'Late Midshipman John Travers (Chester), aged 16 years. He was mortally wounded early in the action, yet he remained alone in a most exposed post awaiting orders, with his gun's crew dead all round him.'
A letter came from Dick to-day; A greeting glad he sends to me. He tells of one more bloody fray, Of how with bomb and rifle they Have put their mark for all to see Across rock-ribbed Gallipoli. ...
Three other soldier blokes 'n' me packed 'ome from foreign lands; Bit into each the God of Battles' everlastin' brands. They limped in time, 'n' coughed in tune, 'n' one was short an ear,...
We don't keep a grand piano in our hut beside the creek, And I'm pretty certain Hannah couldn't bang it, anyhow, But we've got one box of music, and I'd rather hear its squeak...
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 bears all over the brands of graft;...
Don told me that he loved me dear Where down the range Whioola pours; And when I laughed and would not hear He flung away to fight the wars. He flung away, how should he know...
When the white sun scorches the fair, green land in the rage of his fierce desires, Or looms blood red on the Western hills, through the smoke of their waning fires;...
There's a sudden, fierce clang of the knocker, then the sound of a voice in the shaft, Shrieking words that drum hard on the centres, and the braceman goes suddenly daft:...
There are tracks through the scrub, there's a track down the hill, And a track round the bend from M'Courteney's mill, Where they slyly emerge from the bush and converge,...
We're more than partners, Ned 'n' me, Two sections permanently righted. Yiv seen us on the mooch, maybe, Like remnants lovin'ly united. Ned's only got one stump, the left;...
In the morn when the keen blade bites the tree, And the chips on the dead leaves dance, And the bush echoes back right merrily Blow for blow as the sunbeams glance...
'Tis the tale of Simon Steven, braceman at the Odd-and-Even, At The Nations, in the gully. They were sinking in the rock. Sim was small and wiry rather, and a husband and a father,...
Quite a proud and happy man is Finn the Packer Since he built his crazy mill upon the rise, And he stands there in the gully, chewing 'backer,' With a sleepy sort of comfort in his eyes,...
He was a jobbing hand from the printers' flat. His name was Raymond Cato, but he acquired 'Toucher' as a complimentary title when we knew him better. He was tall, sallow, languid and distressingly impecunious. I put it that way...
If you want a game to tame you and to take your measure in, Try a week or two of trucking in a mine Where the rails are never level for a half-a-minute's spin, And the curves are short and sharp along the line....
I see grim War, a bestial thing, with swinish tusks to tear; Upon his back the vampires cling, Thin vipers twine among his hair, The tiger's greed is in his jowl, His eye is red with bloody tears,...
Brown passed away, and Mrs Brown, In weeds all smothered, went through town By Brown's neat grave to take her stand, And hold a metaphoric hand. She diligently drove away The sorrel springing every day....
On summer nights when moonbeams flow And glisten o'er the high, white tips, And winds make lamentation low, As through the ribs of shattered ships, And steal about the broken brace...
The young lieutenant's face was grey. As came the day. The watchers saw it lifting white And ghostlike from the pool of night. His eyes were wide and strangely lit. Each thought in that unhallowed pit:...