path: root/70030-0.txt

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 70030 ***






    Off
    The
    Blue
    Bush

    By
    J P Bourke




                     To the West
             and the People of the West
                TO WESTERN AUSTRALIA
            Golden State of Golden Hearts
                  So Warm, So True
     So Generous in their Welcome of a Wanderer
             TO THE MEMORY OF OLD MATES
                    Women and Men
              The Fondest and the Best
    Who, even for me, Made Life a Brave Adventure
                         and
                    TO MY MOTHER
     With all the Love that I shall never speak
            This poor token of reverence,
            All I could, for all I would
                   I humbly offer.

                              John Philip Bourke.




  When I am dead
  Bring me no roses white,
  Nor lilies spotless
  And immaculate,
  But from the garden roses red,
  Roses full blown
  And by the noon sun kissed,
  Bring me the roses
  That my life has missed
  When I am dead.




[Illustration: _J. P. BOURKE._]




                   OFF THE BLUEBUSH

                VERSES FOR AUSTRALIANS
                     WEST AND EAST

                          BY

                     J. P. BOURKE
                     (“Bluebush”)


               Edited by A. G. STEPHENS
              Illustrated by NED WETHERED


                        SYDNEY
                   TYRRELL’S LIMITED
                 22 Castlereagh Street
                         1915.




  _Copyright—First Edition. 2,000 copies, including 30 copies for
    Subscribers separately printed and bound and numbered and 25
    Superior copies separately bound and numbered, published 1st August,
    1915.—Wholly set in type and printed in Australia by Morton’s Ltd.,
    75 Ultimo Road, Sydney._




ACKNOWLEDGMENT.


J. P. Bourke’s verses were contributed originally to _The Sun_,
Kalgoorlie—chiefly during the editorship of Mr. C. W. Andrée Hayward,
for whose cultivated appreciation Western rough-writers owe much—and to
_The Sunday Times_, Perth.

The preliminary account of Bourke is reprinted, with some revision,
from a series of articles contributed to _The Leeuwin_, Perth.

The illustrations by Mr. Ned Wethered represent the promising effort
of a Western Australian designer and illustrator, almost wholly
self-taught, aged twenty. Their youthful defects are apparent; yet they
depict life, character, and scenery in a Western mining town with a
gusto that preserves faithfully the spirit of the verses.

On behalf of Bourke, I record his expressed gratitude for the help
which, contending with many difficulties, Ned Wethered gave to his
friend.

                              A. G. S.




[Decoration: Black swan]

CONTENTS:

  _Preface_                                               17

  AMONGST THE RICKS OF HAY                               117
  ANOTHER SONG OF THE STAMPS                             110
  ANSWER TO “HIS LETTER FROM W.A.”                       124
  AT BUMMER’S CREEK                                       99
  AT PENNYWEIGHT FLAT                                    103
  AT PARTING                                              48
  A-WHIZZING TOWARDS THE EAST                            126

  BEER BOOST, A                                           79
  BEER IS ENOUGH                                         135
  BEHIND M‘WHALAN’S BAR                                  141
  BENDER AND SOME OF THE MOODS THAT LEAD UP TO IT, A     155
  BETWEEN TWO GATES                                      174
  BLOKE FROM MULLINGAR, A                                149
  BUNCH OF VIOLETS, A                                    137
  BY A KOPI HILL                                          97

  CHURNING COPY FOR THE PRESS                            181
  CURSE OF THE LAUNDRIED SHIRT, THE                       81

  DAN THE HATTER                                          94
  DIAMOND WEDDING, THE                                    55
  DIFFERENCES                                            145
  DREAMS                                                  31
  DREAMING THE DREAM OF LIFE                              41
  DRUNK’S DEFIANCE, A                                    172
  DRUNK’S RUBAIYAT, THE                                  147

  END OF THE EPISODE, THE                                 45

  GARLAND OF SIGHS, A                                     58
  GLIMPSE OF SUMMER, A                                    43
  GOLDEN AGE, THE                                         46
  GOSPEL OF SHIRK, THE                                    37

  HELL FOR LEATHER                                        74
  HIS LETTER FROM W.A.                                   121

  I HAVEN’T THE GUTS TO GO                               107
  I PROMISED SUE                                         179

  KILDEA’S FLOWER FARM                                   119

  LASS, A, A LOAF, AND A GOOD CIGAR                      177
  LAST SPRAT, THE                                        160
  LEADEN HOOF, THE                                        49

  [Decoration: Gold mining camp]

  [Decoration: Man leading camel]

  MAN WHO CAN TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT ALONE, THE             169
  MY SWAG AND I                                           60

  NEARLY A PESSIMIST                                      72
  NO MORE VERSES IN PRAISE OF WINE                       194

  OLD BILL BATES                                          83
  OLD FARM GATE, THE                                     129
  ONLY A KISS                                            153
  OUR GOLDFIELDS SPRING                                   69
  OUR LIMITATIONS                                        196

  PAY WASH                                                65
  PILGRIMAGE, THE                                         51

  RHYMES AND RHYMERS                                     186

  SAY, WHAT DO YOU THINK OF IT NOW                       162
  SCRATCHING FOR A CRUST                                  77
  SHATTERED ILLUSION, A                                  191
  SONG OF COMPROMISE, A                                  189
  SOAKER SMITH                                            63
  STAR-GAZING                                            184

  TILL DAY IS DONE                                        33
  TOO OLD                                                 92
  TO THOSE WHO LOVE US MOST                              131
  TO YOU                                                  36

  UNDER THE HEEL OF FATE                                  39

  VERSEMAKERS, THE                                        29

  WAITING FOR THE CALL                                    59
  WE TOOK THE PLEDGE TILL MAY                             87
  WESTERN WRITER TO HIS MUSE, THE                        167
  WHEN SUSY MAKES THE DUFF                               170
  WILD CATS AND HOURIS                                   158
  WILL YOU LOVE ME THEN?                                 143
  WISH FOR SYDNEY-SIDE, A                                115

  YOUR LEVEL BEST                                        198

  _When I am dead_                                         7
  _With head erect I fought the fight_                    16

[Decoration: Gold miner with dolly pot]




  With head erect I fought the fight
    Or mingled with the dance,
  And now I merge into the night
    With utter nonchalance.




JOHN PHILIP BOURKE.


  We singers standing on the outer rim,
  Who touch the fringe of poesy at times
  With half-formed thoughts, rough-set in halting rhymes,
  Through which no airy flights of fancy skim—
  We write “just so,” an hour to while away,
  And turn the well-thumbed stock still o’er and o’er,
  As men have done a thousand times before,
  And will again, just as we do to-day ...

  If I could take that rosebud from its stem,
  And weave its petals in a simple rhyme,
  So you could hear the bells of springtime chime
  And you could see the flower soul in them—
  Or else, we’ll say, a magpie on the limb,
  Greeting the sunrise with its matin song—
  To catch the music as it floats along,
  And link its spirit to a bush-child’s hymn.

  Or, if—but then the limitations rise,
  Like barriers across the mental plain,
  And mists and things obscure the rhymer’s brain,
  And dull his ears, and cloud his blinking eyes.
  And so we write as Nature sets her gauge—
  No worse than most, and better, p’raps, than some;
  —But should a man remain for ever dumb
  When only rhyming fills his aimless page?

                              J. P. BOURKE.

       *       *       *       *       *

They say that, when Abraham Lincoln had seen Walt Whitman, he summed
his impression in the emphatic “This is a _man_.” That is what one
feels in reading the verses of Western Australian writers—“This is
a _man_.” The work of the tribe of pseudonymous writers in Western
newspapers—especially _Kalgoorlie Sun_ and _Perth Sunday Times_—the
work of “Bluebush” and “Dryblower,” “Crosscut,” “Prospect Good,” and
the rest—is the most virile and the most original poetry that has been
made in Australia since the Commonwealth began. “Here’s manhood,”
I say, and “Here’s Australian manhood.” For vigour and versatility
the East at the moment has few writers to rival this little Western
comradeship.

The East has more refined writers, more cultivated and more artistic
writers; but not more manly writers.

Poetry is a man’s work if it performs a man’s deeds. When, on the
night of 24th April, 1792, Rouget de l’Isle tramped his lodging-house
room “with a head of ice and fire” to compose “The Marseillaise,” how
many deeds were his exultant verses worth! How vainly he himself would
have fought to achieve the feats of swelling valour to which his art
inspired others. In a literary aspect the words are little more than a
rant:—

  “Aux armes, citoyens!
  Formez vos bataillons!”

But this rant, as Carlyle says, when added to the stirring tune, “will
make the blood tingle in men’s veins; and whole armies and assemblages
will sing it with eyes weeping and burning, with hearts defiant of
death, despot, and devil.”

The vigorous Western Australian verses that I praise are of that kind
and approximate to that standard. They are written in peace, and cannot
gain the hottest of mortal ardours, the exultation of war. But if there
were Australian war, here are the men to write our marching songs.

There is a literature of art, and there is a literature of humanity.
The one kind does not exclude the other; the best poetry is human in
impulse, artistic in expression. Yet inevitably, as verse is written,
there are found writers with a languid pulse whose finest effects are
gained by a decorative use of language, and opposed to these are the
writers who use the oldest rhymes, the oldest rhythms, to give impetus
to the messages of emotion that fly hot from their hearts.

This Western Australian poetry is often inartistic; it is often a poor
thing considered as literature; but how broadly and strongly it appeals
to our humanity! how graphic it is! how humorous or tragic! and how
natural! It is written, for the greater part, not from a head to a
head, but from a heart to a heart; and in its most effective passages
it has the same force of sincerity, the same truth of vision, the same
sympathy, that make the old ballads a precious possession, and that
have captivated thirty centuries with the stories and descriptions of
Homer.

There must be allowed, also, to the little school of Western Australian
writers, besides their vigour and vivacity, a real singing talent, and
no slight mastery of striking phraseology. Often enough their subjects
are commonplace, yet it is rarely that their treatment of a subject
is entirely commonplace. Almost always there is found a personal
touch that in its way and to its extent is a true style, and a style
effective to move the readers to whom it is addressed. It is said that
the Arabs are careful not to tread on any scrap of written paper lest
it should contain the sacred name of Allah. In the same manner I think
that every lover of poetry is careful not to contemn the rudest rhyme
that may contain a heartbeat. That is to say that every lover of poetry
is a faithful Catholic. He may like some kinds of poetry better than
others, yet he finds every kind a good kind—however stiffly or crudely
it succeeds in transferring its content of emotion. If it does not
hold and convey emotion, then it is not poetry, no matter how fine its
form or how famous the name of its author. I value this little wild
garden of verses the more because it grows in Australia. Doubtless, its
Australian appeal detracts from its quality considered as universal
literature; yet that detraction is balanced by the additional
attraction it has for readers here and now. I am not concerned to
measure out comparative credit, but only to emphasise the point that we
have here something that is worthy our credit.

The opinion offered, the attitude taken, follow after reading some
hundreds of representative Western verses. The merit of those verses is
to be found in the impression one receives from the whole—an impression
gained from many patches of gold that shine in the quartz. An artist
may touch everything with mastery. These writers are not artists, but
men who utter the measures and rhymes that come to them often unsought;
they are poetical interpreters of life and manhood. Accept them in that
guise, and they need no justification from another’s hand: they justify
themselves.

John Philip Bourke, who wrote for _The Sun_, Kalgoorlie, scores of
stanzas that ring harshly or melodiously, but that ring true, has set
down his page of Western history over the signature of “Bluebush.”
Between East and West his honours are easy; for he springs from the
East, but it is the West that has inspired him. He was born in August,
1860, on the Peel River Diggings, New South Wales; he was born with
the wandering blood. At the age of seventeen he sold his first reef to
Clarke, of Gullandaddy station, for £600; then for seventeen years he
settled down as a school teacher. In 1894 he went West and roughed it
on the mining track.

He was pretty consistently lucky in making small “rises” of from £200
to £1000 (with a “record” of £1,250), but he never handled a wingless
coin. His old Hunter River stock was mostly of Irish blood: does that
account for a free hand and a blessing on a generous heart? Yet until
his death he faced the world with a roguish eye and with bright and
dark years of experience to write about. He died at Boulder, W.A., on
13th January, 1914.

_The Sun_ praised him justly. “He was a writer of verse that appealed
to everyone by its rugged force, its fertility of ideas, its truth and
the spirit of human sympathy and true mateship which permeated every
line. Straight as a gunbarrel and unfaltering in his denunciation of
all that savoured of the mean, the paltry, or the unjust, Bourke was
the whitest and the most lovable of men. Gifted with a keen insight
into human nature and unlimited power of happy expression, he was a
staunch friend and a true mate, and no man on the fields was more
personally popular.”

What did Bourke write? The verse that appeals to wanderers, to reckless
men, to men who have fought and lost, fought and won, fought and wasted
their winnings in all the ways of all the earth. Wasted? Not all
wasted; not most, it may be.

  What is a purse? A thing to scatter free.
    What is a talent but a gift for joy?
  What is life’s lesson? To live heartily
    To man’s utmost, like a happy boy.

It is a doctrine that must be preached cautiously; yet it is the best
doctrine of all. So many people miss life by not grasping it; in saving
other things they spend life itself: and at the end there is pity for
those who cannot say “_Vixi_!” Let Bourke express himself:

  I have no wild desire to sing and sing
  Or kneel at Nature’s feet, and be her mummer.
  Poetic fancies are not rioting
  For liberty, like prisoned birds in summer.
  No thoughts, like maiden hair, climb round and cling
  To rhyming roosters writing on a thrummer;
  But frowsy devils, round the camp to-night,
  Suggest alone the commonplace and trite.

  There is no bubbling spring within my clay;
  I hold no lyrics straining at the tether;
  My bones would drift right into blanket hay
  If it were not such rough financial weather.
  I’d never pen a par, or lay a lay,
  Or deck ambition’s cady with a feather
  If I could clutch a whisky piping hot,
  A plate of hash, a pension and a pot.

But Bourke does himself injustice. His is a strain of toiling life once
again made vocal—the real truth of real toil, as it may happen, as it
has happened to thousands who have struggled “to gain from the West
her glorious golden prize”—and who have gained and have squandered,
or have died struggling, or have “gone out on flukes,” as Bayley did,
“with the new life just begun.”

  Got no time to ruminate! Got no time to read!
  Got no time to foller on! Got no time to lead!
  Got no time to stoop and pluck the daisies by the pad!
  Got no time for triflin’, for hobby-horse or fad!
  Got no time to pass remarks! Got no time to write!
  Got no time to sky the wipe—only time to fight!
  Only time for graft and grind, dog and dough and dust!
  That’s the tune the music plays—scratchin’ for a crust.

From such a life as that stanza depicts, almost inevitably men turn
to intoxicating liquor for consolation or for oblivion. Any reader of
Western verses must see first how large a part liquor plays in life,
and secondly, how large a part of that life, that life in the desert,
in the sand, in the wilderness, can only be assuaged by liquor. Bourke
writes:

  What’s the use of sittin’
    Dry as blessed chips?
  What’s the use of spittin’
    Through our corn-beef lips?
  What’s the use of drinkin’?
    Well, that ain’t so clear
  To my way of thinkin’—
    Let us have a beer.

“A Drunk’s Defiance” is a human plea. But Bourke urges the other side
still more strongly—“No more verses in praise of wine!”

  Shirking the fight that a man should fight,
  Dodging the joys that a man should know,
  Scorning the breath of a plumed thought’s flight—
  Down with the swine and the husks below!
  ’Tis thus we reap from the seeds we sow—
  Hearts grow withered and locks grow white,
  Dodging the joys that a man should know,
  Shirking the fight that a man should fight.

There are keen sight and shrewd sense underlying Bourke’s verses. There
is sentiment, too, intermingled with pathos, in many places—as in “His
Letter from W.A.”

