

The feet that go and come.

And where the many churches raise

Their spiry needles high,

I see the glare of Sydney's lights

Along the eastern sky.

And through the rustling garden palms,

That never more are still,

I see the golden lights align

The paths of Taverner's Hill.

By wood and waste, in sun and shine,

The grey road wanders down.

And finds its goal among the hills 

A little old, grey town.

--Ella McFadyen.

Notes

From the NSW Newspaper The Uralla Times 12 Mar 1931 p 4.