The Shearing Shed
"The ladies are coming", the super says
   To the shearers sweltering there,
And "the ladies" means in the shearing shed:
  "Don't cut 'em to bad, don't swear".
The ghost of a pause in the sheds rough heart,
   And lower is bowed each head;
Then nothing is heard save a whispered word
  And the roar of the shearing shed.

The tall, shy rouser has lost his wits;
  His limbs are all astray;
He leaves a fleece on the shearing board
  And his broom in the shearers way.
There's a curse in store for that jackeroo
  As down by the wall he slants-
But the ringer bends with his legs askew
  And wishes he'd "patched them pants".

they are girls from the city. Our hearts rebel
  As we squint at their dainty feet,
While they gush and say in a girly way
  That the "dear little lambs" are "sweet".
And Bill the Ringer who'd scorn the use
  Of a childish word like damn,
Would give a pound that his tongue were loose
  As he tackles a lively lamb.

Swift thought of home in the coastal towns-
  Or rivers and waving grass-
And a weight on our hearts that we cannot define
  That comes as the ladies pass;
But the rouser ventures a nervous dig
  With his thumb in the next man's back;
And Bogan says to his pen-mate: "Twig
  The style of that last un, Jack."

Jack Moonlight gives her a careless glance-
  Then catches his breath with pain;
His strong hand shakes, and the sunbeams dance
  As he bends to his work again.
But he's well disguised with a bristling beard, 
  Bronzed skin and his shearers dress;
And whatever he knew  or hoped or feared
  Was hard for his mates to guess.

Jack Moonlight, wiping his broad, white brow,
  Explains, with a doleful smile,
"A stitch in the side," and "I'm all right now"-
  But he leans on the beam awhile,
And gazes out in the blazing noon
  On the clearing, brown and bare. . . .
She had come and gone---like a breath of June
  In Decembers heat and glare.

(Henry Lawson)