  It’s scarcely six months since I left Cooranbean,
    But seems longer than all of last year;
  The moon ain’t so bright and the grass ain’t so green,
    And the sky, somehow, isn’t so clear.
  Oh! I’d give all their towns to the very last brick,
    And the mines with the forchins they yield,
  Just to hear the old ripple of Cooranbean crick,
    And the rustle of corn in the field.

And “Her Letter” came back:

  You mind the moss rose that grew over our gate,
    Our old gate where we whispered “Good-bye”?
  Oh, how often I go there and wonder if Fate
    Has one blessing a girl’s wish could buy—
  I am wearin’ a bunch in your favourite dress,
    With the flounces and streamers of blue,
  And though p’r’aps it is silly, I have to confess
    I am wearin’ my heart out for you.

Is that not a sympathetic expression of honest feeling, of true
affection, that has gone out thousands of times to “the boys in
the West”? In pieces like “Old Bill Bates” the note of mateship is
struck; the note that has been the keynote of so many Western lives
linked in the hearty give-and-take comradeship of two men—two bound
closer, almost, than husband and wife, by long-shared years of effort
together. “At Bummer’s Creek” warrants all that has been said of the
manly virtue of Western poetry—and is there anyone who has worked with
men who has not found Dave’s mate?

  We two were fitted, j’int for j’int,
    And toiled and starved and spreed,
  But one’d watch around the stump
    When t’other one was treed,
  The same when Luck was in full bloom
    As when she run ter seed.

That is not refined poetry; but it is essentially poetry; and let us
never forget that all the refinements of life spring from precisely
such realities as are illustrated by this humble “battler.” That a lady
from whose body and mind every speck and thought of defilement are
kept, may walk sedately down the shady side of St. George’s Terrace,
some such man as Bill’s mate must have sweated crudely in the region of
Kalgoorlie. The fancy is far-fetched, but it has a real basis; a large
part of the burden of civilization is borne by “humble battlers;” and
it is to the breed of these “battlers” that we look for civilization’s
defence in the day of challenge. Let not the flower despise its roots.

The lines for “Our Goldfields Spring” are outspoken:

  For here you are thus early soiled and tanned
    A sorry subject for a verse creator,
  A damned inverted pewter in your hand,
    Some draggled immortelles around your crater.
  They speak, somehow, of drought, and dust, and sand,
    And summer’s hell that’s waiting for us later,
  And flies innumerable and small black ants,
  And several thousand other irritants.

“Beer is Enough” is another piece full of racy virtue, expressed with
perverse ingenuity:

  Beer is enough. Let Love roost on his perch,
    And coo and coo his breath away at will—
  The bride in orange blooms—the ivied church—
    The two-roomed kipsy sheltered by the hill—
  Sweep them aside and fetch the frothing bowl
  To warm the cockles of one’s inmost soul.
          Beer is enough.

Or take this sardonic expression of the doubt of Love:

  There’s a new chap born in the world to-day,
    And an axe laid close to the root of doubt.
  When I hear you speak in that soulful way
    Of a love to last till the stars go out—
      But Mignonette!
      Will you love me yet
  When the duns come in? ... ’Tis an even bet.

  Will your faith still shine when the world grows grey?
    When the Autumn comes, will your heart grow sere?
  Will you wear the smile that you wear to-day
    When you wear the hat you wore last year?

Many such stanzas may deserve to be called coarse. A man can defend
them and enjoy them, because they are not vulgar; they are not affected
or insincere; they express the primitive man as he is found—under more
or fewer layers of veneer—in every other man who is worth a woman’s
salt. The work of John Philip Bourke must be taken now and then with a
good deal of salt; but it holds the meat and mettle of manhood.




TOP BRANCH




THE VERSEMAKERS.


  Just now and then when evenings creep
    With languid feet to meet the sea,
  The days go by to sleep their sleep
    With all the past eternity—
  When earth takes on the wondrous hue
    Far shed from arcs beyond our ken,
  We weave a vagrant verse or two,
                    Just now and then.

  Just now and then, ere shadows fall
    Across the threshold of the door,
  And restless hands upon the wall
    Retrace Ambition’s creed no more—
  Apart from cankered strife and stress
    That urge the stumbling feet of men,
  We scrawl a verselet purposeless,
                    Just now and then.

  Just now and then, though time glides on
    From scene to scene, from year to year,
  Till every “Cloth of Gold” is gone,
    Till every leaf is brown and sere,
  Life’s picture holds no glinting sheen,
    We seek the inky shrine again
  To paint our landscape gold and green,
                    Just now and then.

  Just now and then a lilting thought
    May break the reign of monotone
  That claims our camp to hold its court,
    That claims our chair to hold its throne.
  Thrice welcome, then! on silent wing,
    The friends who come from hill or glen
  To overthrow life’s tyrant king,
                    Just now and then.

  Just now and then, when skies are clear,
    And winter evenings wilt and wane,
  Beside the glowing hearth we hear
    The echo of some old refrain—
  Some half-remembered distant dream
    That calls the rhymer’s halting pen
  To mend a broken rhythmic theme
                    Just now and then.

[Decoration: Black swan]




DREAMS.


  Away! Away!
  Let sluggards stay
      The sluggish ruck within,
  While Beauty stands
  With outstretched hands
      To welcome those who win!
  And gems divine
  And wealth and wine
      Are strewn upon the board,
  Where life and love
  Go hand and glove,
      Like slaves before their lord!

  The motors fly,
  The ships go by,
      The tram-cars whizz and whirr—
  I see them pass
  As in a glass,
      Where dim-limned shadows stir:
  I long to hail
  Some friendly sail
      Ere _all_ the throng be past—
  Then failure’s sense
  And indolence
      Reach down and hold me fast.

  Away! Away!
  To act to-day!
      The victor’s creed is _Now_—
  A cloudless brain,
  An easy rein,
      A firm hand on the plough!
  Aside is flung
  The pall that hung
      From damned Inaction’s mast ...
  Then half-thought themes
  And dreamer’s dreams
      Reach down ... and hold me fast.


[Illustration: Man seated at desk]




TILL DAY IS DONE.


  What does it matter
      Though wealth pass by,
  Where follies flatter
      And red lips lie—
  Though cloud shades darken
      The spring-time sheen,
  And dull threads mingle
      Life’s woof between—
  Which winds blow whither
      O’er land and sea—
  What does it matter
      To you and me?

  Here at the door of
      Our Peace-thatched cot
  Cosmea nods, and
      Forget-me-not
  Seems to say from
      Its eyes of blue,
  “Life is fairest
      Where hearts are true!”

  And far beyond, where
      The world is wide,
  Where wrecked lives drift on
      An ebbing tide,
  There is a garland
      A queen may wear,
  Of sweet boronia
      And maidenhair.
  Never grey thyme, or
      A spray of rue
  Tarnish the garland
      I’ve twined for you!
  Let love-fires light, in
      Each fragrant gem
  A setting fair for
      Your diadem!

  What though its petals
      May, one by one,
  Pale grow and pass with
      The mid-day’s sun—
  Though velvet fingers
      At midnight’s hush
  Shall paint your tresses
      With silvered brush—
  Though shadows creep, and
      The earth grows wan,
  Our love will last
      As the years roll on!

  With hand in hand, with
      Our hearts that beat
  Time to the music
      Of twinkling feet—
  Wrapped in a dream that
      Will live and last
  Into the night
      When the day is past—
  Though sails be set for
      The shoreless sea—
  What will it matter
      To you and me?

[Decoration: Man with swag walking away]




TO YOU.


  I love you, Sweetheart! better far than all;
    And still will love, with love that makes or mars,
  When round my head eternal curtains fall,
    And sleep shall close the eyelids of the stars:
    Though all the houris of celestial bars
  Should lure me on with eyes of liquid light,
    Joined to the wondrous music of guitars,
  Without _you_ there, my blood were cold and white!

  Beyond that phase of something some call death
    I want to love you always, just as now—
  To feel my cheek fanned by your clover breath,
    And feel your hand press sometimes on my brow:
    I would not turn one instant from the plough,
  But follow on from starry fence to fence,
    And question not the whither, whence, or how,
  With _you_ as earnest of God’s providence!

  And when at last my evening glooms and greys,
    And when, at last, my last sun westward dips,
  And I go out upon dim, unknown ways
    Where men are borne on heavenly spirit-ships,
    I’ll watch and wait their oft-returning trips,
  Hoping for you to step upon the quay,
  That I may clasp you heart to heart with me,
    And kiss you ... _thus_ ... upon your rose-red lips!




THE GOSPEL OF SHIRK.


  The strenuous rhymer appals me to-night
    With the pitch of his strenuous song
  That shrieks for the god or the goddess of Right!
    Or that lashes the legions of Wrong
    With a vicious and venomous thong—
                  By Crumbs!
    With a knotted and merciless thong!

  He points, with the pointer of arrogant rhyme,
    To the pathway of Wealth and Renown,
  Where weary fools falter and fall, as they climb
    To their Goal, that so grimly looks down
    From its gloomy and sinister crown—
                  Ah me!
    From its blasted and desolate crown!

  And still, on the stretch of the moon-silvered sand,
    With the ripple of waves on the bar
  There comes, from a point jutting down from the land,
    A discordant Voice, echoing far:
    “Steer your boat, steer your boat for a star!”
                  There you are!
    And the Voice is quite sure of the star!

  And to-night, dear Eileen! in our cockle-shell ship,
    To our star that is constant and true,
  We will float on the stream where the willow-boughs dip
    ’Neath a sky that is wondrously blue,
    And a myriad eyes twinkle through—
                  All for you!
    And for me, while I live loving you!

  Let earnest men answer the crack of the whip,
    With their shibbolethed banners aflap—
  On the fur-covered planks of our cockle-shell ship,
    As I lie with my head on your lap,
    I do not care one Commonwealth rap
                  What may hap!
    Not — one — blooming — young — Commonwealth — rap!

  Let other hands delve ’mid the garbage and grime,
    And let other lips puff till they blaze—
  Oh! ’tis weary work marching when fools beat the time—
    But ’tis easy to drift and to laze
    All our nights and our jubilant days,
                  Sweet Eileen!
    All our nights, starry nights, and our days!




UNDER THE HEEL OF FATE.


  Stay we here as the crowd goes by,
    Twining along the street—
  Listless steps and a half-breathed sigh;
    Laughter and twinkling feet:
  Care-worn faces where Time has set
    Pathos in every line:
  Budding Hope with a dead Regret—
  Rue and roses and mignonette
    Bunched in a queer design!

  One is clad in a purple gown;
    One in a skirt of grey;
  Brushing past where the lights beat down,
    Following each her way:
  One is marked by a barefoot son;
    One by a florid beau,
  Tangled still was the skein she spun—
  She who slept when the day was done ...
    Say—was it ordered so?

  See who comes with the drunkard’s gait
    Out from the taproom door!
  He was born to a man’s estate,
    White to his inmost core:
  Few were turned from the Master’s hand
    Fit to compare with Jim ...
  Now by the world despised and banned,
  Clear as day shows the damning brand
    Destiny placed on him!

  Fools may prate of a will that’s free,
    Else of their strength and brain:
  Know they not that the jarrah tree
    Only splits with the grain?
  Think they not that a man denies,
    Or takes his faith on trust—
  Not from the words of the foolish wise,
  Not from the vision of sightless eyes—
    But just because he _must_!

  So pass they, while the music plays,
    Tramping to God knows where:
  Some goal His in the outer haze
    Waiting the pilgrims there;
  But if, as preachers aver, it be
    Part of some changeless plan
  Typed in the shop of Eternity,
  Never a sentence, my friends, did we
    Write for the play of “_Man_”!




DREAMING THE DREAM OF LIFE.


  A fig for the world and its carping cares,
    Its worry and wear and fret—
  A fig for the poppies that passion wears,
    Fast followed by dull regret:
  A fig for the glitter, and gilt, and gaud
    That’s won in a tawdry strife,
  Filling the world with the clash of swords—
  Marring the sweetest of human chords
  Born in the valleys where dreamers wait,
    Dreaming the dream of Life.

  If I own no love for the arts that mould
    The minds and the souls of men,
  There lurks no charm in the miser’s gold,
    Or the heft of the writer’s pen.
  I wear no frown for the clod below,
    No cringe for the clown above;
  For I tread but the path where the roses blow,
  And I pin one bud to her breast of snow,
  And I weave a glorious wreath to crown
    My goddess of Peace and Love.

  Her liquid eyes are a hazel grey
    And her lips are ruby red,
  And the dusk of the night and the light of day
    In the depths of her glance are wed.
  The old world hustles on eager feet,
    And its songs are the songs of strife,
  But we stand aside from the glare and heat
  And we draw the curtain of Love’s retreat—
  This dainty spirit of youth and I
    Dreaming the dream of Life.

  A fig for the warrior’s crown of fame!
    For the faithless world’s caress!
  A fig for the poet’s or painter’s name
    Whose haven is nothingness!
  A fig for the transient light divine
    That halos some godlike head!
  For the Spring-time breaks and the stars all shine,
  And the world goes round for this wife of mine ...
  Oh, the spirit of languorous love will live
    When the spirit of strife is dead!

[Decoration: Man leading camel]




A GLIMPSE OF SUMMER.


  While the world’s a-bustle
      On the upward grade—
  Straining brain and muscle,
      Plying pen and spade—
  Let us go a-dreaming,
  With your hair a-streaming ...
  Cupid lies a-scheming
      ’Neath the mulga shade.

  How the rabble clatters
      As it hurries by!
  Chasing Passion’s tatters,
      Sighing Passion’s sigh.
  Soft airs, sandal-scented,
  Fan us: golden-tinted,
  Like a landscape minted,
      Plain and hill-top lie.

  Willy-willies whirling
      Play for me and you,
  Curling up, and curling,
      Till they reach the blue:
  Like a giant sweeping,
  Creeping on, and creeping
  ’Mongst the trees, a-sleeping
      Mid-day’s languor through.

  Bell-bird notes are swelling
      Upward from the glade;
  Lovelorn swains are telling
      Love-tales worn and frayed:
  Let them strain their tether!
  You and I together
  Never wilt a feather,
      Lolling in the shade.

  Earnest souls, or sighing,
      Death has ever paid!
  See pale Effort lying
      Rue- and wreath-arrayed!
  Come then, Jean, a-dreaming,
  With your hair a-streaming ...
  Cupid lies a-scheming
      ’Neath the mulga shade.

[Decoration: Mining equipment]




THE END OF THE EPISODE.


  There is no need to say Good-bye,
                  And weep;
  There is no call on us for tear or sigh.
  Men say: “Just as ye sow, so shall ye reap.”
            Is that, think you, a lie?

  Now fate points out our different ways,
                  And so
  We leave the spot where glamour clothed the days—
  Leave for those duller worlds that lie below,
            With something like amaze.

  No use to curse: whatever crossed
                  Our way:
  No need for words: when hearts are tempest-tossed—
  But those alone may know the cost, who pay,
            And bankrupt, pay the cost.




THE GOLDEN AGE.


      Then life was young
      And roses hung
  In gay festoons from star to star,
      And o’er the farm
      A silvered charm,
  The moonlight, flooded full and far—
    The moonlight, telling wondrous tales
  Of things that are not, and that are.

      How strange the thrall
      Around it all!
  The subtle flapping of a wing!
      You plainly hear
      Each wheaten spear
  Unto its neighbour whispering,
    And almost catch their secrets, too—
  Those kindred children of the Spring!

      And, watching so,
      The branches throw
  Fantastic shadows on the grass:
      How quaint and clear
      Their lines appear!
  A woven way where fancies pass—
    Those secret bairns, that come to most,
  And live and breathe—but die—alas!

      No longer chimes
      The gold of rhymes
  That would make music, ay or nay!
      I number still
      The month, at will,
  Clare gave to me a lilac spray ...
    ’Tis dead and withered now—how long?
  An age, a year, or yesterday.

      Thus rhyme and spray
      Have turned to clay,
  While Discord plays on life’s guitar ...
      ’Twere wise and meet
      To book a seat,
  A cushioned seat, in Daphne’s car,
    While bright eyes shine, and roses twine
  In gay festoons from star to star!

