Works

There's a light out there in the nearer east
In the dawn of Nineteen Nine;
There's the old ghost light in the salty yeast
Where the black rocks meet the brine.
Here's the same old strife and toil in vain,...

Arming down along the stream,
Along the sparkling water,
And past the pool where lilies gleam,
There comes the squatter's daughter.

Her eyes are kind; her lips are warm;...

James Patrick O'Hara the Justice of Peace,
He bossed the P.M. and he bossed the police;
A parent, a deacon, a landlord was he,
A townsman of weight was O'Hara, J.P.
...

They're shifting old North Sydney,
Perhaps 'tis just as well,
They're carting off the houses
Where the old folks used to dwell.
Where only ghosts inhabit
They lay the old shops low;...

The rising moon on the peaks was blending
Her silver light with the sunset glow,
When a swagman came as the day was ending
Along a path that he seemed to know.
But all the fences were gone or going,...

When friends are listening round me, Jack, to hear my dying breath,
And I am lying in a sleep they say will end in death,
Don't notice what the doctor says, and let the nurse complain,...

With the frame of a man, and the face of a boy, and a manner strangely wild,
And the great, wide, wondering, innocent eyes of a silent-suffering child;
With his hideous dress and his heavy boots, he drags to Eternity,...

'ONE-MAN-ONE-VOTE!' You hear the people shouting.
The walls of Mammon tremble ere they fall.
ONE-MAN-ONE-VOTE! Is this a time for doubting?
The poets have been prophets after all.
...

It's only a sod, but 'twill break me ould heart
Nigh hardened wid toilin' and carin',
And make the ould wounds in it tingle and smart.
It's only a sod, but it's parcel and part
Of strugglin', sufferin' Erin....

So the time seems come at last,
And the drums go rolling past,
And above them in the sunlight Labour's banners float and flow;
They are marching with the sun,
But I look in vain for one...

Have you seen the bush by moonlight, from the train, go running by?
Blackened log and stump and sapling, ghostly trees all dead and dry;
Here a patch of glassy water; there a glimpse of mystic sky?...

On the summit of Mount Clarence rotting slowly in the air
Stands a tall and naked flagstaff, relic of the Russian scare,
Russian scare that scares no longer, for the cry is 'All is well',...

Now the tent poles are rotting, the camp fires are dead,
And the possums may gambol in trees overhead;
I am humping my bluey far out on the land,
And the prints of my bluchers sink deep in the sand:...

We set no right above hers,
No earthly light nor star,
She hath had many lovers,
But not as lovers are:
They all were gallant fellows
And died all deaths for her,
And never one was jealous...

The old year went, and the new returned, in the withering weeks of drought,
The cheque was spent that the shearer earned, and the sheds were all cut out;...

Sing us a song in this cynical age,
Sing us a song, my friend,
While the Flesh and the Devil are all the rage
And Death seems the only end.
Give it the clatter of hoof-clipped bones...

I want to be lighting my pipe on deck,
With my baggage safe below,
I want to be free of the crowded quay,
While the steamer's swinging slow.
I want to be free of treachery,...

Let others sing praise of their sea-girted isles,
But give me the bush with its limitless miles;
Then it's over the ranges and into the West,
To the scenes of wild boyhood; we love them the best.
...

Now up and down the siding brown
The great black crows are flyin',
And down below the spur, I know,
Another `milker's' dyin';
The crops have withered from the ground,
The tank's clay bed is glarin',...

When at first in foreign parts
Was her flag unfurled,
England was a Gipsy lass
Peddling round the world.
Sailing on the Spanish Main,
Everywhere you roam,
Peddling in the Persian Gulf...