[Editor: This is section 4 of “Barcroft Boake: A Memoir ”, by A. G. Stephens, published in Where the Dead Men Lie and Other Poems (1897).]
[Goodbye to Rosedale]
Boake had agreed to stay with Mr. Commins for two years; and when, towards the close of 1888, the time expired, he was wholly under the spell of the Bush. At times he complained of its monotony, its hardships; but he always added that he could not again endure a city life. So, although urged to return to Sydney by his father, who wished him to qualify to obtain his license as surveyor, he preferred to take service as boundary-rider at Mullah Station, near Trangie, in the Narromine district. He was influenced by a reluctance to commit himself wholly to a surveyor’s career, for though an excellent draughtsman, and fairly competent in the field, his heart was not in the work.
The parting from the friends at Rosedale was affectionate and sad. Boake promised to come back in three years, with a pocket full of money, and then ——! His hopes were never to be realised. As the months passed, and one by one rosy dream-castles faded, his constitutional melancholy intensified to morbid gloom. He became more and more despondent, self-absorbed, careless of externals. And at last he ceased to struggle.
There seems some pathetic prescience in these lines, written by Boake in Miss Jean McKeahnie’s scrap-book on the night before he left Rosedale.
GOOD-BYE. 12th August, 1888.
Rosedale, my other home, to you I bid
Regretfully one lingering, sad farewell.
We two have met as on that mountain stream
Which, clearly flowing, bathes your furrowed fields,
Two leaflets meet and gently glide along
In friendly company, linked side by side,
When, lo! an eddy or a hidden rock
Remorselessly doth tear them far apart:
Perchance it leaves one stranded on the bank
To shrivel up and wither in the sun,
And bears the other on its widening stream
To fate unknown.So, Rosedale, you remain, while I go on,
Launched on that treacherous stream that men call Life,
Which bears them helpless over spray-wrapt falls,
O’er sparkling shallows and deep, gloomy pools,
To strand them in oblivion whence they sprung.It may be that Life’s stream, by some strange freak,
May turn and bring me back to clasp again
Your hands outstretched to welcome my return;
To see once more the crossing at the stream,
The green of drooping willows and the plain
Fringed by its border of bold wooded hills;—
Once more at early morn to see the mist
Drawn from the river’s bosom by the sun
Lift up to heaven and vanish like a dream;
Or in the evening by the genial fire,
In merry cadence hear your voices rise,
Telling of pleasures past and joys to come.But, if I come not, in some idle hour
You may with loit’ring finger turn this page,
Then pause awhile, and give one kindly thought
To him who writes at parting his last prayer —
God guard you! and — good-bye!
Source:
Barcroft Boake, Where the Dead Men Lie and Other Poems, Sydney (NSW): Angus and Robertson, 1897, pp. 176-178
Editor’s notes:
the Bush = bushland (areas in the country which have lots of bushes and trees; an area which is predominantly untamed wilderness)
doth = (archaic) does
loit’ring = (vernacular) loitering
morn = morning
o’er = (archaic) over (pronounced the same as “oar”, “or”, and “ore”)
pathetic = something which evokes feelings of sadness or sorrow (can also refer to something which is considered inadequate, inferior, or beneath contempt)
prescience = to have knowledge of an occurrence in the future, to know a future outcome in advance, foreknowledge; anticipation or estimation of the course of events, foresight; the ability to foresee, estimate, or suggest future events and outcomes
wrapt = archaic form of “wrapped” (to have enclosed or enveloped something, such as wrapping up an item with cloth or paper)
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