[Decoration: Gold mining camp]




AT PARTING.


  I sit beside you, this last afternoon,
    And watch the sunset’s change from gold to grey,
    That mirrors well my life of yesterday
  Where shadows, born of twilight, fell so soon.

  And yet, you seemed so womanly and true—
    I never guessed “’Twas but to kill the time!”
    For I, who dwelt in Passion’s summer clime,
  Played for a life that centred all in you.

  I’ve spun no webs, as money-spiders spin,
    Nor stacked the shining shekels row on row;
    And yet I have one plea—I love you so!
  And fatuously dreamed that love might win.

  For me this old world smiled when you were by;
    Life’s circles spread their limits wider yet;
    There came no grey train-bearers of regret
  To grace the triumph of hypocrisy.

  My heart throbbed to the rustle of your dress;
    My soul drank in each message of your eyes;
    For Love, they say, is all our paradise,
  And wanting Love, this life were nothingness.

  But ere we part—O girl grown worldly-wise!—
    I place one glory-rose amid your hair,
    And kiss your lips, with something of despair:
  For, Dear, I love you yet—and yet despise.




THE LEADEN HOOF.


  What use to puff a blackened fire
  Grown emberless within the grate?
  What use to twang a damaged lyre
  That’s only half articulate?
      What use for dumb
      Desire to thumb
      The leaves of a curriculum
  When other men matriculate?

  ’Tis vain to plan a fabric gay
  With tangled warp and broken woof—
  Just listen for a moment, pray,
  —A magpie singing on the roof—
      Just hear, and then
      Throw down the pen:
      The songs and wings of common men
  Are anchored to a leaden hoof.

  And yet, are other days, that bear
  No weight of pessimistic sin—
  A laurel leaf for me to wear,
  A thought to stir, a smile to win;
      And o’er the sea
      There comes to me
      The echo of a symphony
  That sets the smiling world a-spin.

  Now carmine-hued are Renée’s lips,
  A thousand gleams light life’s old wine—
  I tremble to the finger tips
  To breathe devotion at her shrine;
      But while I write,
      Some blasting light
      Reveals my rose an ashen white
  That crumbles in these hands of mine.

  What use to fret a halting brain
  While inspiration holds aloof?
  And hark! the voice bursts forth again,
  —A magpie singing on the roof—
      Just hear, and then
      Throw down the pen:
      The songs and wings of common men
  Are tethered to a leaden hoof.

[Decoration: Mining with a windsail]




THE PILGRIMAGE.


  For many a year we wandered
        over hill and dale and mountain,
  For ever pressing onward
        till we’re nearly worn and old:
  Searching for some spot Elysian
        where the poets’ crystal fountain
  Sings its songs of calm contentment
        in a valley draped with gold:

  Where the flowers bloom for ever
        ’neath the sun’s life-giving kisses,
  But never droop ’neath thirsty skies
        or feel the winter’s chill:
  Where roses wreath an arbour
        where no fatal adder hisses,
  And the promise of our youthful dreams
        our later days fulfil.

  Then the purple flush of morning
        thrilled our careless hearts with pleasure,
  And the sunbeams shooting downward
        with our spirit shared their glow:
  Once every bell and buttercup
        that blossomed was a treasure—
  In those days that we have dreamed of,
        in the misty long-ago.

  But the joys of life would pall upon
        the heart that they for ever,
  Unbroken by a shadow,
        lit with one eternal glare;
  And the bonds of love are strengthened
        by the thought that they may sever,
  And are hallowed in the memory
        of lives and loves that were.

  The ropes of sand that bound us
        then appeared so deftly woven
  That we noticed not each single grain
        the breezes swept away,
  Nor underneath the robe of Beauty,
        silken-cased, the cloven
  Hoof of Time, that swept the garlands
        into ruin and decay.

[Decoration: Horse-powered mining]




MIDDLE TWIGS




[Illustration: Elderly wife and husband]

THE DIAMOND WEDDING.


  To-day is our diamond wedding, old wife!
    Some seventy summers and more
  Since first we paired off in this battle of life
  On thirty a year, and the run of a knife ...
    What! You say I’m a blessed old bore!

  Oh, yes, now we are, I admit, pretty right;
    But still to that hard-grafting time
  My mind often wanders in quiet delight
  ’Way down from the tree of prosperity’s height
    That our industry’s helped us to climb.

  And I picture the day to the station we tramped
    With our characters safe in the swags—
  A long weary walk, and, by George! you were camped;
  And don’t you remember the lads had me stamped
    As one of Glint’s runaway lags?

  Well! well! now I wonder is _he_ living still—
    The super that then bossed the run,
  You know he was “Captain,” and I “Bo’s’n Bill”
  In those pleasant old days when we lived on the hill,
    And I scarcely knew life had begun.

  A fine lot of fellows now, wife! were they not?
    And genuine, too, to the core;
  And, if they weren’t quite on to the spot
  In their speech—there’s one thing they never forgot:
    To leave the latch key in the door!

  But then one ne’er dreamed as one worked straight ahead
    What the future held for us in store;
  Nor that thrift would build up from this stringy-bark shed
  A right little, tight little cottage instead,
    With enough in the stocking—and more.

  We hadn’t much then in the furniture line—
    That’s not to call gorgeous, you know—
  But still round it all there’s a glow of sunshine
  That makes the blood dance in this old frame of mine
    In a stream that naught else can make flow.

  Some magic hangs round the old iron-hooped tongs
    And the splutter the tallow-lamp made ...
  All seem to my memory like beautiful songs
  As they float on before me in numberless throngs
    From the depths of a fifty years shade.

  But you must remember how proudly you’d bring
    Home the cheque at the end of the year:
  Then you were a queen, lass! and I was a king;
  Though we usedn’t to lunch off a butterfly’s wing
    Or any of that kind of cheer.

  Have those pleasures all vanished, old girl! did you say?
    What! Tears in those precious old eyes!
  No, lass! for you’re dearest and fairest to-day
  When the golden-haired girl has grown wrinkled and grey ...
  We’re together, and shall be for ever and aye
    In our home up above in the skies.

[Decoration: Gold miner with dolly pot]




A GARLAND OF SIGHS.


  What is the use of a sheaf of regrets?
    What is the use of a garland of sighs?
  Ever is Destiny trailing her nets,
    A smile on her lips, and with hate in her eyes.
    Heedless the spirit, beseeching, that cries!
  Helpless the mortal who sorrows and frets!
    What is the use of a garland of sighs?
  What is the use of a sheaf of regrets?

  Cast in the midst of the limitless skies,
    Lost in the æons that e’en God forgets.
  Merely a life-light that flashes and dies,
    Merely a soul-spark that glimmers and sets—
    These are the glories that “being” begets,
  Granted alike to the foolish and wise—
    What is the use of a sheaf of regrets?
  What is the use of a garland of sighs?

  Ah! but philosophy always forgets—
    Writ though the sentence, and cast though the dies—
  Love may fly downward from God’s parapets,
    Fanning Eternity’s breath as she flies!
    Groundlings awake from their squalor and rise,
  Destiny then may well gather her debts—
    What is the use of a garland of sighs?
  What is the use of a sheaf of regrets?




WAITING FOR THE CALL.


  Though to-day may groan ’neath its weight of care,
        and the sun be a raven’s wing
  That darkens the faces of children fair
        and saddens the songs they sing;
  I know it will change at the faintest touch
        from the hand of a God-sent Spring!

  And I know, though the desert be grim and grey,
        and its life be a Lethe’s pond
  Whose waters of indolence hold alway
        the spirits of men in bond,
  Full well there is room for a strenuous life
        in the Land that is Just Beyond.

  Thus we wait for the touch of a magic string
        and a glance of a love-lit eye:
  For a breath from some spirit awakening
        that passes us clearly by:
  —We legion of dreamers that drift and live,
        and dabble and drink—and die.




My Swag and I

[Illustration: Man with swag and campfire]


  When I tramp forth attended by
      A retinue of “blues,”
  And all the world and all its wife
      Are clothed in sombre hues,
  Then life holds nothing much to win,
      And nothing much to lose.

  ’Tis little use to preach and pray,
      And none to fume and fret—
  No solace dwells within the days
      Of love and lush and debt—
  ’Tis then I throw the bundle off
      And light a cigarette.

  And seeking, so, some mental perch
      Upon some mental crag,
  I straightway run the colours up
      Of self-assertion’s flag,
  Assume a tragic air, and thus
      Apostrophise the swag:

  “You’ve tarried closer far than friends,
      And closer too than foes;
  You’re with me when the autumn falls,
      And with the first spring rose;
  Though whence such fond affection comes
      The Devil only knows.

  “You’ve driven me along the track
      Like mankind’s primal curse;
  You’ve driven me—behold the proof!—
      To scrawling slipshod verse;
  And every wrinkle in your face
      Denotes an empty purse.

  “I know you well from stem to stern,
      From centrepiece to rim;
  For many, many years ago
      You cost a modest ‘jim’—
  Those years, those sun-tipped years! that now
      Live with the seraphim.

  “Since then I’ve marched the dusty way
      That better feet have trod,
  But always found, my bride! in you,
      An unresponsive clod;
  Until we two have grown alike
      As peas within a pod.

  “And yet to flirt with you I left
      A woman passing fair
  (A pleasant girl who had for me
      A smile or two to spare),
  A half-a-dozen quid a week,
      A couch and easy chair.

  “I left——” But, ah! a wintry wind
      Awakes Matilda’s charms:
  I calmly spread the old girl out
      And snuggle in her arms—
  Untouched by sighs or sentiment,
      Unscathed by love’s alarms.




SOAKER SMITH.

_He died of thirst._


  They tell no tale lugubrious
      Or horror finely spun,
  Of martyr’s groans and human bones
      A-bleaching in the sun;
  But those who cut beneath the bark
      May find the very pith
  Of pathos, in the yarn they spin,
      Concerning Soaker Smith.

  He never dogged on Bayley’s tracks,
      Nor battled through with Frost,
  In wild times, when the souls of men
      Were torn and tempest-tossed,
  Nor bore the brunt, nor claimed the rank
      Of fearless pioneer—
  He was, in point of fact, a joint
      Who played his life for beer.

  Smith sat upon the shanty floor
      With blazing eyes and brain,
  While, from the sand, the impish band
      Of fantods sprang again:
  They mocked him with a phantom pot,
      They laughed and lured and lied—
  “A pint! or I,” he howled, “must die
      Of thirst!”—and so he died.

  Then all the tribe of whiskered wits
      That nourishes up North,
  From rub-a-dubs and frowsy pubs
      Like one gay ghoul came forth;
  And Blastus painted on a slab
      A dead marine, reversed,
  And wrote, the knave, beside his grave,
      “Hic! jacet. Died of thirst.”

  And still, around the shanty bar,
      When wit and humour fly,
  They greet the tale that ne’er grows stale
      With wild hilarity;
  But those who probe it to the core
      May find the very pith
  Of pathos, in the yarn they spin
      Concerning Soaker Smith.




Pay Wash

[Illustration: Miners around mineshaft]


  Did you ever drive on pay-wash in this land of boom and bust?
    Did you ever see gold glitter in the dull light of the glim,
  Where the face is specked and sprinkled with the best of sovereign-dust,
    And you calkerlate your income at a pick-blow to the jim?

              _Hello, on top! Hello!
              Hook on, and let her go!
  Or we’ll never make our tucker in a five-ounce show!_

  Oh, the days go by like drinkin’—for it’s entertainin’ graft,
    And you hear your mate discoursin’ to the crowd around the brace,
  As he tugs away the hide, and it goes skimmin’ up the shaft,
    While a smile ’ud trip a bullock jest illumernates his face—

              _Hello, on top! Hello!
              Ease off, and have a blow!
  We’ve a crushin’ in the paddock, and there’s more below!_

  Then you don’t dine any more on sodden flapjacks in the pan;
    And you don’t back under cover when you see a bit of skirt;
  For there’s something in the atmosphere that bulges out a man
    When he’s drivin’ on the gutter, and there’s pay-gold in the dirt—

              _Hello, on top! Hello!
              Jest rosin up your bow!
  For we’ve got no time for sleepin’ when there’s corn to hoe!_

  But I’ll bet old Bill is dreamin’, and he’s driftin’ on the tide,
    Where his wife and kids is waitin’ for a dozen lengthy years
  On their cocky-patch, and hopin’ till the last hope nearly died—
    And it’s safe to lay a dollar as his eyes is dim with tears—

              _Hello, on top! Hello!
              This is boshter sile to grow,
  F’r I guess our plotch ’ll answer mor’n a ’tater to the row!_

  But a man ain’t got no time to dream with plenty work in sight,
    When he’s got the cream of all the lead right through from pay to pay;
  For you can’t get rich on dreamin’, and you can’t shift dirt with skite,
    And the gold stream only dribbles in a keg-o’-treacle way—

              _Hello, on top! Hello!
              Is’t frost up there or snow?
  I’d back you ’gainst a fun’ral any day for goin’ slow!_

  Some day when we’ve her bones picked bare, and got her gutted clean,
    We’ll travel over East, and see what yaller dust can buy;
  And old Bill and me, I reckon, will be right and all serene,
    If we only keep our thirst at bay, and keep our powder dry—

              _Hello, on top! Hello!
              Let down the rope, and throw
  The sling; you’d keep a man all night ’thout singin’ out “Yo, ho!”_

[Decoration: Man with swag walking away]




[Illustration: Miners outside hotel]

OUR GOLDFIELDS SPRING.


  You come not with the dainty air and grace,
    And wreathing smiles, that clothe the Eastern season—
  A maiden lithe of form, and fair of face,
    To wheedle lovers from the ranks of reason:
  You do not come in riots of pink lace,
    For Western bards to perpetrate a wheeze on,
  And cover, in a frenzy, page on page
  With all the rhymer’s threadbare persiflage.

  We seek in vain the fern-wreaths on your gown,
    The dew-drop jewels in your carpet spreading—
  Those pæans from the bush-land and the town,
    Suggestive, quaintly, of a fairy wedding:
  We wait expectantly—then truckle down
    To sleep on bags—no rose leaves for our bedding!
  And wring our hands, and weep like anything ...
  There is no copy in a Western Spring.

  For here you are, thus early soiled and tanned,
    A sorry subject for a verse creator;
  A damned inverted pewter in your hand,
    Some draggled immortelles around your crater:
  They speak, somehow, of drought, and dust, and sand,
    And summer’s hell, that’s waiting for us later,
  And flies innumerable, and small black ants,
  And several thousand other irritants.

  I do not like your rude, precocious stare;
    Your torrid temperature is disconcerting;
  And, Lord! the frowsy draperies you wear
    Might well be made of gunnybags, or shirting;
  And one could bet you never learned the rare
    And subtle art of scientific flirting—
  To set the tune, and lead the boys a dance,
  Through many a labyrinth of sweet romance.

  Yet still our own! though scoffers mock and mar;
    And at your feet I lay this sapless jingle,
  That, if too dry, may moisten at the bar
    Where sundry goddesses and groundlings mingle—
  Where modest Martha’s conduct grows bizarre,
    And Virtue’s self is often short a shingle:
  And soaked, thus, in the dregs of beer and wine,
  Once more I shy the garland at your shrine!

  Yet, after all, the joyous feet of Spring
    Trip to the tune the pipes of Pan are playing
  In every clime where Youth may have its fling,
    And Love, unweighted by life’s cares, goes straying.
  Look not where last year’s rose lies withering!
    Heed not the pessimistic asses braying!
  But fetch your gauds, and place them on Her brow—
  Life’s best delusion is beside you now.

[Decoration: Man leading camel]




NEARLY A PESSIMIST.


  What’s the use o’ laughter,
      What’s the use o’ strife,
  To a gloomy shafter
      In this team of Life?
  Hear the whips a-crackin’
      Through the atmosphere,
  When the traces slacken—
      Let us have a beer.

