A Tale that is told and a Day that is done

“There are others toiling and straining

  ‘Neath burdens graver than mine;

They are weary, yet uncomplaining —

  I know it, yet I repine:

I know it, how time will ravage,

  How time will level, and yet

I long with a longing savage,

  I regret with a fierce regret.”

A. L. GORDON.

‘Possum Gully, 25th March, 1899

Christmas, only distinguished from the fifty-two slow Sundays of the year by plum-pudding, roast turkey, and a few bottles of home-made beer, has been once more; New Year, ushered in with sweet-scented midsummer wattle and bloom of gum — and box-tree has gone; February has followed, March is doing likewise, and my life is still the same.

What the future holds I know not, and am tonight so Weary that I do not care.

 “Time rules us all. And life, indeed, is not

The thing we planned it out, ere hope was dead;

 And then, we women cannot choose our lot.”

Time is thorough in his work, and as that arch-cheat, Hope, gradually becomes a phantom of the past, the neck will grow inured to its yoke.

Tonight is one of the times when the littleness — the abject littleness — of all things in life comes home to me.

After all, what is there in vain ambition? King or slave, we all must die, and when death knocks at our door, will it matter whether our life has been great or small, fast or slow, so long as it has been true — true with the truth that will bring rest to the soul?

“But the toughest lives are brittle,

  And the bravest and the best

Lightly fall — it matters little;

  Now I only long for rest.”

To weary hearts throbbing slowly in hopeless breasts the sweetest thing is rest.

And my heart is weary. Oh, how it aches tonight — not with the ache of a young heart passionately crying out for battle, but with the slow dead ache of an old heart returning vanquished and defeated!

Enough of pessimistic snarling and grumbling! Enough! Enough! Now for a lilt of another theme:

I am proud that I am an Australian, a daughter of the Southern Cross, a child of the mighty bush. I am thankful I............