The Australian Worker. Sydney, NSW .15 April 1920
CONVICTS' GRAVES.
Where the mountains, ridge and hollow,
Fold and fall in sombre waves,
Mid the gum trees by the roadside .
Lie the convicts lonely graves.
Mounds of stone, unfenced and barren,
With no flower nor fern to hide,
Lie the lone graves of the dead men,
Who were dead before they died.
Scarce a stone-throw from them lying,
Winds the road they shaped and built,
In the mountain sunshine silent
As their sorrow and their guilt.
Careless now of lash and jailer,
Callous now to heat and frost,
Nameless, known of none, they slumber;
They the shadowed and the crossed.
Were they sad or glad, I wonder,
When Death called a halt to strife,
When they put aside their sorrows
And their cruel Hell-in-life?
Leaf and limb above them brooding,
Stand the gum-trees, white and high,
Puzzling much on their existence,
Asking God the reason why.
RODERIC QUINN.
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