  What’s the use o’ flayin’
      Loathsome gads and drills?
  What’s the use o’ payin’
      Other people’s bills?
  Let the missus hustle,
      Let the kinchins clear;
  I’m not goin’ to bustle—
      Let us have a beer.

  What’s the use o’ prayin’?
      ’Taint no use to curse;
  What’s the use o’ layin’
      ’Gainst the winning hearse?
  Man at best’s a rotter,
      Fried and frizzled here;
  Hell can’t be no hotter—
      Let us have a beer.

  What’s the use o’ sittin’
      Dry as blessed chips?
  What’s the use o’ spittin’
      Through our corn-beef lips?
  What’s the use o’ drinkin’?
      Well, that ain’t so clear
  To my way of thinkin’—
      Let us have a beer.

  What’s the use o’ frettin’
      Cos you missed the pot?
  What’s the use o’ gettin’
      In a tied-up knot
  Bet you can’t unravel
      If you tried a year?
  No, that cop don’t travel—
      Let us have a beer.

  What’s the——? Oh, _I’m_ toilin’
      Down the Boulder way—
  Only just been spoilin’
      Arf a quid a day.
  Now you bet I’m chargin’
      Homewards at my top.

       *       *       *       *       *

  What’s the use o’ bargin’
      With a white-eyed slop?




HELL FOR LEATHER

[Illustration: Miner with pick, pan and gravel]


        What though the day
        Be dull and grey,
    The earth bestrewn with ashes—
        Hope’s magic lamp
        Lights up his camp
    With rainbow-tinted flashes!
  His eyes, with some unwonted beam,
    Grow soft as any feather,
        Since Luck slid through
        The kipsy flue,
    To smile on “Hell for Leather”!

        The jade and he,
        Since ’Ninety-three,
    Had not so much as spoken:
        The goods she sold
        Were gilt—not gold—
    And promises were broken;
  But “Hell for Leather” scratched along
    As desperation scratches,
        A harlequin,
        Beclobbered in
    A rig of shreds and patches!

        When Hunger grim
        Shaped up to him,
    He’d scorn to take it sitting;
        But answered back,
        With crack for crack,
    Nor ever thought of quitting;
  And oft he’d say, though buckled belt
    And backbone came together,
        “Some day, I’ll bet,
        Will Fortune yet
    Chum in with ‘Hell for Leather’!”

        His frame was lean:
        His eyes shone keen
    Beneath their shaggy awning:
        Somewhere ahead,
        He always said,
    A brighter day was dawning!
  And oft, around the hatter’s camp,
    Would fact with fancy scamper,
        What time he’d munch
        His frugal lunch
    Of potted dog and damper.

        But years, at last,
        Must win the cast,
    And locks grow white and whiter;
        For Time is tough
        To belt and cuff,
    Though sturdy be the fighter:
  Yet so it happed, ere Winter fell,
    Like frost on Highland heather,
        Good luck slid through
        His chimney flue,
    To smile on “Hell for Leather”!

        And so the tale
        With cakes and ale
    Is garnished, ere ’tis ended;
        And so the stress
        And bitterness
    With soothing oil are blended;
  And far away, by out-back pads,
    Where battlers stretch the tether,
        And starve or roast,
        They’ll drink the toast
    Of “Good old ‘Hell for Leather’!”




SCRATCHIN’ FOR A CRUST.


  Got no time to ruminate! Got no time to read!
  Got no time to foller on! Got no time to lead!
  Got no time to stoop and pluck daisies by the pad!
  Got no time for triflin’ with hobby horse or fad!
  Got no time to pass remarks! Got no time to write!
  Got no time to sky the wipe!—only time to fight—
  Only time for graft and grind, dog and dough and dust;
  That’s the toon the music plays: scratchin’ for a crust.

  Got no time to whine and pray! Got no time to curse!
  Got no time for trickin’ thoughts out in shreds of verse!
  Got no time to wear a smile—no, nor raise a laugh!
  Got no time for siftin’ grains out of tons of chaff!
  Got no time to touch the Muse on the funny bone!
  (Got no chance indeed, at all, catchin’ her alone!)
  Got no time to reason why—takin’ things on trust—
  That’s the way we whistle it: scratchin’ for a crust.

  Got no time to do a smoodge! Got no time to wed!
  (Anyway it wouldn’t do—not on soda bread!)
  Got no coin to treat a pal! Got no face to hum!
  Nigh forgettin’ how they taste—tanglefoot and rum!
  Got no time for feelin’ bad! Got no time to peg!
  Got no time to shake a paw—let alone a leg!
  Stoo-pan’s fallin’ out of use! brain-pan’s gone to rust!
  That is how our programme reads: scratchin’ for a crust.

  Got no time to argify! Politics is dead—
  Happy Jack and Texas Green sittin’ on its head!
  Got no time for livin’, scarce!—eatin’ dog and dirt;
  Feel’s if ants was in my block, buzz-flies in my shirt!
  (Got no time to shake ’em out! Got no time to scratch!)
  Got no blanky oof to board! Got no guts to batch!
  Guess there’ll have to be a change, else somethin’s bound to bust—
  Sinkin’, drivin’, beltin’, blastin’, battlin’ for a crust.

[Decoration: Mining equipment]




A BEER BOOST.


  Well, as you’re so pressing, don’t mind if I do—
    What, a pint? Yes, a pint! I should smile at your query—
  There’s a wonderful balm in the cream of a brew
    For a soul that is fagged in a case that is weary.

  It beats all your juggling illusions a mile,
    Whilst it clear overshadows the magic of Moses,
  And it clothes the grey plains of existence awhile
    With the sunshine of spring and an odour of roses.

  A pint! I should guess—we’ll increase it to two—
    I will ne’er be a bigot where beer is in question,
  For if merely you take a sound practical view,
    It enhances the health and improves the digestion.

  It smoothes the deep lines from the forehead of care,
    Till your enemy looms in the light of a brother,
  And there’s peace—that strange peace that is lisped in the prayer
    Of the sleepy-eyed brat at the knee of his mother.

  The old world chips in, in the guise of a friend,
    As the solvent of hops humanises and mellows,
  And the limits of brotherhood stretch and extend
    Till the Devil himself seems the best of good fellows.

  Then bring me a glass, or a tankard, or tank—
    And the last, if permitted a voice in the choosing:
  For, in all the crimes’ calendar, none is so rank
    As the sin, the nigh obsolete sin, of refusing.

[Decoration: Gold mining camp]




THE CURSE OF THE LAUNDRIED SHIRT.


  I came down here from the ’Back, last year,
      For a spell and a high-toned drunk,
  But I back and fill with a palsied will
      As I lounge on a kapok bunk.
  I laze and laze where a man’s life pays
      For a kiss and a pint of squirt,
  Like a weak-kneed slop in a draper’s shop—
      ’Neath the curse of a laundried shirt!

  I tire to death of the town’s close breath—
      Of the pave, and the lighted street:
  Its silken tiles, and its threadbare smiles—
      Of the patter of kid-shod feet;
  And thoughts tramp back where I lost the track
      Of a “leader” of five-ounce dirt,
  Before I knelt with a “Scheme”-cleansed pelt
      At the shrine of a laundried shirt!

  I came down here for a spell, last year,
      And a brush with the town-bred folk—
  For a bit of a change from my “moated grange”
      (A camp by an outback soak):
  But drift I still with a flagging will
      And a spirit that grows inert—
  A sagging jaw and a bleaching paw—
      ’Neath the curse of a laundried shirt!

  I’ve lit my camp with the moon’s soft lamp
      And the light of the outback stars,
  And drunk my fill of the Out-Back swill,
      As I breasted the shanty bars:
  I’ve made my bit, and have squandered it
      In an island of dreams, rum-girt—
  To fall at last with my flag half-mast,
      ’Neath the curse of a laundried shirt!

  The stampers roar to the tune no more
      Of “Aboard for the Sydney-side!”
  The merry hum of the windlass drum
      ’S like the song of the swan—that died:
  My mulga maid, in whose eyes hope played—
      With jewels adown her skirt,
  She’s sailed a trip on some desert ship
      From the chap in a laundried shirt!




OLD BILL BATES.


  No, Mister, I’ve no messages ter send along the track
    But I thank y’ fer enquiring, jest the same;
  Fer it’s mighty near an age agone I wandered from Out-back,
    And I dessay they’re forgettin’ this old frame:
  But you’ll find a hearty welcome at the far end o’ the pad,
    Where the rank and file is nothin’—only mates;
            And I wish yer luck ... but stay!
            If yer chance along his way,
    Jest remember me to Old Bill Bates.

  We both battled on together since the year o’ ’Ninety-two,
    And we mostly hung around the outer rim,
  And we drank, and fought, and made-up friends, as good as gold, and true,
    Till the camp took us for brothers—me and him:
  You will find him crush to sample, if you try him by the bulk,
    And you’ll find the ’malgam ribbed along the plates;
            Fer he’s pretty high-grade rock
            From his flannel to his sock,
    Is that sun-dried salamander, Old Bill Bates!

  But in case yer fail ter reckernise his features at the pub,
    (Fer he might be outer luck, or off the spree)
  Yer can fossick through the workin’s till y’ find his rub-a-dub,
    And then all yer got to do, is mention me:
  And yer won’t want any witness to identerfy yer phiz.
    Nor yer won’t need to projoos no days or dates,
            If he doesn’t claim yer straight
            F’r a white man and a mate,
    Then that party isn’t Old Bill Bates!

  Y’ might guess him fer a chap what wears a pretty stiffish lip,
    And he user ter own a one-eyed spotted bitch,
  And he’s mostly rags and air-holes—jest the picter of his kip—
    So it’s hard ter tell (fer strangers) which is which;
  But he’s grit right to the bottom, and the mate what’s tried his sand,
    He ’ud swag it back from them ’ere Pearly Gates
            With a longish stride, I’ll swear,
            If they kep’ no lodger there
  By the monniker of “Old Bill Bates.”


[Illustration: OLD BILL BATES]


  No, thanks, Mister, I’ve no message—since I’ve opened out my drum,
    Where a suit o’ tailor’s clobber pulls the strings;
  But (I wouldn’t say it public) I am feelin’ pretty glum
    When I start a-cogitatin’ about things:
  But you’ll find a hearty welcome where the sky begins ter dip,
    Out where mates is mostly men, and men is mates,
            And I wish yer luck ... and say!
            If yer chance upon his way,
    Jest remember me to Old Bill Bates.

[Decoration: Black swan]




[Illustration: Men observing fantastic creatures]

WE TOOK THE PLEDGE TILL MAY.


  Dave Barker is a mate of mine,
    A solid mate and chum,
  And when we’re out upon the wine
    I guess we make things hum:

  We go the pace all fair and square,
    But rapid, I’ll allow;
  And start from—well, just anywhere,
    And wind up—anyhow.

  When Dave and me’s out on the loose
    We follers close and keen,
  And samples every kind of juice
    From rum to kerosene.

  It’s all good fish comes to our net,
    To Barker’s net and mine,
  And our intentions are, you bet!
    Most strictly genu_wine_.

  We beats about upon the ramp,
    And does up all our tin;
  Then Dave—well, Dave strikes out for camp,
    And I—well, I jines in.

  And then the panoramy starts—
    The queerest kind of fakes—
  Fat little blokes and smaller tarts,
    And funny bob-tailed snakes.

  And presently, a big galoot
    Drops down the chimbly flue,
  And takin’ up Dave’s blucher boot,
    Sez, “Lads! Here’s luck to you!”

  But all the time it’s bilin’ hot,
    And, spare me (crimson) days!
  You never heerd such blanky rot
    As what them fantods says.

  Well, comin’ on this last old year,
    I sez to David B.,
  “Old chap, we pays a lot too dear
    These fan-tod fakes ter see.

  “We grafts and grinds and stints our grub,
    But if we socked our rent
  We soon could _buy_ a blanky pub,
    Or stand for Parlyment.

  “What say to puttin’ in the peg?
    Swear off, old man!—what say?”
  Sez Dave, “I’m on—we’ll spike the keg
    Fer good and all, till May.”

  And then our two right hands we clasps
    The ’greement fer to bind;
  And felt like them there “Army” chaps
    Wot’s left all sin behind.

  If any tries to pull our leg
    This coming Hogmanay
  We’ll shout, “No, no! we’ve driv’ the peg
    Home flush and fast till May.”

  Well, Dave and me, we saunters down
    Along the bloomin’ street,
  And every ’quaintance in the town
    ’Ud want to stand us treat.

  They’d pull and press, and chaff and beg,
    Till ’t last we’d break away,
  A-shoutin’ “No! we’ve spiked the keg—
    No booze for us, till May!”

  Well, Dave, he comes from Aberdeen,
    And Sandy Mac. was tight:
  Sez Mac., “Old Scotland’s hills are green!
    One drink on Scotia’s night!”

  Then Dave he looks acrost at me,
    And I looks ’crost at Dave—
  It allus after seemed to be
    A kind of mootual “cave.”

  For Barker sidles to’rds the bar:
    “A whisky from the bin,”
  Sez he, “my gay young Lochinvar!”
    And I—well, I chimes in.

  That _was_ a night—we drank and stept,
    And joined the Scotchy’s lilt,
  Till all the rest were drunk or slept,
    And all the casks a-tilt.

  Then, as we staggered home at four,
    It was a sight ter see
  A-troopin’ from our “rubby” door
    Our fan-tod familee!

  They tended on us jest like kings,
    And darnced around the bunk,
  And seemed, the ’fectionate little things,
    So glad to see us drunk!

  One smilin’ dwarf with flowin’ beard,
    He sang (as sure as sin)
  The sweetest song you ever heerd—
    “Our dad’s kem home agin!”

  And you may all take this from me,
    For gorspel truth to-day—
  _The best way to injy a spree
    Is, Take the pledge till May._

[Decoration: Mining with a windsail]




TOO OLD.


  It is durned hard lines, when a man grows sere
    And his whiskers are flecked with grey,
  And he wears the boots that he wore last year
    When he worked for a miner’s pay,
  To be brushed aside, with a callous word,
    By the arms of sturdier men,
  As they rush and crush, with a hope deferred,
    For the coveted three-pound-ten!

  Oh! he sold his strength, and he sold his health,
    And he bartered his manhood’s prime
  As he toiled and moiled, in the stores of wealth—
    Where they banter the whole crib-time;
  And they sweat, and sweat, and they crack their jokes
    To the tune that the “banjos” play;
  For the world wags fine with the bow-yanged blokes
    While they work for a miner’s pay!

  And To-morrow’s left for To-morrow’s self
    To provide for as best it can;
  For there comes no dream of a workless shelf
    To the brain of the miner man—
  Not a whining call from the voice of Thrift!
    Not a cramp in the open hand!
  As they play and pay—and they drift and drift
    To the ranks where the grey-heads stand.

  But his kids are cold, and their feet are bare,
    And the prospect is bleak and brown,
  And the missus has never a hat to wear
    That’s fit to be seen in the town;
  And the spectres flock—that were held last year,
    With the rattle of coin, at bay:
  When the old man smiled at his old wife’s fear
    While he worked for a miner’s pay.

  There are none to heckle; there’s nought to blame
    But the curse of a gambler’s quest!
  And the men pass out, as they lose the game
    That we play in the Golden West:
  But their thoughts must turn as the days grow late.
    In a dream, to some “cocky” patch
  Where the old folk stand at their homestead gate,
    And they laugh ’neath their whitening thatch.




[Illustration: An old gold miner with equipment]

DAN THE HATTER.

An Old North Country Identity.


  I tramped again ’neath a blazing sky,
  In a Western land where the deserts lie:
  But the rush and roar, and the life we knew,
  When the ’Nineties echoed the whole world through,
  Were silent, or uttered their speech alone
  With a drab and dreary monotone.

  I sought a field where a thousand men,
  Stout-limbed, strong-hearted, toiled madly then;
  But the hessian flapped on the rotting camps,
  And the rust was eating the silent stamps;
  And of all the throng of that mildewed past
  There was only one who stuck to the last.
  Just one old man, and his beard of grey
  Kept time with his chatter the live-long day.

