stump quotes

Have you seen the bush by moonlight, from the train, go running by? Blackened log and stump and sapling, ghostly trees all dead and dry; Here a patch of glassy water; there a glimpse of mystic sky? Have you heard the still voice callingyet so warm, and yet so cold: 'I'm the Mother-Bush that bore you! Come to me when you are old'?

- Henry Hertzberg Lawson
'On the Night Train', collected in Colin Roderick (ed) Henry Lawson: Collected Verse (3 vols,1967^9).