English

He longed to be a Back-Blocks Bard,
And fame he wished to win —
He wrote at night and studied hard
(He read The Bulletin );
He sent in " stuff " unceasingly,
But couldn't get it through;
And so, at last, he came to me
To see what I could do.

The poet's light was in his eye,
He aimed to be a man ;
He bought a bluey and a fly,
A brand new billy-can.

A blanket low and leaden,
Though rent across the west,
Whose darkness seems to deaden
The city to its rest;
A sunset white and staring
On cloud-wrecks far away —
And haggard house-walls glaring
A farewell to the day.

A light on tower and steeple,
Where sun no longer shines —
My people, O my people!
Rise up and read the signs!
Low looms the nearer high line
(No sign of star or moon),
The horseman on the skyline
Rode hard this afternoon!

(Is he — and who shall know it? —

(T HE “V INCENNES ”)

'Twas the glowing log of a picnic fire where a red light should not be,
Or the curtained glow of a sick-room light in a window that faced the sea.
But the Manly lights seemed the Sydney lights, and the bluffs as the “Heads” were seen;
And the Manly beach was the channel then—and the captain steered between.

The croakers said with a shoulder shrug, and a careless, know-all glance:—
“You might pull out her stem, or pull out her stern—but she'll sail no more for France!”

THE Second S ONG OF THE E LDER S ON

O the strength of the toil of those twenty years, with father, and master, and men!
And the clearer brain of the business man, who has held his own for ten:
O the glorious freedom from business fears, and the rest from domestic strife!
The past is dead, and the future assured, and I'm in the prime of life!

She bore me old, and they kept me old, and they worked me early and late;
I carried the loads of my selfish tribe, from seven to thirty-eight:

Where shall we go for prophecy? Where shall we go for proof?
The holiday street is crowded, pavement, window and roof;
Band and banner pass by us, and the old tunes rise and fall —
But that great waiting silence is on the people all!

Where is the cheering and laughter of the eight-hour days gone by,
When the holiday heart was careless, and the holiday spirit high?
The friendly jostling and banter, the wit and the jovial call?
But that great waiting silence is over the people all.

They were men of many nations, they were men of many stations,
They were men in many places, and of high and low degree;
Men of many types and faces, but, alike in all the races —
They were men I met in trouble, and the men who stuck to me.

Some were " friends " , but most were strangers; some were weary world-wide rangers;
Some in freedom were in prison, and in prison some were free.
O I have a vivid vision of the men I met in prison —
In the craving for tobacco they were men who stuck to me.

Of home, name and wealth and ambition bereft —
We are children of fortune and luck:
They deny there's a shred of our characters left,
But they cannot deny us the pluck!
We are vagabond scamps, we are kings over all —
There is little on earth we desire —
We are devils who stand with our backs to the wall,
And who call on the cowards to fire!

There are some of us here who were noble and good,
And who learnt in ingratitude's schools —
They were born of the selfish and misunderstood,

I may walk until I'm fainting, I may write until I'm blinded,
I might drink until my back teeth are afloat;
But I can't forget my ruin and the happy days behind it,
When I wore a pink carnation in my coat.

O I thought that time could conquer, and I thought my heart would harden;
But it sends a sodden lump into my throat
When I think of what I have been, and the cottage and the garden,
When I wore a pink carnation in my coat.

God forgive you, girl, and bless you! let no line of mine distress you—

There's the whitebox and pine on the ridges afar,
Where the iron-bark, blue-gum, and peppermint are;
There is many another, but dearest to me,
And the king of them all was the stringy-bark tree.

Then of stringy-bark slabs were the walls of the hut,
And from stringy-bark saplings the rafters were cut;
And the roof that long sheltered my brothers and me
Was of broad sheets of bark from the stringy-bark tree.

And when sawn-timber homes were built out in the West,
Then for walls and for ceilings that wood was the best;

I have written, long years I have written
For the sake of my people and right,
I was true when the iron had bitten
Deep into my soul in the night;
And I wrote not for praise nor for money,
I craved but the soul and the pen,
And I felt not the sting in the honey
Of praising the kindness of men.

You read and you saw without seeing,
My work seemed a trifle apart,
While the truth of things thrilled through my being,
And the wrong of things murdered my heart!
Cast out and despised and neglected,