  “What luck, old friend?”—and he turned around,
  Where his hopperings fell in a cone-shaped mound;
  And he rested his arm on the shaker’s side,
  With the air of a man when the world was wide—
  And his tongue ran off with a ceaseless flow,
  For the hermits talk of their cronies so.

  He spoke, with a digger’s quenchless zest,
  Of the early days of the Golden West:
  Of a surging wave, of a seething tide,
  That rolled to the fields from the Eastern side;
  Of the wondrous slugs and the mighty men
  Who answer not to the call again.
  “And I was right in their midst,” said he,
  “For I followed Bayley in ’Ninety-three.”

  Then he led the way, and he led me far
  With the changing trend of each dip and bar,
  And he pointed out with a palsied hand
  All the work he’d done, all the plans he’d planned;
  “For there’s gold,” he yelled, “that would pave a street,
  At the spot where the slate and granite meet.”

  I chanced that track on my way once more,
  And I sought my friend of a year before;
  But his shaker cracked in the midday sun,
  And the old man’s search for the joint was done,
  For he’d stacked his tools, and had drawn his stake.
  And had followed the army in Bayley’s wake.

  Oh, I trust he’s gone—as the priests insist—
  Where the streets are paved with the gold he missed;
  And they’ll weave his crown, and they’ll string his lyre,
  From the trusty strands of his shaker wire;
  And they’ll let him fossick for dip and bar
  In the likely places ’twixt star and star.
  It will please old Dan, for a man was he
  Not planned for an angel minstrelsy.




[Illustration: Headstone]

BY A KOPI HILL


  He rests at the foot of a kopi hill
    By the old Coolgardie track;
  But whether his name was Claude, or Bill,
    Or Clarence, or “Hell-fire Jack,”
  There isn’t a legend at all to say—
  And what does it signify, anyway?

  There’s nought of funereal pomp or show—
    Just a rough-hewn slab that states,
  The leisurely chap that lies below
    Had honestly paid his rates
  Somewhere in the summer of ’Ninety-four;
  And then he came hither—to pay no more.

  So he wearied soon of the storm and strife,
    And he cast his swag aside,
  When men were strong with the lust of life
    And the world seemed opened wide.
  Were the castles fair, that he built that day,
  Ere the Fever came in its cloak of grey?

  Does he rest well there, by his kopi hill,
    Now the tale of his life is told?
  Does a fear disturb his dreaming still,
    Or a sigh strike through the mould?
  Does a mother weep, or a sweetheart wait,
  Where they said “Good-bye,” at the old farm gate?

  However it be, by the wind-swept hills
    Of leisure he nothing lacks;
  And he laughs, perchance, at the dust that fills
    For ever his earthly tracks.
  —Peace, Peace, old chap! It is half a prayer
  In the name of a friend—Someone—Somewhere.




AT BUMMER’S CREEK.


  I planted Dave at Bummer’s Creek
      Somewhere in ’Ninety-five,
  When all the country round about
      Was like a busy hive—
  And good blokes pegged like rotten sheep,
      And wasters stopped alive.

  And here, to-day, I’m t’ilin’ still
      Beside the same old soak
  Where we pitched camp twelve years agone,
      Played out and stony broke;
  And after work I think right back,
      And smoke, and smoke, and smoke.

  We two were fitted, j’int fer j’int,
      And toiled and starved and spreed;
  But one ’ud watch around the stump
      When t’other one was treed;
  The same when Luck was in full bloom,
      As when she run to seed.

  But now I’m getting old and hipped,
      And kick against the ruts,
  I often think I’ll have a pray,
      But can’t sit down fer nuts—
  And Dave ’ud say, “A prayin’ pea,
      He’s never got no guts!”

  D’ye think it’s true, this ’ere report
      That parson blokes kin tell
  As who is bound fer parrydise,
      And who is booked fer ’ell?
  Fer I’ve got dust enough to pay
      If they’ve the noos to sell.

  Y’ see, us partners never ’ad
      Religion much in mind,
  And didn’t think to make no plan
      Fer ’im who stopped behind—
  But ’course you tumble to my graft:
      I’ve got an axe to grind.

  D’ye think now if I went to town,
      Got up all smart and sleek,
  A short-necked shammy, just like that,
      ’Ud make them pilots speak
  And say which track the battlers took
      Who pegged on Bummer’s Creek!


[Illustration: AT BUMMER’S CREEK.]


  Fer Dave an’ me, we never knoo
      The rights of any sect,
  Or ’ow these different pads cris-crossed,
      And things in that respect;
  Or, if we’d heer’d it years afore,
      We didn’t ricollect.

  I don’t say as I’d lift my ’at,
      And cringe, and beg, and crave,
  Nor don’t want them to speechify
      About no soul ter save;
  But there’s the dust! if they’ll pint out
      Which track was took by Dave.

[Decoration: Horse-powered mining]




AT PENNYWEIGHT FLAT.


  “Do you have any luck at the diggins?” I said
    To a dryblower grizzled and grey—
  “Does the nebulous fossicker’s star ever shed
    On your shaker, one flickering ray?
    Does Dame Fortune e’er toddle your way?”

  But he deigned not a look nor an answer—not then—
    And I felt most decidedly hurt,
  And I marked, as he leaned o’er the hopper again,
    To examine the rubble and dirt,
    He had sugar-bag sleeves to his shirt.

  Oh, his boot soles were tied to the uppers with string,
    And his beard swept his chest like a mat,
  And I noted his eyes were as clear as the Spring—
    (That is, Springtime at Pennyweight Flat)—
    He had corks, also, strung to his hat.

  But I flushed to the hair, as he tossed in his hand
    A large slug, from the gravel he mined,
  And a midwinter smile I did not understand
    Lit his weatherworn dial and lined,
    As he carelessly toyed with his find.

  Then I hurried across to congratulate Dad,
    (Oh the slug! and its wondrous gold-red!)
  And I spoke of the marvellous fortune he had,
    When he wakened that sprite from its bed—
    “Pshaw! A fly-speck—a fly-speck!”—he said.

  And he sighed as he spoke, and his eyes gathered damp
    (Ah, the depth of the pathos they wore!)
  “I have plenty like that sowed away in the camp,
    And because you’re true grit to the core
    You may have the durned thing for a ‘score’!”

  Quick I dived for my purse, and I counted the coin,
    Ere I greedily gathered my prize—
  Then our hands were as hands of old friends, when they join
    And our eyes met as brotherly eyes—
    Oh, we wept, as we mingled good-byes!

  “What’s it worth? What’s it worth?” to the banker I cried,
    As I came through the door at a run,
  And I brushed seven customers waiting aside,
    And the banker chap calmly begun,
    “I should say about nine pounds a ton.”


  [Illustration: AT PENNYWEIGHT FLAT
  “PSHAW! A FLY SPECK—A FLY SPECK HE SAID”]


  I will swear that my hair turned a peony red,
    And my visage an emerald green,
  As he scraped off the gilt from a pound weight of lead;
    And a sadness fell over the scene
    That but late wore a holiday sheen.

  Then I rushed like a mad thing, on homicide bent;
    And with anger that cut to the bone
  I demolished the shaker, and ravaged the tent,
    —But the hardened old sinner had flown;
    And I sank to the earth with a groan.

  Oh, his boot soles were tied to the uppers with string,
    And his beard swept his chest like a mat—
  I remarked that his eyes were as clear as the Spring,
    (That is, Springtime at Pennyweight Flat)
    He had corks, also, strung to his hat.

[Decoration: Gold miner with dolly pot]




[Illustration: Despondent miner sitting on swag]

I HAVEN’T THE GUTS TO GO.


  I want to be out where the battlers are,
      Away from the tyrant pen,
  Where the bell-bird sits on the morning star
      To waken the mulga men;
  I want to stand on the crazy brace,
      Or hammer away below,
  While Luck waits by with a shining face
  So long as the “leader” pans a trace—
      _But I haven’t the guts to go!_

  I want to be fixed in the same old camp,
      And sit by the sandal fire—
  I can see it now in the flickering lamp:
      It looks like a funeral pyre.
  I want to be with the gods of graft,
      The stars of an out-back sky,
  Or follow on with a bushman’s craft,
  With my bag and bundle before and aft—
      _But I haven’t the guts to try!_

  Oh, I know a place where the gold went down,
      The spot where the “country” broke:
  And the shaft is there near the ridge’s crown,
      By the foot of an old bull-oak.
  I know the metal is waiting still
      For a lusty heart to buy,
  For a trusty arm, and a tireless will,
  Till the slug rolls out from the public mill—
      _But I haven’t the guts to try!_

  There’s a shanty, too, and a lodestone there—
      A girl of the out-back type—
  The midnight sleeps in her vagrant hair
      And her lips are cherry-ripe:
  The battlers vie at the kipsy bar,
      And many a mulga beau;
  And I want to be where the battlers are,
  And bask in the light of my out-back star—
      _But I haven’t the guts to go!_

  There’s a fell disease in the touch of ink—
      The shriek of a coastal train—
  There’s a subtle curse in the draught we drink
      That softens the bushman’s brain:
  We weary fast of the gauds and guile,
      Though strong are the bonds they weave,
  And the glamour that circles the Golden Mile—
      _But we haven’t the guts to leave!_

  I want to up with my swag and hence,
      Away from the tyrant pen,
  Where the bell-bird calls from the morning’s fence
      To waken the mulga men!
  I want to stand on a crazy brace,
      Or hammer away below,
  While Luck looks on with a beaming face,
  So long as the “leader” pans a trace—
      _But I haven’t the guts to go!_




ANOTHER SONG OF THE STAMPS.


  There’s another and brighter song to sing
      That is caught on the writer’s quill,
  Though ’tis told all day with a rhythmic swing
      By the stamps of the ten-head mill:
  They repeat no burden of cankered greed,
      And they echo no anguished moan,
              When they rattle the roofs
              With their iron hoofs,
      As they pound on your two-ounce stone!

  There’s never a beat for the filching crew,
      Not a chip from the workman’s crust;
  There’s never a turn for the London Jew,
      Nor a “weight” for the London “trust”;
  There’s never a sigh for the wretched gnomes
      Below in the seething stope,
              And the walls resound,
              As the cams go round,
      With the clamour of new-born Hope!

  There’s a battler seeing the parcel through;
      And he stands in the lamplight dim,
  And he bends his ear to the voice anew
      For the message that comes to him:
  And his bronzed cheek glows as the words grow clear.
      For they quicken his pulse and thrill,
              And memories stir
              To the whizz and whir
      Of the wheels of the ten-head mill.

  There’s a king to-night in his dungarees,
      And he’s quaffing an old, old wine—
  Oh, he doffs no cap and he bends no knees
      To the boss of the Bull-owned mine!
  And he gives no thought to the fruitless quest
      Where his years and his toil were cast,
              While the stampers sing
              The awakening
      Of his Luck—that has come at last!

  So the sky grows clear and the world grows wide,
      And there’s melody in the air:
  There’s a waiting ship for the Eastern side,
      And a woman that’s waiting there:
  There’s a proud disdain for the things that were,
      And this planet is all his own—
              And there’s good red blood
              In the stamper’s thud
      As it pounds on his two-ounce stone!




POINTING EAST




A WISH—FOR SYDNEY-SIDE.


  I wish you a happy New Year,
    O, faithful old mother of me!
  May it come with a smile, not a tear,
    Where Sydney looks out on the sea—
    On the wings of some wind, blowing free,
  Where the heads of Port Jackson rise sheer—
          From the heart in my breast
          And the heart of the West
  I wish you a happy New Year!

  While the hands of Luck’s jenny-wheel spin
    And Fortune is ever a-fret,
  From the voices of homeland and kin,
    Come the clearest of messages yet:
    And the nose of my dinghy is set
  For the time the gods give me a win!
          And I waft you a line,
          Dear old mother of mine!
  While the hands of Luck’s jenny-wheel spin.

  But, though Fortune be good or be ill!
    Though the guerdon be ashes or gold!
  When the crushing has gone to the mill
    And the tale of life’s effort is told,
    Though the world be grown never so cold
  There’s a heart that will beat for me still!
          And a prayer to fend,
          And a trust without end,
  And an old hand to cancel the bill.

  So I wish you a happy New Year,
    O, well-loved old mother of me!
  May it come with no trace of a tear
    When it trips from Eternity’s sea!
    Oh, for mine! and for thine! and for thee!
  With a love that is deep and sincere,
          From the heart in my breast,
          In the heart of the West,
  I wish you “A Happy New Year!”




AMONGST THE RICKS OF HAY.


  When Western roads are rough and long,
      and days are hot and dry:
  When mulga branches cast no shade
      against the brazen sky:
  I throw “Matilda” by the pad
      and let my fancy play—
  A-skipping o’er the fields once more,
      amongst the ricks of hay.

  Oh, here they come! there’s Joe and Dan!
      and May, and Kate, and Min.!
  The old swing gate flies open wide
      to let the rompers in:
  For I am friends with all the lot,
      and trusty chums are they,
  And all a-troop for hide-a-hoop
      amongst the ricks of hay.

  We mashers dress in father’s pants—
      our sweethearts’ trilbies bare—
  For we are jolly farmer’s kids
      with hayseeds in our hair!
  And Joe Tresize takes after Kate,
      and I takes after May,
  And Dan and Min. like whirlies spin
      amongst the ricks of hay.

  And when the rush and romp are o’er
      we go in twos and twos—
  And oh! the undermining arts
      we simple urchins use;
  And oh, the saucy tricks and ways
      of Kate, and Min., and May!
  While life’s begun and hearts are won
      amongst the ricks of hay.

  Then safe behind the sheltering wing
      these friendly ricks afford,
  We swear we’re “deep as deep” in love!
      we are “as true as Gord”!
  And linked together Jack and Jill,
      beneath the moonlight grey,
  With hearts ablaze, we spoon our ways
      amongst the ricks of hay.

  Alas! just then a startling voice
      through dream and mistland broke:
  “A dozen weary mulga miles
      to Jerry Hogan’s soak!”
  A fig for that! The miles fly past
      to spryer steps and gay—
  I’ve spent a boyish hour or two
      amongst the ricks of hay.




KILDEA’S FLOWER FARM.


  I live where the shade is,
  And rusted Life’s blade is—
  The sand-drifts from Hades
      Have tarnished each charm:
  But, sober or shicker,
  My heart-pulse beats quicker
  Whenever I think of
      Kildea’s flower farm!

  ’Twas not the green sward, or
  The spangled disorder
  Along the path border
      That led to their gate;
  Nor mazes and mazes
  Of heartsease and daisies,
  That blossomed so early
      And lingered so late:

  It was not the ringing
  Of crimson bells swinging—
  It was not the singing
      Of elves in the corn—
  Nor fairy beds, laden
  With rose-wreaths from Aidenn,
  That smiled like a child, in
      The face of the morn!

  Ah, the roses so bloomy
  That held me and drew me—
  The thrill that shot through me,
      ’Neath blue skies or grey—
  The fear that oppressed me,
  The hope that caressed me,
  All dwelt ’neath the bonnet
      Of Katy Kildea!

  With callous years flying,
  And Youth’s fountains drying,
  One memory undying
      Lives always attuned:
  And, if plucked from its setting,
  Forgot and forgetting,
  The best of my being
      Would flow through the wound!

  I live where the shade is—
  And rusted Life’s blade is—
  The sand-drifts from Hades
      Have tarnished its charm:
  But, sober or shicker,
  My heart-pulse beats quicker
  Whenever I think of
      Kildea’s flower farm.




HIS LETTER FROM W.A.


  Dear Kitty, I’ve just read the letter you sent—
    It was brought by the man from the store;
  And I’m writin’ straight back, as I lay in my tent,
    Sprawlin’ out at full length on the floor.
  But the pen ’ll scarce write for the thinkin’ of you—
    Oh, I’m sorry that ever I went!
  And I have to knock off every minute or two,
    Just to glance through the letter you sent.

