Works

I would never waste the hours
Of the time that is mine own,
Writing verses about flowers
For their own sweet sakes alone;
Gushing as a schoolgirl gushes
Over babies at their best,...

When God's wrath-cloud is o'er me,
Affrighting heart and mind;
When days seem dark before me,
And days seem black behind;
Those friends who think they know me,
Who deem their insight keen,...

There's a class of men (and women) who are always on their guard,
Cunning, treacherous, suspicious, feeling softly, grasping hard,
Brainy, yet without the courage to forsake the beaten track,...

I have sinned, like others, blindly, without thought and without fear,
And my best friends say it kindly, 'You should go away from here.'
Shall I fly the paltry spirit of a narrow little town,...

There'll be royal times in Sydney for the Cuff and Collar Push,
There'll be lots of dreary drivel and clap-trap
From the men who own Australia, but who never knew the Bush,...

'Tis the song of many husbands, and you all must understand
That you cannot call me coward now that women rule the land;
I have written much for women, where I thought that they were right,...

The men who camp with Danger
Are mostly quiet men:
And one may use a rifle,
And one may use a pen,
And one may strap a camera
In deserts to his bike;
But men who sleep with Danger...

They were men of many nations, they were men of many stations,
They were men in many places, and of high and low degree;
Men of many types and faces, but, alike in all the races,...

The motor car is sullen, like a thing that should not be;
The motor car is master of Smart Society.
'Twas born of sweated genius and collared by a clown;
'Twas planned by Retribution to ride its riders down....

He works in the glen where the waratah grows,
And the gums and the ashes are tall,
'Neath cliffs that re-echo the sound of his blows
When the wedges leap in from the mawl.
...

The rooster is a brainless dude, although he sports a crest,
The hen's an awful fool we know, though hen-eggs are the best;
She'll flutter, cackling, anywhere save through a gate or door,...

By homestead, hut, and shearing-shed,
By railroad, coach, and track,
By lonely graves of our brave dead,
Up-Country and Out-Back:
To where 'neath glorious the clustered stars
The dreamy plains expand,...

Let bushmen think as bushmen will,
And say whate'er they choose,
I hate to hear the stupid sneer
At New Chum Jackaroos.

He may not ride as you can ride,
Or do what you can do;...

It was built of bark and poles, and the floor was full of holes
Where each leak in rainy weather made a pool;
And the walls were mostly cracks lined with calico and sacks,...

The old Jimmy Woodser comes into the bar
Unwelcomed, unnoticed, unknown,
Too old and too odd to be drunk with, by far;
So he glides to the end where the lunch baskets are
And they say that he tipples alone....

Old coach-road West by Nor'-ward,
Old mile-tree by the track:
A dead branch pointing forward,
And a dead branch pointing back.
And still in clear-cut romans
On his hard heart he tells...

They proved we could not think nor see,
They proved we could not write,
They proved we drank the day away
And raved through half the night.
They proved our stars were never up,...

Wrap me up in me stockwhip and blanket,
And bury me deep down below,
Where this piffle and sham won't disgust me,
In the land where the coolibahs grow;
For I've stayed with some well-to-do people,...

There were ten of us there on the moonlit quay,
And one on the for'ard hatch;
No straighter mate to his mates than he
Had ever said: 'Len's a match!'

"'Twill be long, old man, ere our glasses clink,...

It was a week from Christmas-time,
As near as I remember,
And half a year since, in the rear,
We'd left the Darling timber.

The track was hot and more than drear;
The day dragged out for ever;...