In Cornwall and Across the Sea :: :: University of Virginia Library

A hero as gallant as he of Khartoum,
Though one met his rescue and one met his doom,
Was Cooper of Tumut, a six-year-old child,
Left lonely on guard in a New South Wales wild.

The township of Tumut stands sweet on the river,
In the serest of summers an oasis ever;
But our poor little hero lived deep in the hush
Surrounding the settler far back in the bush.

A little one ailing and tossing in bed—
Its father was working far off for its bread:
Its mother was nursing a babe at her breast,
With five little children to rob her of rest:

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Her husband was working far off for their bread,
The little one ailing and tossing in bed:
With the babe at her breast and her six-year-old child,
In search of assistance, she plunged in the wild.

The track through the forest from clearing to clearing,
If trampled not often is aye disappearing;
The gum-branches falling, the heaths that upspring,
So wanton is nature—a veil on it fling.

At eve in Australia the darkness is swift,
The shadows o'erwhelm like the snow in a drift,
And ere she had come to her neighbour's, the night
Had brought her to bay in the midst of her flight.

The night it was stormy; the thunder-cloud showered
Its tears on the three, as for shelter they cowered
In a hole by the root of the tree that was nighest,
Defying the lightning which shivered the highest.

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A day and a night with no morsel of food—
No breast for the babe—she must feed it with blood—
Her own, or the child's, or, the faithful to death—
The dog's, who would loather lose master than breath.

The dog must be slaughtered: he flies not away,
But welcomes the hand that is stretched out to slay:
This truest of Christians endures to the end
With the love that would lay down its life for a friend.

Oh! many the morn that the children would rush
With the dog as sole escort to roam in the bush:
He'd bark for sheer gladness as outward they trooped,
And brought up the rearguard as homeward they drooped,

With his tongue hanging roguishly out of his mouth,
Perhaps in dog-laughter, perhaps for the drouth,
With a dignified march that declared without doubt
That he'd frisked off the spirits with which he'd set out.

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He feared not to battle the deadly black snake,
That the little one wished in his fingers to take,
(When out in the forest with “Laddie” alone)
As it flashed in its sleep on a sunny flat stone.

What wanted the dingo found dead at the door,
With Laddie beside him half dead in his gore,
Which Father and Mother away for the night
Had found when they came to their children at light?

The friend of the children, the guard of the house,
Whom kindness could conquer, no teasing could rouse,
Must end up his life of devotion with death:—
If his blood might give baby an hour more of breath.

He died as he often had perilled to die,
For their lives that he loved—mild reproach in his eye,
That the hand which now wielded the gum-log that slew
Should be that he had licked with attachment so true.

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The babe could not live upon loyal-heart's blood,
As it lived on the milk it was used to for food,
The slaughter availed not: the baby still died,
And the mother toiled on with the child at her side.

Three days and three nights and the baby was dead.
She bore her dead babe and her little one led,
And, fed with the flesh of the friend that had gone,
The little one still struggled manfully on.

Four days! And the noontide glared down from the sky,
The merciless sun of Australia was high:
The stout little spirit could struggle no more,
And downward he sank on the forest's rough floor.

But stronger than Hagar the mother, who left
Boy and babe by the water still full in a cleft
From the rain of the thunder, till aid she had found
For the child on its bed and the child on the ground.

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Two days more she wandered, unsheltered, unfed
Ere she came to the Chinese who gave her his bread,
And ran for a digger, miles further away,
To help him to succour the child left astray.

They hasted, but camped on the mountains that night,
For long ere they neared him they lost the day's light,
And when they did reach him, this six-year-old child
Had been three days alone without food in the wild,

Three days all alone without food in the wild,
This stout little hero, this six-year-old child,
In peril of serpents, in peril of dogs,
No roof and no pillow but sky and dead logs.

O singers of battles, no hero sing ye,
Who'd the soul of the Spartan more truly than he;
This six-year-old child in Australia's bush
Would put half the soldiers of story to blush.

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For there was the little one after his fast
Of a week in the bush, when no morsel had passed
His lips, save the dog's flesh before he was left
By his mother afaint near the pool in the cleft.

For there was the little one lying—ah no,
But sitting up, spite of his want and his woe,
By the little dead baby with vigilant eyes
To guard the poor body from hawks and the flies.

A hero as gallant as he of Khartoum,
Though one met his rescue and one met his doom,
Was Cooper of Tumut, this six-year-old child
Who stood as a sentry three days in the wild.

Envoy.

He eat and was rescued: mayhap in the years
He will live and will die in the simplest of spheres,
This child who has shewn in six years from his birth
A valour unpassed in the annals of Earth.