  It is scarcely six months since I left Cooranbean,
    But seems longer than all of last year;
  And the moon ain’t so bright, and the grass ain’t so green,
    And the sky, somehow, isn’t so clear:
  Oh, I’d give all their towns, to the very last brick,
    And their mines, with the forchins they yield,
  Just to hear the old ripple of Cooranbean crick,
    And the rustle of corn in the field.

  There isn’t no “skirts” like the Cooranbean “skirts”!
    Or no boys like the Cooranbean boys!
  And there isn’t no parties for fellers and flirts,
    And there isn’t no dance at Mulroy’s!
  And there isn’t no chance for a couple to spin
    Like the wind acrost Cherrytree Plain!
  Where the best of the prizes were kisses to win—
    And ... there isn’t no Kitty M‘Lean.

  I can’t find no nuggets, and can’t see no charm,
    As I wander about in the street;
  And I long to be back once again on the farm,
    With the rabbits and rust in the wheat.
  Oh, then life would want neither a whip or a spur—
    With a “string,” and a trigger to pull,
  And just you at my side, and the possums astir,
    And the moon, our old moon! at the full ...

  But if I am dull, and my letters are crook,
    It is certain that you should know why:
  For you’ll find Charley’s heart, if you’re carin’ to look,
    At the gate where he kissed you “Good-bye!”
  And say, if in a month, on the home-comin’ track,
    There is anyone’s eyes charnster skim,
  And they see a young chap with a “port” on his back—
    That most likely, Dear Kit., ’ll be him.


[Illustration: HIS LETTER FROM W.A.]




ANSWER TO “HIS LETTER FROM W.A.”


  Dear Charley, I dreamt of a letter last night
    With the postmark of W.A.,
  And it’s wonderful, reely, how soon it came right,
    And I ought to feel happy to-day—
  For your letter came home from that far-away shore,
    But no matter however I try,
  The difference, somehow, it always seems more
    And I cannot do nothing but cry.

  They’re all gone to Hogan’s to see their noo plough,
    But I’m stayin’ behind from the rest,
  For there doesn’t seem anything happenin’ now
    Like before you cleared out to the West.
  The voice from the crick’s like a human in pain
    And a sigh seems ter come from the trees,
  And there’s somethin’ I don’t understand on the plain
    With the grass wavin’ up to your knees.

  You mind the moss rose that grew over our gate,
    Our old gate where we whispered, “Good-bye”?
  Oh, how often I go there and wonder if Fate
    Has one blessing a girl’s wish could buy—
  I am wearin’ a bunch in your favourite dress
    With the flounces and streamers of blue,
  And though pr’aps it is silly, I have to confess
    I am wearin’ my heart out for you.

  All the country around is as green as a leaf
    And there’s never no fires or no drought,
  And they say it’s old weatherwise Riley’s belief
    That the seasons is goin’ to hang out;
  And they say that young fellers is fools to go West
    When there’s whips of good land on the run—
  And the stick-at-home policy’s always the best
    When the summin’-up comes to be done.

  Oh, Charley! come back to your sweetheart again!
    She’s as dull as a girl in a trance:
  And she hasn’t been out for a flutter since then
    And she don’t care a dump for a dance;
  And she’s watchin’ for someone who kissed her, and cried
    “But a few little months for to wait!
  When the time’ll pass by, and I’ll stand by your side
    Where the roses twine over the gate.”




[Illustration: Man with luggage and moneybag hastily leaving camp]

A-WHIZZING TOWARDS THE EAST.


  Hurrah! at last
  Ill luck is past;
      My shammy weighs a ton!
  A drink or two,
  A shake for you,
      A smile for everyone!
  My number’s up—
  A stirrup cup!
      No Death’s head at the feast!
  As off I go
  With veins aglow,
      A-whizzing towards the East!

  Yet, wait a shake!
  Put on the brake,
      And shut the damper down!
  A kiss for you
  With eyes of blue!
      And you with eyes of brown!
  ’Tis oft declared
  A joy that’s shared
      Is seven-fold increased—
  Then jump aboard
  And trust the Lord,
      A-whizzing towards the East!

  The breezes tell—
  The stars as well—
      The tales I love to hear:
  Their voices seem
  As in a dream,
      Those missed for many a year.
  Then here with you!
  My cronies true!
      The nearest and the least!
  I’ll clink a glass,
  Then skim the grass,
      A-whizzing towards the East!

  With love and loot,
  And youth to boot,
      I’ll plough the ocean blue—
  They’re waiting me
  Upon the quay,
      And gaze the mistland through:
  Then shout afar,
  “Hurrah! Hurrah!”
      Like prisoners released—
  With sails outspread
  And “Steam ahead,”
      We’re whizzing towards the East!

[Decoration: Man with swag walking away]




THE OLD FARM GATE.


  There’s an all-pervading glamour and a glitter in the West;
    There’s a market here for muscle or for brain:
  And Success stands ever near us, with a blossom at her breast,
    And a galaxy of beauty in her train!
  There are prizes worth the winning, for the daring hearts and bold,
    There are gauds and gear for those who work and wait,
  But I’m often drifting, drifting, from the palling gleam of gold
    Till I stand beside the old farm gate.

  How the roses bloomed that Summer! with their petals white and red:
    How the honeysuckle clustered near the porch!
  The soft warm glow of sympathy around the place was shed,
    For the god of sweet Contentment held the torch!
  There were mountains in the distance, and a river at their base,
    And when Summer evening fancies re-create
  Then I go a-drifting, drifting, with a smile upon my face
    Till I stand beside the old farm gate!

  Ere the mocking days that hover ’twixt the dreams of then and now:
    Ere the fevered years, that withered with their touch:
  There was Hope! that never ceased to wear a flush upon her brow,
    And that Hope still struggles onward—with a crutch!
  But the harvest days are over, and asleep their merry men,
    And I glean the ears of fantasy or Fate,
  As I go a-drifting, drifting, till I find Eileen again
    As I left her by the old farm gate.

[Decoration: Man leading camel]




TO THOSE WHO LOVE US MOST.


  Oh, fill the sparkling crystal up
    A beaker to the brim!
  We sing no lays of fulsome praise
    Of white-lipped seraphim:
  No universal hymn of peace—
    No puling, puking toast—
  But clink a glass to those we love!
    And those who love us most.

  A love for love! a hate for hate!
    Good old Mohammed’s creed—
  That sears and brands the hearts and hands
    Of every human breed:
  We join in greetings to our foes—
    No false-tongued canting host;
  But drink a health to those we love!
    And those who love us most!

  To him whose hand would bear us down—
    Whose fluent lie would mar—
  We bear no hate inveterate,
    No gall-tipped scimitar;
  And little care, though glory crown,
    Or hottest hell may roast—
  But drain a glass to those we love
    And those who love us most!

  A white-haired woman o’er the sea—
    A group within her gate,
  Who bend to read the halting screed,
    But half articulate—
  Yet bearing on its blotted page,
    From Austral coast to coast,
  A word of love to those we love
    And those who love us most.

  To-night! oh, let no follies sway!
    No gas-lit, luring eyes
  Glint through the clear God’s atmosphere
    That links eternities!
  Wave back each wizened witch of care!
    Wave back each peering ghost!
  And breathe a heathen prayer for them—
    “_The hearts that love us most!_”




NOR’WEST CORNER




BEER IS ENOUGH.


  Beer is enough. Let us be satisfied,
    Nor fret our hearts with longing after gin,
  And bob saloons, and vanities beside,
    That lead one to the shelving edge of sin ...
  For wights who sit a-row along the pave,
  With crackling skins, and drooping lives to save,
                    Beer is enough.

  Beer is enough. Let Love roost on his perch,
    And coo and coo his breath away at will ...
  The bride in orange blooms—the ivied church—
    The two-roomed kipsy sheltered by the hill ...
  Sweep them aside, and fetch the frothing bowl
  To warm the cockles of one’s inmost-soul.
                    Beer is enough.

  Beer is enough. Though dreamers sigh and sigh
    Of melting love, did love e’er quench a thirst?
  Did ever Cupid, ’neath a brazen sky,
    Hand out a pint to taper off a burst?
  Can Daphne’s lips allay the wild desire
  To wade in hops, when coppers are afire?
                    Beer is enough.

  Beer is enough. The brightest and the best
    Of all the gifts the gods have handed down!
  A Nautch girl she! who graces all the West,
    Dressed in her picture hat, and amber gown ...
  There is no canker in her love—no lees
  To weight one’s ghost through dim eternities.
                    Beer is enough.

[Decoration: Mining equipment]




A BUNCH OF VIOLETS.


  The loungers eyed the Wreck askance,
    —A seedy bloke was he,
  Who bore upon his countenance
    A boozer’s historee—
  He wore a small pea-dodger hat
    Upon his massive brow,
          And everywhere
          His sandy hair
    Spread round the rim like tow.

  “Oh! Charles Adolphus,” Hebe chipped
    (The belle of Bung’s saloon)
  “Old chap! you’re got me fairly hipped—
    I’m dying for a spoon!”
  “Stand off! Stand off!” the boozer yelled,
    And dashed his pewter down:
          “_Her_ eyes of grey,
          Though dimmed to-day,
    Glow warm from Sydney town!”

  “Cheer up!” the barmaid cried, “Cheer up!
    You’ll be a long time dead.”
  “Ah! we have drained the bitter cup,
    My girl and I,” he said;
  “For she is ’neath the morning sun,
    And I am where it sets—
          On Sydney quay
          She waits for me,
    My bunch of vio-lets!”

  “Girl! we were raised together, where
    The Namoi winds along—
  Corn tassels were not like her hair!
    Or magpies like her song!”
  —And so he waxed poetic, while
    The barmaid bent her ear
          (As women do
          To listen to
    The eloquence of beer.)

  “Oh! shut your head, and do a get!”
    The irate loungers cried:
  “Last month I saw your Violet
    Upon the Sydney side.
  She wore a pretty rakish hat;
    A Chow on either fin;
          And loaded thus,
          She wanted us
    To fill her up with gin.”


[Illustration: A BUNCH OF VIO-LETS.]


  He heard the insult where he stood:
    A gleam lit up his eye:
  “A lie!” he howled; “that calls for blood!
    A damned and heartless lie!
  But for my mother’s son, and her
    Who lives across the sea,
          If God is white
          Himself, to-night
    He’ll lend a hand with me!”

  As willy-willies rush and tear
    Their way through mulga scrubs—
  As old-time pirates used to dare,
    Aboard their wooden tubs—
  As men still fight for those they love,
    While weaklings dodge and spar—
          With flying blows
          And steel-shod toes
    He cleared that private bar!

       *       *       *       *       *

  But one stood there with drooping head,
    And sandy hair like tow—
  “I reckon, Miss,” the Object said,
    “I’ll try a pewter now.”
  And when he sank upon the floor
    Where Bacchus spreads his nets,
          A flower spray
          Fell where he lay—
    ’Twas Hebe’s vio-lets.




BEHIND M‘WHALAN’S BAR.


  No theme for poet’s ecstasies,
      No Phyllis fond and fair,
  With sprouting wings and soulful eyes,
      And sunglints in her hair;
  No wood-nymph, clad in gossamer,
      A-treading daisied meads,
  No saintly nun, from sun to sun
      A-telling of her beads:

  She’s not the girl who wept upon
      Our shirt-front on the quay!
  She is no Frenchified Mignonne!
      No Scotch lass frae the Dee!
  No leaf culled from Romance’s page,
      No scintillating star,
  Is charming Luce—who jerks the juice
      Behind M‘Whalan’s bar.

  And yet the lads for miles and miles
      From mulga camp and mine
  Come in to bid for Lucy’s smiles
      And worship at her shrine:
  They dream of nectar from her lips,
      But drain the whisky jar,
  And leave their hearts’ own counterparts
      Upon M‘Whalan’s bar.

  She is no dreamy, droopy frond,
      No white rose of regret;
  But, oh! we leap in Lethe’s pond
      From Virtue’s minaret
  When deftly, with a flashing toe!
      She tips our panama,
  And in a whirl of clothes and girl
      Vaults back across the bar.

  She holds us with a silken thread,
      This hypnotising flirt:
  A wink that whispers, “Hope ahead!”
      The frou-frou of her skirt;
  But, Lord, it fairly breaks us up,
      Our eyes grow large as moons,
  When with despatch she strikes a match
      Upon her pantaloons.

  Then all the world may bow to-night
      To Beauty’s peerless queen,
  And all the world may fight its fight
      For “God and Gwendoline”;
  But we will lilt our serenade
      To bright eyes flashing far,
  And drink to Luce who jerks the juice
      Behind M‘Whalan’s bar!




WILL YOU LOVE ME THEN?


  There’s a new chap born in the world to-day,
    And an axe laid close to the root of doubt,
  When I hear you speak in that soulful way
    Of a love to last till the stars go out——
              But, Mignonette!
              Will you love me yet
  When the duns come in? ... ’Tis an even bet.

  Ah! I try to think, as I feel your breath,
    Like a perfume thrown from a Glory rose,
  That our path will lead (as the poet saith)
    In a pleasant field, where the wild thyme blows——
              But, wife of mine!
              Will your star still shine
  When he’s loaded down to the Plimsoll line?

  Oh, I like you thus, with your nut-brown hair
    In a wilderness, as I saw you first;
  And I love you much as a man may dare
    Who is torn asunder ’twixt love and thirst——
              Pray tell me, dear!
              Will the wind-vane veer
  When I hang my pants on the chandelier?

  And will Passion’s flower still bloom as red,—
    Will you shrink right over against the wall,—
  When I tumble into the nuptial bed
    With my harness on, and my boots and all?
              Will you have resource
              To a plain divorce
  When I smell of hops like a brewer’s horse?

  Will your faith still shine when the world grows grey?
    When the Autumn comes, will your heart grow sere?
  Will you wear the smile that you wear to-day
    When you wear the hat that you wore last year?
              Girl, keep your vow!
              Things will shape somehow—
  And we’ll take our toll from the lap of Now!

[Decoration: Gold mining camp]




DIFFERENCES.


  Different men have different ways,
  Different crooks have different lays,
  Different girls wear different stays.

  It’s just according to how you’re built
  Whether you sing a dirge, or lilt,
  Laugh, or cry, when the milk is spilt.

  Different dogs have different yaps,
  Different tarts have different chaps,
  Different bees fill different caps.

  The bloke who missed is a carper—hence
  We find him sitting astride a fence,
  Cursing like hell as a recompense.

  Different hounds have different bays,
  Different nags have different neighs,
  Different priests have different prays.

  Who’d have a world that was uniform
  Timing its pulse to a damning norm?
  Give me the varying calm and storm.

  Different hooks have different eyes,
  Different cooks make different pies,
  Different stamps have different dies.

  Little it matters, my friend! to you,
  Though arms are clinging, or hearts are true,
  Or gold be clotted around the shoe.

  Different grocers use different sand—
  That is the game that you understand!
  Here is a genuine, good right hand.

  [Illustration: ☟ hand, index finger pointing down]

  Bring me a tangle of fairish dope
  To widen a rhymer’s mental scope,
  And I’ll write an ode to a bar of soap!

[Decoration: Black swan]




THE DRUNK’S RUBÁIYÁT


  Awake! the Dawn is breaking rosy red;
  The Flies their matin Hymns sing round your Head—
    And here you’ve roosted on the Kerb all night,
  And never paid a Stiver for your Bed.

  Last Eve, no doubt, when primed with Beer and Wine,
  The World at large was all your Ruby Mine;
    But if you had to face the Beak to-day,
  It’s odds you couldn’t pay a Dollar Fine.

  Ah, then Life wore an amber-tinted Hue,
  To dizzy Heights your hop-fed Fancy flew;
    But now, alas! to damp a Soul of Clay
  You’ll have, perforce, to try a weaker Brew.

  Search well again! Perhaps some vagrant Sprat
  Lies hid within the Lining of your Hat;
    Or if a Thrummer, you’ve an even chance—
  A hungry Bung will often come at that.

  And, ah! see yonder open tap-room Door—
  If Fate be kind, old chap! maybe you’ll score;
    And if a foaming Pot materialise,
  Soak up the Juice, and boldly ask for more.

