And he rested his arm on the shaker’s side,
With the air of a man when the world was wide—
And his tongue ran off with a ceaseless flow,
For the hermits talk of their cronies so.
He spoke, with a digger’s quenchless zest,
Of the early days of the Golden West:
Of a surging wave, of a seething tide,
That rolled to the fields from the Eastern side;
Of the wondrous slugs and the mighty men
Who answer not to the call again.