English

The day is hot, and Saturday, and sorry;
The time a little after three o'clock.
The pub is fourteen miles from Care-and-Worry,
Where toil-tired men are ploughing Evatt's block.
They brought their ploughs by spring-cart, dray and lorry—
They mostly come of Riverina stock.

Some are too old, and some found “nothin' doin'”
When trying to enlist, for, it appears,
The smart young doctor dropped on something new in
Their well-worn “works” or in their eyes or ears—
Because they'd stared too hard through drought and ruin,

McPheerson came from Mucklebrae
Long, weary whiles ago —
In Scotland, somewhere, far away,
If you should want to know.
His pants were patched about the knees,
His beard was reddish grey;
But you'll remember, if you please,
He came from Mucklebrae.

He couldn't keep his farm-hands, so
McPheerson made a plan:
He wrote the Government Bureau
To send him out a man.

He stumbled up the ridges
With his old cattle-dog;
He took his maul and wedges
From underneath a log —
His wedges, maul and crosscut,
So light to drive and draw;
And he rubbed well with suet
The dew-rust on the saw.

He marked a tree and felled it,
As lone-hand splitters do;
He measured it and cut it —
The cuts were straight and true.
And all day in December,
When dust and heat prevails,
From out the groaning timber
He belted posts and rails.

He'd come across the water;

Paddy the Ram was a cankered spud, and he was a matured egg,
With a leg that went straight as a leg might go, and a sort of circular leg.
He worked his way with his shoulder blades, and his turret would sometimes jamb;
And he screwed his “dial” at every step; and that was Paddy the Ram.

He'd shout for himself and he'd bum for beer, and tobacco he'd seldom buy,
But Paddy the Ram was the Only Joke in the township of Blankydry.
He'd shake his stick at the world at large, and his mildest word was damn,

I long for the city, but God knoweth best,
For there I fall short of a saint;
There are lovable characters out in the West
With humour heroic and quaint.
And, be it Up Country or be it Out Back,
When I shall have gone to my home,
I hope to be buried 'twixt river and track
Where my lovable characters roam.

There are lovable characters drag through the scrubs,
Where the Optimist ever prevails;
There are lovable characters hang round the pubs,
There are lovable jokers at Sales,

It's O to be in Flanders,
In Flanders,
In Flanders;
It's O to be in Flanders,
Where our brave soldiers are!

With love and hate and hellfire,
And hellfire,
And hellfire;
With love and hate and hellfire,
And sun and moon and star.

Our soldiers fight like devils,
Like devils,
Like devils;
Our soldiers fight like devils,
Then rest a day or two.

The wide-hipped girls of Flanders,

( THE RETURN )

I watch the track on the Red Soil plain,
To the East, when the day is late,
For one who shall surely come back again,
In summer heat or in winter rain,
Limping under his swag in pain —
For a crippled Anzac mate.

We lie at rest when the day is late, on stretchers set on verandahs wide,
With a clear canal by our garden gate, and fruit-trees growing on either side;
With native saplings that seem to look to a future grand with a faith that's blind,
And a clear canal like an English brook, with a rustic bridge to the lane behind;
And the pine-trees run by the long red road, straight to the rim where the sun went down —
And we, for a season, have dropped each load of care and sorrow by Leeton Town.

You seem forever writin'
 Yer Songs of Victory;
An' “Wear the beatin' colours,
 An' wear them back with me!”
You seem forever whinin':
 “O come an' look at me!”
Yer mind forever narrers—
 Say anythin' yer can,
I'm one as wore the arrers,
 An' wore 'em like a man!

While you slept in the mornin'
 An' had yer cup of tea,
An' dreamed, no doubt, with scornin'
 Of better blokes maybe—
Like Ginger Mick an' Stinker,
 An' Snorkey, Snout an' me—
Then I was busy fillin'

He loved a girl when his hair was brown,
And his heart was young and tender,
And she took him up and she took him down,
So he's got no time for that gender.
He's a " whaler " now with a patched-up boat
By a Murrumbidgee station,
With an old he-dog and a William-goat
And a cat of the Thomas persuasion.

There's a Nanny-goat's skin with the head and horns
On a gum-tree tall and shady;
And hair like a long-lost gin's that warns
The native dusky lady.
There's the skin of a female dog as well,