  Myself, when young, did eagerly frequent
  Shanty and Pub, on gratis Beer intent;
    But I (unlucky wayfarer) was oft
  Shot out by the same Door that in I went.

  And that perverted soul we call the Bung,
  Whose Moods, in turn, are praised or cursed or sung—
    I’ve often wondered in my Heart, why he
  Remains uncanonised—or else unhung.

  From some, indeed, the Milk of Kindness flows:
  Another Churl the pointed Insult throws—
    But when He cops a Oner on the Beak,
  He knows about it all—He Knows—HE KNOWS!

  But come! Let’s tap this caravanserai!
  I hold a Bob, in case the Kite won’t fly;
    But ask not how it haps—like Life and Death
  I know not How, nor When, nor Whence, nor Why.




A BLOKE FROM MULLINGAR.


  I met him nearly farthest out—
      No matter when or where.
  He carried in his ragged clothes
      A kind of city air.
  I said, “I’ve just been wondering
      The devil who you are?”
  And he replied, in broken tones,
  “I’m all that’s left of Billy Jones,
      The beau of Mullingar!”

  “Brush up! brash up! my friend,” I cried,
      “And bear it like a man.
  Why, look at me, I’ve battled through
      From Beersheba to Dan;
  And yet may do the ‘buffer’ trick
      When Fortune’s bogies jar,
  And shade the truth
  From callow youth
      Who hail from Mullingar!

  “Come, trot inside this shanty door!
      This out-back mulga hell!
  Where all our finer thoughts are damned,
      And e’en our worst rebel.
  But still when deathly monotone
      Spreads over land and star,
  Here, broken men
  Oft dream again
      Of some old Mullingar!”

  He sighed, and took my hand in his—
      The kind of flaccid clasp
  That rankles through one’s very soul
      And tears it like a rasp—
  “Ah, yes, that talk is right enough
      Beside a shanty bar;
  But I’ve,” he said,
  And bowed his head,
      “A girl in Mullingar!”

  “Remember this,” I laughed, “my lad!
      The brave alone may win—
  To her we’ll chink, where’er she be,
      One foaming pannikin,
  For Cupid’s cunning shafts, my lad,
      They carry fast and far;
  And girls are true
  To me and you,
      In hell—or Mullingar!


[Illustration: A BLOKE FROM MULLINGAR]


  “Come, sink another pot to her!
      A wizened soul and white
  Would falter in its tracks by day,
      And in its core by night.
  For I, too, twenty years ago,
      Beneath a luckless star,
  Left, in a rage,
  Life’s heritage
      Behind at Mullingar!”

  “Oh, yes,” he chortled with a sneer,
      “I know, I know your kind
  Of out-back bloke who babbles of
      The girl he left behind—
  Her face was quite a beauty show,
      Her voice like a guitar.
  I guess,” he grinned,
  “The kind of wind
      Blew you from Mullingar!

  “For city men, like me, may read
      The lying lines between,
  Of blokes who bruise with hob-nailed feet
      Love’s field of evergreen—
  The car wherein _your_ goddess drives
      May be Aspasia’s car!”
  I hit him solid, fair and square,
  And left the wastrel lying there—
      That bloke from Mullingar.




ONLY A KISS.


  “I shan’t,” cried the maiden, “I shan’t!”
    With a dear little petulant cry;
  But the Moon, the old Moon, looked aslant,
    With a comical twist in her eye;
  And the mulga bush, lingering near,
    Caught up the defiant refrain,
        And “I shan’t! Oh, I shan’t!”
        In a musical chant,
  Was re-echoed again and again.

  “But Lucretia, my dearest, you will!”
    Our Superbus persisted—and soon
  His soft accents came back from the hill,
    In the mellowing light of the moon;
  And the salmon-gums, clustering round,
    Sent the melody dancing along,
        And “You will! Oh, you will!”
        Was repeated, until
  They were all out of breath with their song.

  But the maiden was adamant still,
    Though her lips were an edible red;
  And when Tarquin insisted, “You will!”
    “Oh, I shan’t! you deceiver!” she said.
  And the mulga and salmon-gums all,
    In this star-gazing argument caught,
        Sang, “You will!” “Oh, I shan’t!”
        In a soul-wrecking chant—
  But they thought in their hearts that she ought.

[Decoration: Mining with a windsail]




A BENDER AND SOME OF THE MOODS THAT LEAD UP TO IT.


  When days are long and nights are dull,
    And life seems deathly still,
  And wretched insects buzz and buzz
    Against the window sill,
  One balances the force of “Won’t”
    Against the force of Will.

  I live upon the outer edge,
    And on the desert’s rim,
  And sometimes query, in a tone
    Quite humourless and grim,
  Is life, indeed, a mere burlesque?
    Some Potent Joker’s whim?

  I give the Desert stare for stare,
    We never fraternise;
  For me the siren has no voice,
    For her I have no eyes,
  And whipcord couldn’t link us twain
    In peaceful marriage ties.

  She’s clothed in desolation’s garb,
    And visaged like the Sphinx;
  Too close communion oft begets
    Those tortured mental kinks
  That populate the upper end
    Of men who mix their drinks.

  She brings no help to sling a rhyme
    That sniggers as it goes ...
  Sometimes a thought comes limping in
    With sand between its toes,
  A well-developed polypus
    Somewhere within its nose.

  But when its wares are spread upon
    The operating sheet
  I mostly find them shadow hash,
    With very little meat,
  And so I shoot them out the door
    To give the dog a treat.

  There’s something in the very air
    Of torture, finely spun;
  The weight of care that bears me down
    Weighs mighty near a ton;
  The breakfast steak tastes like a brick,
    The spuds are underdone.

  The whole world’s badly out of joint,
    And shaky at the knees;
  And that old trouble with my back
    It hints of Bright’s disease,
  And barley-water in a ward,
    And thumping doctors’ fees.

  The touch of ’flu I caught last month
    Grows daily worse and worse:
  ’Tis sure my plan to keep afloat
    Till time and tide reverse,
  Is, Take a load of beer aboard,
    And jettison my purse!

  For one must never count the cost
    When health is in the scales
  And dull-eyed devils roost upon
    One’s mental boundary rails,
  Nor bend an over-fearful ear
    To timid travellers’ tales.

  The same old wild and woolly whirl
    Along the same old track,
  Outpacing sundry ills I have,
    To garner those I lack!
  —And so, I slither down to hell
    (But have to hoof it back).

  Then Reason riots wild awhile,
    With bells upon her cap,
  Until the last resource is sped
    Of coin, or kid, or strap;
  And then—I come back smiling, a
    Rejuvenated chap!




WILD CATS AND HOURIS.


  My worthy friend, if you’d list to me,
    I’d teach you the way of a millionaire:
  Advice costs nothing; the class is free;
    And the road is smooth and the game is fair
            Where dame Fortune smiles
            With a woman’s wiles,
    And a golden comb in the jade’s back hair.

  Pray listen to me as you love your life;
    The old world trips to the Oof-bird’s song:
  ’Tis poverty cuts like a butcher’s knife,
    And the stabs of the butcher rankle long—
            Say are you, at most,
            Like a chap on toast,
    Held over the fire on the toaster’s prong?

  The prizes are not for the swift alone:
    There’s small demand on your brawn or brain:
  Just a cast-steel chiv, and a hunk of stone,
    And a thirst that can cut and come again—
            A trifle of salt,
            A barrel of malt,
    And four good stout pegs in a mulga plain.

  My worldly friend! if you’d list to me,
    You’d cease to worry of duns and bills,
  And practice the one philanthropy
    That works the ranch that your ego fills—
            For the mugs await
            At your outer gate,
    And the world is crying for gilded pills.

  ’Tis thus the prizes are lost or won,
    And thus the guerdon is bought or sold;
  For the game is fair when the coins are spun,
    And the “heads” show up in the aureate mould—
            And where is the sin,
            When the flats chip in,
    In flying a “nob” for their good red gold?

  Well, that is the lore that I wish to teach,
    And such is the way that I want to show,
  For Daphne lies on the sanded beach
    ’Way down by the ocean at Cottesloe,
            With a barrel of “fat”
            And a tall silk hat,
  And a tip-top time where the houris grow.




[Illustration: Man outside bar]

THE LAST SPRAT.


  I’ve nursed it all a sultry summer night
  This buffer ’twixt a rocky shore and me:
  I elbow through the crowd upon my right
              Of solvency.

  Life still holds some potentialities!
  I feel myself a unit amongst men!
  But know, should thirst prevail, there wilts and dies
              A citizen.

  The clink of glasses floats upon the air—
  Thirst’s fingers gripe me round the neck and choke—
  One beerward step: and then a voice, “_Beware!
              Dead broke! Dead broke!_”

  Shallows to windward, breakers on the lee,
  I weigh and weigh the question, cons and pros,
  Till (wracked by indecision’s pangs) I see
              The last pub close.

[Decoration: Horse-powered mining]




SAY, WHAT DO YOU THINK OF IT NOW?


  Ye comrades in shicker and cobbers in sin,
      Ye wrecks from the ranks of life’s crew,
  Who’ve tickled each barmaid under the chin
      And frivolled with nymphs in the Rue;
  Who’ve painted the town a magnificent red
      (All impressionist artists, I trow),
  Look here, in the light of the aftermath shed,
      Say, what do you think of it now?

  Oh, you’ve had a gay and a festive debauch
      In regions where sanity reels,
  With Bacchus, wine-laden, ahead with his torch,
      And Nemesis close at your heels.
  And little you recked, as the glamour of wine
      Smoothed the lines of Life’s puckering brow—
  But own up and tell me, old cobbers of mine,
      Say, what do you think of it now?

  You’ve made the pace willing in numberless bars,
      You have sung, and recited, and yapped;
  You have slept a drunk’s sleep ’neath the pitying stars,
      You have squandered and borrowed and strapped—
  You have struck every note, the sublime to the lewd,
      But, alas, from Despondency’s slough,
  May I ask in a friendly and brotherly mood,
      Say, what do you think of it now?

  You have played the pied piper and danced the fool’s dance
      ’Mid the smiles of well-ballasted men
  (By-and-by, when the devil is better perchance
      You will cut the same caper again.)
  But now, as you bare your scant locks to the blast,
      And re-register vow upon vow,
  May I ask, as a brother—the month that is past—
      Say, what do you think of it now?

[Decoration: Gold miner with dolly pot]




ODD LEAVES




[Illustration: Man seated at desk]

THE WESTERN WRITER TO HIS MUSE.


  I have no wild desire to sing, and sing,
    Or kneel at Nature’s feet, and be her mummer.
  Poetic fancies are not rioting
    For liberty, like prisoned birds in summer.
  No thoughts, like maidenhair, climb round and cling
    To rhyming roosters writing on a thrummer;
  But frowsy devils, round the camp to-night,
  Suggest alone the commonplace and trite.

  There is no bubbling spring within my clay;
    I hold no lyrics straining at the tether;
  My bones would drift right into blanket hay
    If it were not such rough financial weather.
  I’d never pen a par, or lay a lay,
    Or deck ambition’s cady with a feather
  If I could clutch a whisky piping hot,
  A plate of hash, a pension and a pot.

  No, she will never set the Thames a-flame,
    Nor even churn a Western willy-willy,
  My Muse! now growing greasy-heeled and lame:
    She never was too sprightly as a filly;
  But now, God bless my stars! her fires are tame—
    They wouldn’t even boil a blanky billy,
  Or grill a steak, or mull a glass of stout,
  Garnished around with oysters—or without.

  Get up, old girl! and give yourself a try—
    A snort, a cough, a whistle, or a whinny—
  Some folk are waiting now outside to buy,
    If you’d display the spirit of a jenny!—
  Prick up your ears! Just look a trifle spry,
    And we may catch the nimble half-a-guinea.

       *       *       *       *       *

  What! No? Well, dash my eyes, you are a cow,
  To jib incontinently, here, and now!




THE MAN WHO “CAN TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT ALONE.”


  “Now, you see,” said my friend, as we breasted a bar,
  And he mentioned to Popsy, “A go of Three Star”—
  “Now, you see, I am built on a different plan,
  And avoid all extremes, like a moderate man—
  But you! you can never touch liquor at all
  Without kicking prudence right over the wall.

  “You’ve a bad moral balance, a weakness somewhere,
  A mental deficiency under your hair,
  And large woolly rats get right into your ‘think’
  The moment you open your gills for a drink—
  Why not be like me? Have a will of your own,
  And the firmness to take it or leave it alone.”

  So we filled them again, and again, and some more,
  While he started to probe the thing into the core;
  Oh, he analysed drunkenness, torso and limb,
  Till his phrases grew thick and his vision grew dim,
  And he fully, but mildly, condemned as “a muff”
  Any chap who said “Yes,” when he’d lowered enough.

  “W’y the dickens,” he groaned and deplored, “cansh yer be
  A (hic) moderate, senshible drinker, like me?
  For”—he said as he sank to the floor with a groan—
  “I’m a mansh (hic) can take it, or leave it alone.”




[Illustration: Woman presenting demonic pudding to man at table]

WHEN SUSY MAKES THE DUFF.


  My Susy is a bird of Spring,
    A home-bird sweet and shy,
  With rainbow colours on her wing
    And laughter in her eye:
  My hopes in life flit round beneath
    Her coronet of fluff:
  One hidden thorn within the wreath—
    She makes the Sunday duff!
        _When Susy makes the duff,
        If man were sterner stuff,
      He’d kneel and plead at Mercy’s seat
        When Susy makes the duff._

  It is not that she loves me less—
    That rare hymeneal sin!
  It is not that her morning dress
    Cuts out the nimble “fin.”
  It is not that her eyes of blue
    Convey the cold rebuff—
  (Oh, let me, friend! confide in you)
    She makes the Sunday duff!
        _When Susy makes the duff!
        Love’s motor waxes rough,
        And all the world gets out of joint
        When Susy makes the duff!_

  I’ve tried all subtle arts and wiles
    To lure her from her bent;
  I’ve even said, ’twixt frowns and smiles,
    That cooks are Devil-sent.
  But “Oh,” she’ll say—and never show
    The shadow of a huff—
  “My dearest Jim, I know, I know—
    _I’ll_ make your Sunday duff!”
        _When Susy makes the duff
        I groan “Enough, enough!”
      A stricken dear, in frozen truth,
        When Susy makes the duff!_

  Oh, shall I sigh and suffer still
    To act the martyr’s part?
  Or shall I brave dyspepsia’s ill
    And indigestion’s smart?
  No need recurring dates to con,
    Or write them on my cuff,
  While Susy pins her apron on
    To make the Sunday duff!
      _Ah, when she makes the duff,
        No grump be I, or gruff;
    But put the white man’s burden down
        When Susy makes the duff!_




A DRUNK’S DEFIANCE.


  I would like to offer this word or two
      In a straight and a manly way,
  From the deadhead’s room, where a light shines through
      With a dimmed and a sickly ray:
  There are some folk born with a lucky caul,
      And a hobby to ride at will,
  While for others—it isn’t the Lord at all,
      But the Devil, who drives the mill.

  And though you may laugh on the mountain’s crown,
      And though I may toil at the base,
  It is neither he who is up nor down
      Has himself to thank for his place;
  But whether ’tis Fate, if you choose to say,
      Or say, if you choose, ’tis chance—
  No matter—the tune that their fingers play
      Is exactly the step we dance.

  Yet if all the tales that are told be wrong,
      And though reason be topmost yet,
  There’s a broken chord in the tempting song
      And a “something” of cheap regret;
  But a fig for the tones of the broken chord!
      And a fig for the tempting voice!
  For a man must fight with a wooden sword
      Where he only has Hobson’s choice.

  And so, with his hand to the pewter pot,
      And a smile on his frothy lip,
  He follows the way of the drunken sot
      Like a dog to his master’s whip;
  And at last, with a curse on the hopeless strife,
      He will knock at the Border Gate
  As he slings his hat in the face of Life,
      And his boots in the teeth of Fate.

