The sand was heavy on our feet, A Christmas sky was o'er us, And half a mile through dust and heat Lake 'Liza lay before us. 'You'll have a long and heavy tramp', So said the last adviser,...
We, three men of commerce, Striving wealth to raise, See but little promise In the coming days; Though our hearts are brittle, Hardened near to stone, We can think a little...
I scorn the man, a fool at most, And ignorant and blind, Who loves to go about and boast 'He understands mankind.' I thought I had that knowledge too, And boasted it with pride,...
MaCleay Street looks to Mosman, Across the other side, With brave asphalted pavements And roadway clean and wide. Macleay Street hath its mansions, Its grounds and greenery;...
You almost heard the surface bake, and saw the gum-leaves turn, You could have watched the grass scorch brown had there been grass to burn. In such a drought the strongest heart might well grow faint and weak,...
They'd parted but a year before, she never thought he'd come, She stammer'd, blushed, held out her hand, and called him 'Mister Gum.' How could he know that all the while she longed to murmur 'John.'...
Jim Duff was a 'native,'as wild as could be; A stealer and duffer of cattle was he, But back in his youth he had stolen a pearl Or a diamond rather the heart of a girl;...
It was Peter the Barbarian put an apron in his bag And rolled up the honoured bundle that Australians call a swag; And he tramped from Darkest Russia, that it might be dark no more,...
Only one old post is standing, Solid yet, but only one, Where the milking, and the branding, And the slaughtering were done. Later years have brought dejection, Care, and sorrow; but we knew...
My Army, O, my army! The time I dreamed of comes! I want to see your colours; I want to hear your drums! I heard them in my boyhood when all men's hearts seemed cold;...
My father-in-law is a careworn man, And a silent man is he; But he summons a smile as well as he can Whenever he meets with me. The sign we make with a silent shake That speaks of the days gone by,...
They have eaten their fill at your tables spread, Like friends since the land was won; And they rise with a cry of "Australia's dead!" With the wheeze of "Australia's done!"...
Once I wrote a little poem which I thought was very fine, And I showed the printer's copy to a critic friend of mine, First he praised the thing a little, then he found a little fault;...
The world goes round, old fellow, And still I'm in the swim, While my wife's second husband Is growing old and grim. I meet him in the city, It all seems very tame, He glances at me sometimes...
It is night-time when the saddest and the darkest memories haunt, When outside the printing office the most glaring posters flaunt, When the love-wrong is accomplished. And I think of things and mark...
By hut, homestead and shearing shed, By railroad, coach and track, By lonely graves where rest the dead, Up-Country and Out-Back: To where beneath the clustered stars The dreamy plains expand, ...
The breezes blow on the river below, And the fleecy clouds float high, And I mark how the dark green gum trees match The bright blue dome of the sky. The rain has been, and the grass is green...