English

I'm tired of the cackle of women,
At home and in politics too
(Of — Labour — and — Liberal — too),
Of the clack-clack-clack-clacker and screamer,
Of the yell, and the Pouter Goo-Goo.
I am tired of the Fearsome Ill-Treated —
You hear of her everywhere;
And the Cool One that talks on a platform
Two hours without turning a hair.

She cares not a curse for her country,
She cares not a damn for a cause;
She knows what a female baboon does
Of politics, justice or laws.
'Tis NOTICE she craves for her antics,

He wears no armour, he bears no crest,
No high hopes swell in his manly breast;
He is not plighted to ladye fair
(Though Liz of the factory may be there);
He hath not given his knightly word,
Nor taken an oath on his knightly sword.
No princelings ride in his glittering train,
For he's Ginger Smith of the Red Rock Lane.

He is not a pirate of days gone by,
Who holds his crew with an eagle eye;
He is no smuggler of lace and rum —
Though he might have had dealings in opium.
No loyalist, rebel, or bandit, he;

White and pure by the Northern Sea in the Arctic day it lies,
Fairer far than St Petersburg, and greater in Finnish eyes:
By snow-drift and floe-drift where the distant bergs are grand,
And the ice blink and the northern lights like a frozen fairyland;
And still they cleave to the Swedish church, the Norsemen of the Norse,
In, not a collection of greasy huts — but the city of Helsingfors.

Big and blonde, and with flaxen hair, and a grin for his downs and ups,
And a womanish seeming affection, unknown to an Englishman, in his cups,

The men who camp with Danger
Are mostly quiet men:
And one may use a rifle,
And one may use a pen,
And one may strap a camera
In deserts to his bike;
But men who sleep with Danger
Are pretty much alike.

To men in places pleasant
Or in the barren West
There's Danger ever present —
A half unheeded guest.
But, thoughtful for the stranger,
The timid or the weak —
The men who camp with Danger
Keep watch but do not speak.

The men who go with Danger
Are mostly dreamy-eyed,

He painted a face on the studio door
And a jest on the window pane —
Those strong, brown hands that shall paint no more —
And I'll never go there again.
They'll clean the window and colour the wall,
And they'll paint the face away;
For they raised the rent when my money was spent.
And I gave up the key to-day.

The Waratah sails and she cannot sink —
She sails in the Indian Sea;

You will find, when over forty, man was made but to repine,
And I sadly sit reflecting on that sinful past of mine;
When the trade that I've forgotten paid far better than the pen,
And when I too, for a season, was a leader amongst men:
When in townships on the Mountains, in the nearer, dearer Bush,
I —by virtue of my “writin's”—was a captain of a push.

Then, the city pushes flourished—lived and flourished as they ought,
For they blanked the world they lived in, and they worked, and loved and fought;

I'm not standing on the platform for the gaping fools to see:
Every train that comes to Mudgee is an empty train to me.
Ah! me boy was quite contented to stay West and settle down,
Till the damned Pro-gress Committee brought the railway to the town.

I am sitting by the river, listening to the sad old song,
Where a sigh seems floating ever down the willowed Cudgegong.
O I hate the cruel cuttings an' embankments round Mount Frome,
For they took me sweetheart from me and they took me heart from home.

The Elder Son was a young man still,
Though toil and worry had told on him.
The land and the people were hard to till —
His back was bowed and his eyes were dim —
Dimmed by the long, long years of drought;
And his heart was tired of beating alone.
The home was barren within and without —
The ground was hard and the hearts were stone.

The Younger Son went to the world away
With a tenner, a horse, and a good rig-out —
(And his horse was stuffed with the last of the hay,
And he left the farm in a blazing drought.)

O do you mind the auld shop, Dan?
They've scarcely left a hint —
Where Banjo and meself, lang syne,
Brot our furse books to print.
They've partly left the auld front, Dan,
But that is going too —
An' sae I sadly sing the sang:
" The Auld Shop an' the New! "

Twa boxes 'neath the window-sills
Stood open to the glare,
An' soiled and tattered Secon'-Han'

Spoken through the world in kindness — through the universe in thunder!
When the world-folk would not listen, while the world was growing grey:
" Those whom God or Fate hath mated, let no mortal put asunder! "
And the Thousand seek to do it, spite of Satan, every day.
Perish by the Sword, or Slander! They shall feel it, they shall know it,
Who, when from a sky of azure that dread thunderbolt was hurled,
Made me drunkard who was sober, made me devil who was poet,