He’s an old grey horse, with his head bowed sadly, 
   And with dim old eyes and a queer roll aft, 
With the off-fore sprung and the hind screwed badly, 
   And he's marked all round with the brands of graft; 
And the grey old horse comes to wait and wonder 
   Why by night and day the whim is still, 
Why no voice is heard, and the stampers’ thunder 
   Sounds forth no more from the shattered mill. 


In that whim he worked when the night winds wrestled 
   With the waving trees on the hill o'erhead, 
And by day when the "keets" in the blossom nestled, 
   As the seasons flourished, and waned, and fled; 
And he knew his shift, and the whistle’s warning, 
   And he knew the calls of the boys below; 
Through the years, unbidden, at night, or at eve, or morning, 
   He had taken his turn in the old whim bow. 


Now the whim stands still, and the wheeling swallow 
   In the silent shaft hangs her home of clay, 
And the lizards flirt and the swift snakes follow 
   O’er the grass-grown brace in the summer day; 
And the corn springs high in the cracks and corners 
   Of the forge, and down where the timber lies; 
And the crows are perched like a band of mourners 
   On the broken hut on the Hermit’s Rise. 


All the hands have gone, for the rich reef paid out, 
   And the company waits till the calls come in; 
But the old grey horse, like the claim, is played out, 
   And no market’s near for his bones and skin. 
So they let him live, and they left him grazing 
   On the hills, and oft in the evening dim 
I have seen him stand on the rises, gazing 
   At the ruined brace and the rotting whim. 


The floods rush high in the gully under, 
   And the lightnings lash at the shrinking trees, 
Or the cattle down from the ranges blunder 
   As the fires drive by on the summer breeze. 
Still the old grey horse at the right hour wanders 
   To the lonely ring, though the whistle’s dumb, 
And with head bowed low by the bow he ponders 
   Where the whim boy’s gone - why the shifts don’t come. 


But there comes a night when he sees lights glowing 
   In the roofless huts and the ravaged mill, 
When he hears again all the stampers going -  
   Though the huts are dark and the stampers still - 
When he sees the steam to the black roof clinging 
   As its shadows roll on the silver sands, 
And he knows the voice of his driver singing, 
   And the knocker’s clang where the braceman stands. 


See the old grey horse, like a creature dreaming, 
   On the ring once more take his 'customed place; 
But the moon's bright beams on the ruins streaming 
   Show the scattered timbers and grass-grown brace. 
Yet he hears the sled in the smithy falling, 
   And the empty truck as it rattles back, 
And the boy who stands by the anvil, calling; 
   And he "turns" and backs, and he "takes up slack". 


While the old drum creaks, and the shadows shiver, 
   As the wind sweeps by, and the hut doors close, 
And the bats dip down in the shaft, or quiver 
   In the ghostly light - round the grey horse goes; 
And he feels the strain on his untouched shoulder, 
   Hears again the voice that was dear to him, 
Sees the forms he knew, and his heart grows bolder 
   As he works his shift by the broken whim. 


He hears in the sluices the water rushing 
   As the buckets drain and the doors fall back; 
When the early dawn in the east is blushing, 
   He is limping still round the old, old track. 
Now he sways and sinks, but, the foe defying 
   High his head he lifts, and his old eyes glow; 
Then he pitches down in the circle, dying, 
   From the ring no more will the grey horse go. 


In a gully green, where a dam lies gleaming, 
   And the bush creeps back on the worked-out claims, 
And the sleepy crows in the sun sit, dreaming, 
   On the timbers grey and the charred hut frames, 
Where the legs slant down, and the hare is squatting 
   In the high rank grass by the dried-up course, 
Nigh a shattered drum and a king-post rotting 
   Are the bleaching bones of the old grey horse.

"Edward Dyson"
The Bulletin, 30 July 1892, p7

Note:
This poem was published in slightly different form in Dyson's poetry collection Rhymes From the Mines and Other Lines.