60 Classic Australian Poems for Children (9 page)

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?

Have you heard the still voice calling—yet so warm, and yet so cold:—

‘I'm the Mother-Bush that bore you! Come to me when you are old'?

Did you see the Bush below you sweeping darkly to the range,

All unchanged and all unchanging, yet so very old and strange!

While you thought in softened anger of the things that did estrange?—

(Did you hear the Bush a-calling, when your heart was young and bold:—

‘I'm the Mother-bush that nursed you; Come to me when you are old'?)

In the cutting or the tunnel, out of sight of stock or shed,

Did you hear the grey Bush calling from the pine-ridge overhead:—

‘You have seen the seas and cities—all is cold to you, or dead—

All seems done and all seems told, but the grey-light turns to gold!

I'm the Mother-Bush that loves you—Come to me now you are old'?

Birth, A Little Journal of Australian Poetry
, 1922

The baker-man was kneading dough

And whistling softly, sweet and lough.

Yet ever and anon he'd cough

As though his head were coming ough!

‘My word!' said he, ‘but this is rough;

This flour is simply awful stough!'

He punched and thumped it through and through,

As all good bakers always dough!

‘I'd sooner drive,' said he, ‘a plough

Than be a baker, anyhough!'

Thus spake the baker kneading dough;

But don't let on I told you sough!

The Bulletin
, 1906

I'd like to be a pieman, and ring a little bell,

Calling out, ‘Hot pies! Hot pies to sell!'

Apple-pies and Meat-pies, Cherry-pies as well,

Lots and lots and lots of pies—more than you can tell.

Big, rich Pork-pies! Oh, the lovely smell!

But I wouldn't be a pie-man if …

I wasn't very well.

Would you?

A Book for Kids
, 1921

We are the old-world people,

Ours were the hearts to dare;

But our youth is spent, and our backs are bent,

And the snow is on our hair.

Back in the early fifties,

Dim through the mist of years,

By the bush-grown strand of a wild strange land

We entered—the Pioneers.

Our axes rang in the woodlands,

Where the gaudy bush-birds flew,

And we turned the loam of our new-found home,

Where the eucalyptus grew.

Housed in the rough log shanty,

Camped in the leaking tent,

From sea to view of the mountains blue,

Where the eager fossickers went.

We wrought with a will unceasing,

We moulded, and fashioned, and planned,

And we fought with the black, and we blazed the track,

That ye might inherit the land.

Here are your shops and churches,

Your cities of stucco and smoke;

And the swift trains fly, where the wild-cat's cry

Once the sad bush silence broke.

Take now the fruit of our labour,

Nourish and guard it with care,

For our youth is spent, and our backs are bent.

And the snow is on our hair.

The Song of Manly Men and other verses
, 1908

They came of bold and roving stock that would not fixed abide;

They were the sons of field and flock since e'er they learnt to ride,

We may not hope to see such men in these degenerate years

As those explorers of the bush—the brave old pioneers.

'Twas they that rode the trackless bush in heat and storm and drought;

'Twas they that heard the master-word that called them farther out;

'Twas they that followed up the trail the mountain cattle made,

And pressed across the mighty range where now their bones are laid.

But now the times are dull and slow, the brave old days are dead

When hardy bushmen started out, and forced their way ahead

By tangled scrub and forests grim towards the unknown west,

And spied the far-off promised land from off the ranges' crest.

Oh! ye, that sleep in lonely graves by far-off ridge and plain,

We drink to you in silence now as Christmas comes again,

The men who fought the wilderness through rough unsettled years—

The founders of our nation's life, the brave old pioneers.

Australian Town and Country Journal
, 1896

On the Sunday morning mustered,

Yarning at our ease;

Buggies, traps and jinkers clustered

Underneath the trees,

Horses tethered to the fences;

Thus we hold our conferences

Waiting till the priest commences—

Pitchin' at the Church.

Sheltering in the summer's shining

Where the shadows fall;

When the winter's sun is pining,

Lined along the wall;

Yarning, reckoning, ruminating,

‘Yeos' and lambs and wool debating,

Squatting, smoking, idly waiting—

Pitchin' at the Church.

Young bloods gathered from the others

Tell their dreamings o'er;

Beaded-bonneted old mothers

Grouped around the door;

Dainty bush girls, trim and fairy,

All that's neat and sweet and airy—

Nell, and Kate, and Laughing Mary—

Pitchin' at the Church.

Up comes someone briskly driving,

‘Cutting matters fine':

All his ‘fam'ly lot' arriving

Wander in a line

Off in some precise direction,

Till they find their proper section,

Greet it with an interjection—

Pitchin' at the Church.

‘Mornun', Jack.' ‘Good-mornun', Martin.'

‘Keepin' pretty dry!'

‘When d'you think you'll finish cartin'?'

‘Prices ain't too high?'

Round about the yarnin' strayin'—

Dances, sickness—frocks surveyin'—

Wheat is ‘growed,' the ‘hens is layin”—

Pitchin' at the Church.

Around the Boree Log and other verses
, 1922

Each poet that I know (he said)

Has something funny in his head,

Some wandering growth or queer disease

That gives to him a strange unease.

If such a thing he hasn't got

What makes him write his silly rot?

All poets' brains, so I have found,

Go, like the music, round and round.

Why they are suffered e'er to tread

This sane man's earth seems strange (he said).

I've never met a poet yet,

A rhymster I have never met

Who could talk sense like any man—

Like I, or even you, say, can.

They make me sick! The time seems ripe

To clean them up and all their tripe.

And yet (He stopped and felt his head)

I met a poet once (he said)

Who, when I said he made me sick

Hit me a punch like a mule's kick.

That only goes to prove again

The theory that I maintain:

A man who can't gauge that crazy bunch;

No poet ought to pack a punch.

Of all the poetry I've read

I've never yet seen one (he said)

That couldn't be, far as it goes,

Much better written out in prose.

It's what they eat, I often think;

Or, yet more likely, what they drink.

Aw, poets! All the tribe, by heck,

Give me a swift pain in the neck.

The Herald
, 1936