Swinging free with a stroke that’s straight and strong
    To the heart of the messmate sent,
He is cheered by the magpie’s morning song
    With the ring of the metal blent,
But the birds in their terror scatter high
    When she falls with a rush and bound,
And the quivering saplings split and fly,
    And the ranges all roar around.

Who is lord when the axeman mounts his spar,
    And the breeze on his brown breast blows,
When the scent of the new wood floats afar,
    And the gum from its red wounds flows?
With the bush at his back he laughs at care,
    With a pipe and a right good mate—
There is drink in the billy, grub to spare,
    And a bunk in the ten-by-eight.

When the sun’s in the west, from nooks aloft
    Where the stringy is straight and tall,
Come the strains of a chorus quaint and soft,
    Or the clink of the wedge and maul;
From the gully a murmur of broken talk
    Or the song that the crosscut sings;
For the bush is a-dream, and high the hawk
    Hangs at rest on his cradling wings.

But at night, by the tent, when tea is done
    And when euchre’s begun to flag—
In the bush he may hear a distant gun
    Or the neigh of a lonely nag—
Then the splitter has thoughts no longer gay,
    And sorrows he cannot drown,
For he dreams of a girl who’s far away,
    Or the joys of a spree in town.