At suburban railway stations, you may see them as you pass, there are signboards on the platform saying "Wait here second class," And to me the whirr and thunder and the cluck of running-gear...
Now this is the creed from the Book of the Bush, Should be simple and plain to a dunce: "If a man's in a hole you must pass round the hat, Were he jail-bird or gentleman once."
When the heavy sand is yielding backward from your blistered feet, And across the distant timber you can SEE the flowing heat; When your head is hot and aching, and the shadeless plain is wide,...
"Like clouds o'er the South are the nations who reign On fair islands that we would command; But clouds that are darker and denser than these Have sailed from an Isle in the Northern Seas...
No church-bell rings them from the Track, No pulpit lights their blindness, 'Tis hardship, drought and homelessness That teach those Bushmen kindness: The mateship born of barren lands,...
Why are the sheoaks forever sighing? (Sheoaks that sigh when the wind is still), Why are the dead hopes forever dying? (Dead hopes that died and are with us still.) As you make it and what you will. ...
Fools can parrot-cry the prophet when the proof is close at hand, And the blind can see the danger when the foe is in the land! Truth was never cynicism, death or ruin's not a joke,...
I met Jack Ellis in town to-day, Jack Ellis, my old mate, Jack, Ten years ago, from the Castlereagh, We carried our swags together away To the Never-Again, Out Back. ...
While they struggle on exhausted, While they plough through bog and flood, While they drag their sick and wounded Where the tracks are drenched with blood; While the Fates seemed joined to crush her...
Here's never a bough to be tossed in the breeze, For it's long since the forest was green; And round all the trunks of the naked white trees The marks of the death-ring are seen....
He's somewhere up in Queensland, The old folks used to say; He's somewhere up in Queensland, The people say to-day. But Somewhere (up in Queensland) That uncle used to know,...
The Wireless tells and the cable tells How our boys behaved by the Dardanelles. Some thought in their hearts 'Will our boys make good?' We knew them of old and we knew they would! Knew they would,...
Far back in the days when the blacks used to ramble In long single file 'neath the evergreen tree, The wool-teams in season came down from Coonamble, And journeyed for weeks on their way to the sea,...
On the moonlighted decks there are children at play, While smoothly the steamer is holding her way; And the old folks are chatting on deck-seats and chairs, And the lads and the lassies go strolling in pairs....
Did you see that man riding past, With shoulders bowed with care? There's failure in his eyes to last, And in his heart despair. He seldom looks to left or right, He nods, but speaks to none,...
It was somewhere in September, and the sun was going down, When I came, in search of `copy', to a Darling-River town; `Come-and-have-a-drink' we'll call it, 'tis a fitting name, I think,...
Where's the steward?, Bar-room steward? Berth? Oh, any berth will do, I have left a three-pound billet just to come along with you. Brighter shines the Star of Rovers on a world that's growing wide,...
Let us sing a song as not a Solitary poet sings, For our seething brain has got a Mighty grip on earthly things; We can feel the strength within us, And our soul is bounding high,...