Works

With pannikins all rusty,
And billy burnt and black,
And clothes all torn and dusty,
That scarcely hide his back;
With sun-cracked saddle-leather,
And knotted greenhide rein,...

Do you think, you slaves of a thousand years to poverty, wealth and pride,
You can crush the spirit that has been free in a land that's new and wide?...

Sons of the South, awake! arise!
Sons of the South, and do.
Banish from under your bonny skies
Those old-world errors and wrongs and lies.
Making a hell in a Paradise
That belongs to your sons and you....

While you use your best endeavour to immortalise in verse
The gambling and the drink which are your country's greatest curse,
While you glorify the bully and take the spieler's part,...

I've done with joys an' misery,
An' why should I repine?
There's no one knows the past but me
An' that ol' dog o' mine.
We camp an' walk an' camp an' walk,
An' find it fairly good;...

So I sit and write and ponder, while the house is deaf and dumb,
Seeing visions "over yonder" of the war I know must come.
In the corner, not a vision, but a sign for coming days...

By the bodies and minds and souls that rot in a common sty
In the city's offal-holes, where the dregs of its horrors lie;
By the prayers that bubble out, but never ascend to God,...

While tyrants rule the land,
Beneath the Irish skies;
While e'er the iron hand
Upon our people lies;
While sons are driven forth
In other lands to dwell,
Still in the South and North...

How oft in public meetings past,
Where sense was not and talk was loud,
We caught a glimpse of long white hair
Upon the outskirts of the crowd;
And then the tide of talk ebbed back,...

CHAPTER I

I cannot blame old Israel yet,
For I am not a sage,
I shall not know until I get
The son of my old age.
The mysteries of this Vale of Tears
We will perchance explain...

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;...

Tall and freckled and sandy,
Face of a country lout;
This was the picture of Andy,
Middleton's Rouseabout.

Type of a coming nation,
In the land of cattle and sheep,...

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...

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.
...

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...

The Valley's full of misty cloud,
Its tinted beauty drowning,
The Eucalypti roar aloud,
The mountain fronts are frowning.

The mist is hanging like a pall
From many granite ledges,...

Ten miles down Reedy River
A pool of water lies,
And all the year it mirrors
The changes in the skies.
Within that pool's broad bosom
Is room for all the stars:
It's bed of sand has drifted...

She says she's very sorry, as she sees you to the gate;
You calmly say 'Good-bye' to her while standing off a yard,
Then you lift your hat and leave her, walking mighty stiff and straight,...

We're marching along, we're gath'ring strong'
We place on our right reliance,
We fling in the air, for all who care,
Our first loud notes of defiance!
We fling in the air,
For all who care,...

Dust and smoke against the sunrise out where grim disaster lurks
And a broken sky-line looming like unfinished railway works,
And a trot, trot, trot and canter down inside the belt of mines:...