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...
A dusty clearing in the scrubs Of barren, western lands, Where, out of sight, or sign of hope The wretched school-house stands; A roof that glares at glaring days, A bare, unshaded wall,...
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:...
Oh, the wild black swans fly westward still, While the sun goes down in glory, And away o'er lonely plain and hill Still runs the same old story: The sheoaks sigh it all day long,...
Said Grenfell to my spirit, "You've been writing very free Of the charms of other places, and you don't remember me. You have claimed another native place and think it's Nature's law,...
'Now tell me what can England do?' Said the Kaiser to the Spy. 'She can do nought, your Majesty, You rule the sea and sky. Her day of destiny is done; Her path of peace is plain;...
The boy cleared out to the city from his home at harvest time, They were Scots of the Riverina, and to run from home was a crime. The old man burned his letters, the first and last he burned,...
Emblems of storm and danger, Spindrift and mountain stern, Plants that welcome the stranger, Seaweed, tussock, and fern. Known to the world-wide ranger, Who sailed on the 'Never Return,'...
Now this is the creed from the Book of the Bush, Should be simple and plain to a dunce: "If a man's in a hole you must pass round the hat, Were he jail-bird or gentleman once."
Why are the sheoaks forever sighing? (Sheoaks that sigh when the wind is still), Why are the dead hopes forever dying? (Dead hopes that died and are with us still.) As you make it and what you will. ...
Fools can parrot-cry the prophet when the proof is close at hand, And the blind can see the danger when the foe is in the land! Truth was never cynicism, death or ruin's not a joke,...
I met Jack Ellis in town to-day, Jack Ellis, my old mate, Jack, Ten years ago, from the Castlereagh, We carried our swags together away To the Never-Again, Out Back. ...
The Wireless tells and the cable tells How our boys behaved by the Dardanelles. Some thought in their hearts 'Will our boys make good?' We knew them of old and we knew they would! Knew they would,...
Far back in the days when the blacks used to ramble In long single file 'neath the evergreen tree, The wool-teams in season came down from Coonamble, And journeyed for weeks on their way to the sea,...
On the moonlighted decks there are children at play, While smoothly the steamer is holding her way; And the old folks are chatting on deck-seats and chairs, And the lads and the lassies go strolling in pairs....
Let us sing a song as not a Solitary poet sings, For our seething brain has got a Mighty grip on earthly things; We can feel the strength within us, And our soul is bounding high,...