[Decoration: Man with swag walking away]




BETWEEN TWO GATES.


  “Good-day! Good-day, my ancient friend!”
    We threw our swags beside the track—
  For twenty solid years on end,
  Spent as Life’s spendthrifts only spend,
            I’d not met Jack!

  A battered wreck, and tempest tossed,
    This friend and brother tramp of mine,
  With tangled, matted beard of frost—
  As rough as seas that he had crossed
            Since Auld Lang Syne!

  I watched him for an answering glance—
    Some sprig of memory, fresh and green,
  Of days when through our merry dance
  We wove a rough and rare romance
            At Ballandean!

  “Old Jack!” I said; “Old Jack McQuade!”
    And grasped his lean and palsied hand—
  “However wide our lives have strayed,
  You surely recognise the shade
            Of Charlie Brand?”

  But still he munched his blackened clay;
    I felt no warmth within his palm;
  He shook his matted head of grey,
  And clutched his prisoned hand away
            In half alarm.

  “Ah, no!” he answered; “Stranger, no!
    No other life than this I’ve known.
  For forty years of sun and snow,
  As seasons come, and seasons go,
            I’ve been alone!”

  “But hark you back, McQuade!” I said—
    “The days, the happy days, old mate!
  We plucked the gums for roseleaf beds,
  And rung, we two, the Southern sheds
            To Delegate!

  “You never thought that hearts could break,
    You never thought that love could mar,
  When, Jack! a jolly roving rake,
  You kissed Good-bye to Mary Blake
            At Freney’s bar!

  “Come, come, old boy! chase back the cold,
    And warm your heart at Friendship’s fire—
  Be still the self-same Jack of old—
  As true as steel, as good as gold,
            As tough as wire!”

  A phantom smile a moment played
    Around his visage, worn and wan—
  “Ah, friend! you’ve dreamt a dream,” he said:
  “I’ve had no mate! I’ve loved no maid!”
            And wandered on.

  “Oh, stay!” I cried; “a thousand themes
    Come thronging back at Memory’s call—
  The gum-fringed plains, the oak-girt streams—
  A wondrous sunlight glows and gleams
            Above them all!”

  He faded through the twilight grey.
    A chill shot through my very spine—
  A deadly chill, that seemed to say,
  “And even like to him, are they—
            All dreams of thine!

  “They flit above some fancied sphere,
    Those eyes that smile, those lips that pray.
  The silent winds that blew last year
  Along the banks of Windermere
            Are more than they.”

  “Then why,” I shrieked, “do gods create?”
    As nightfall near and nearer drew,
  On either side, a closèd gate ...
  I stood, an old man, desolate,
            Between the two.




A LASS, A LOAF, AND A GOOD CIGAR.


  Ye, who are caught in the bonds of debt!
    Ye, who are whipt with the thongs of scorn!
  Feeding the ghost of some old regret
    Born in a world that was tempest torn!
  List to the words of a creed benign
    Preached through the ages by old Omar:
  Content ye, then, with a flask of Wine,
    A girl, a song—and a good cigar!

  The years that vanish leave no redress;
    Last evening never a bridge has spanned;
  So loll we here in the wilderness
    That Love has sown in the arid sand:
  The bush-birds sing of a world divine
    As Pomp rolls by in its gilded car;
  And I sit just so—with your hand in mine,
    A bottle of wine—and a good cigar.

  Heed not the pestilent kill-joys’ screech
    That dulls your ears to the voice of Sue!
  Disdain the gospel that dour men preach
    To hide the light of her eyes from you!
  Why should we sorrow, and sit supine
    Or clutch the rays of some mystic star
  While Love hangs near, on its drooping vine—
    And smoke-wreaths curl from a good cigar?

  This is the moment of all the year,
    Casting a rose as it passes by—
  Catch it quick! ere the leaves grow sere,
    Blushing now ’neath an Austral sky;
  For its petals whisper of His design,
    Its heart is bursting with Life’s attar:
  “A shady nook, with a flask of wine,
    A lass, a loaf—and a good cigar!”

[Decoration: Man leading camel]




[Illustration: Four men in a bar]

I PROMISED SUE.


  The night is waning—Good-night! Good-night!
    —I promised Sue to be home by nine:
    A sacred promise, though amber wine
  Sparkles and laughs in the crystal bright,
  But the hours fly by with an eerie flight
    When friends grow mellow and glasses clink,
    And I’ll venture not to the tempting brink
  When the night is waning—Good-night! Good-night!

  No, _not_ another—the hop and vine
    May wilt and wither like western grass;
    Oh, well, if I must—in a final glass
  I will drink a toast to a girl divine,
  I will drink a toast to this wife of mine,
    A queen, enthroned in the hearts of men!
    Eh! What’s that striking? It can’t be ten,
  For I promised Sue to be home by nine.

  Pshaw! Sue is tucked in the sheets, I guess,
    And Towzer guards at my outer gate
    With a sleepless eye and a fang-girt pate,
  Cruel and callous and pitiless.
  Then, what of a night the more or less?
    Come, fill up the glasses from heel to brim!
    Till daylight nears and the stars grow dim,
  And the new day yawns from its drowsiness.

  For lives are merry while hearts are true,
    Though the sun may wink through the window pane
    And she’ll say “Algernon! drunk again!”
  With a limpid tear in her eyes of blue,
  But I’ll stroke her hair of a flaxen hue,
    And I’ll kiss her lips of a rosebud red
    And, harness and all, I will flop to bed
  And dream of the promise I made to Sue!




CHURNING “COPY” FOR THE PRESS.


  Men are rushing through the level, or are delving in the shaft,
    Or a-belting like the devil at a moil—
  With a bitter curse for Adam, as the pioneer of graft
    And the bloke who took a patent out for toil.
  But they ought to mark a ticket at a game of pak-a-pu,
    Or assume the thankful mien of holiness,
  Since the Managing Director found them other work to do
    Than that of churning “copy” for the press!

  For the misbegotten smudger wends along his inky way,
    Haply dodging past the commonplace and trite
  As he follows on the faintest scent of ‘incident’ by day,
    And he notes it on his washing bill by night;
  But what time the Sunday Sun comes out from press, all piping hot,
    He is tempted sore to sky the blanky wipe,
  When he hears the dullest dunces in the town cry, “Tommyrot!”
    And the johnny push abolish it as “Tripe!”

  For at times the breath of Life grows cold, the outlook brown and flat,
    And without one touch of colour there at all;
  And there’s nothing but a vacancy beneath a rhymer’s hat,
    And the pictures all are “turned towards the wall.”
  Then he reaches for a bottle of Glen Shicker on the shelf,
    As a cobber who may share the strain and stress
  With a very seedy poet, who pours piffle out for pelf,
    In the columns of the western Sunday Press.

  And when those two collaborate, a change comes o’er the scene,
    (It happens so when kindred spirits meet)
  For here and there, a patch of red! and here and there, of green!
    And a chirpy crowd goes laughing down the street!
  The genial face of Friendship ’gainst the window-pane is pressed,
    And an optimist keeps boredom well at bay,
  Whilst a maiden comes a-tripping, with a rosebud at her breast,
    Adown his mental corridors of grey.

  Then the murky fluid splashes, and his flagging pulses swell,
    Till a neighbour’s rooster greets the morning star,
  And a sound comes floating westward, like the echo of a bell,
    Calling men to where the loaves and fishes are.
  For crude, unbroken fancies get the bit between their teeth,
    While the earth puts on a very different guise,
  And even Sorrow’s self assumes a far less sombre wreath
    When the poet and the snifter fraternise.

  They are rushing through the levels, and are drumming in the stopes,
    And a-cursing at the ‘presser’ and the hose;
  But they never took to dancing where the Printer pulls the ropes
    And the Editor blue-pencils half their prose,
  And the proofman designates their airy, fairy verse as ‘slim,’
    And the staff guard by the door with broken bricks,
  As they tremulously venture to suggest a modest ‘jim’
    For a ‘liquid’ poem, costing eight-and-six!




[Illustration: Man asleep outdoors]

STAR GAZING.


  I camped last night in a desert grey
    ’Neath the eyes of a million stars,
  For they all had come in their vestments gay,
  Like a laughing host in the wake of day,
    To the shrine of the midnight bars.

  And satyrs slid on the glinting spars
    Of light, through the halls of space,
  And Venus served from the vintage jars,
  And a blossom shone on the nose of Mars
    And a smile on the old Moon’s face.

  My castle’s roof was the spangled sky
    And its carpet of sea-green moss;
  And its walls were curtained with tapestry, ...
  And the face of her I had kissed Good-bye
    Was enshrined in the Southern Cross.

  As I gazed, the stars kept clustering,
    And closer and closer crept,
  Until I and they, we were all a-swing,
  When an owl flew down on a drowsy wing
    And we blew out the light ... and slept.

[Decoration: Mining equipment]




RHYMES AND RHYMERS.


  Do you know, if a chap could write and write,
    As editors pay and pay,
            There’d be whips of sport
            For the “shingle short”
    On the rhymer’s inky way—
  If the theme be bright and the hand as light
    As the touch of a skeeter’s wing,
            There is good red gold
            In the Press-ship’s hold
    For the songs that the rhymers sing.

  There are stacks of room in the ranks of rhyme
    For the persifleurs to fill—
            There are plums and perks
            For the bloke who works
    With a tireless, lilting quill—
  There are “values,” set in the measured line,
    And “jim” in the tuneful scrawl,
            Where the ore falls thick
            To the light pen-prick,
    And the sky is a hanging-wall.

  There are no high backs in the rhymer’s stope,
    No depths in the rhyming vein—
            Not a drop of sweat
            In the deft coup-let,
    Or ache in a whole quatrain;
  And editor-men, with their bags of gold,
    Come out from their inky lairs,
            And they doff their caps
            To the rhymer-chaps,
    As they bid for the rhymer’s wares.

  So we sit aloft in our cushioned chairs
    And scrawl for the world below,
            And we smile aloud
            At the toiling crowd,
    As the toilers come and go—
  For they say, of all at the desk or mine
    Who drudge for a daily wage,
            There are scores of men
            With a rhymer’s pen
    Who could blazon the world’s wide page!

  And we glean from the supercilious bard—
    The tilt of a scornful nose—
            That the joyous call
            Of a madrigal,
    The voice of a wild red rose,
  Awake in his room when the lamp burns low,
    And the buzz-flies sink to rest;
            And his throbbing brain,
            With a mad refrain,
    Sings the Soul-Song of the West.

  But we of the “Times” and the “Sunday Sin”
    Are the recreants of rhyme,
            For our hearts won’t thud
            And our souls won’t bud
    Till the Oof-bird calls the time.
  And we write—just so—for the clink of coin
    And the incense of a quid,
            And the deathless name
            On the scroll of fame,
    My brothers! awaits your bid.

[Decoration: Black swan]




A SONG OF COMPROMISE.


  If you cannot be the needle, be the thread;
  If you cannot ride a motor, be a ped.;
    If you cannot cut the figure
    Of a bloke chockful of vigour,
        Please be dead—
  ’Tis the softest snap of any to be dead.

  If you cannot be a hero, be a skunk;
  If you cannot be the barman, be the drunk;
    If you cannot scale Parnassus
    Flop right down among the asses,
        Friend! kerplunk—
  Like a flapjack on a platter, lob kerplunk.

  If you cannot be the ocean, be a drop;
  If you cannot be the sergeant, be a cop;
    It is not the act of falling
    That is said to be appalling,
        But the stop—
  There’s a prejudice, somehow, against the stop.

  If you cannot win the heiress, take the cook;
  If a failure as a burglar, be a “hook”;
    ’Tis the worst of all life’s phases,
    If you’re on the road to blazes,
        To go crook—
  And the world just guys you worse for going crook.

  If you can’t get gin and bitters, stick to rum;
  If you cannot be a spendthrift, be a hum;
    If your credit grows so slender
    That you can’t dig up a bender,
        Take a thrum—
  There’s a dim religious light about the thrum.

  If you cannot be the candle, be the moth;
  If you cannot be the weaver, be the cloth;
    If Life’s waitresses say “Dicken!”
    When you reach out for the chicken,
        Cop the broth—
  There’s a deal of consolation in the broth.

  Doesn’t matter if you’re single or you’re wed,
  Still the rose-leaves always crumble in your bed;
    But the sea ahead is placid,
    Just a dose of prussic acid,
        And you’re dead—
  Those alternatives won’t matter when you’re dead.




A SHATTERED ILLUSION.


  No heart-whole songs of the Golden West
    Come ever at night to me,
  Who suckled not at her broad, brown breast
    Nor played at her giant knee,
            Nor laughed or cried
            By her ingle-side,
  As a kid in his ain countree.

  I find no warmth in the gleam of gold,
    No soul in the West’s expanse;
  And actors, cast in a heavy mould,
    All people the day’s romance;
            And pipe I still
            With a right good will,
  Yet the fays of the stage won’t dance!

  I know full well that the fault is mine—
    That the skies are just as blue,
  That life is fair, and the lights that shine
    In your sweetheart’s eyes are true;
            And twilights gray
            And the break of day
  Have a message to tell to you.

  But I hear it not, or only hear
    As a dull and prosy theme—
  Then drift away to a day somewhere
    In the wake of Fancy’s team,
            That travels straight
            For an old swing gate,
  By the side of an oak-girt stream.

  ’Twas not the lure of a gate that led,
    Nor yet of an oak-fringed creek,
  But the memory of a gold-thatched head
    And a tear-besprinkled cheek—
            A stifled sigh,
            And a last good-bye
  In the language that love can speak!

  I pictured Kate at the cottage door,
    Like a home-bird by her nest,
  With the self-same summer dress she wore
    On the day I moved out West—
            The self-same shoes
            And the same heart-bruise
  And the same pink rose at her breast.

  I urged my team with a supple wrist,
    And they scampered over the grass ...
  With Katie Clare I must keep the tryst
    Of a lover with a lass ...
            Oh, I minded well
            Of her eyes’ soft spell;
  But forgot how the years may pass!

  I drew a rein ... ’Neath the trysting tree
    Were a matron and her brood;
  And I said, “My sweetheart waits for me
    In this half-enchanted wood:
            And the fairest fair
            Is my Katie Clare,
  Of the whole world’s sisterhood!”

  Then the matron stared with a puzzled stare
    That changed to a gloomy frown
  (I marked her looks were the worse for wear,
    And her heels were somewhat down),
            And she snapped, “Ah! Kate?
            She went out of date
  When I married old Pigweed Brown.”

  Then I thanked my stars, and left the team,
    As I gripped the paw of Fate
  And air-planed over the oak-girt stream,
    And over the old swing gate—
            And cried not crack
            Till I landed back
  In this hub of the Western State.




NO MORE VERSES IN PRAISE OF WINE!


  No more verses in praise of Wine!
    No more gauds for the gods of Woe!
  Better by far to sit supine
    Watching the current of strong life flow,
    Crouched by a hearth where the false fires glow;
  Conning the comedy, line by line—
    No more gauds for the gods of Woe!
  No more verses in praise of Wine!

  Shirking the fight that a man should fight,
    Dodging the joys that a man should know,
  Scorning the breath of a plumed thought’s flight,
    Down with the swine and the husks below—
    ’Tis thus we reap from the seed we sow!
  Hearts grow withered and locks grow white,
    Dodging the joys that a man should know,
  Shirking the fight that a man should fight.

  No more verses in praise of Wine!
    Where are the glorious days we knew
  Touched with the rays of a light divine,
    Decked with a garland of thyme and rue?
    Where is their glamour for yours and you?
  Where is their laughter for me and mine?
    Where are the glorious days we knew
  Ere knees were bent to the gods of Wine?

  See our boat, with a broken mast,
    Cleaving a sea that is rough and grey!
  Cargoes come to the port at last:
    Ashes and Dead Sea fruit are they.
    The climax this of a soul-less play—
  We were the stars of a soul-less cast—
    Over a sea that is rough and grey
  Drifts our boat, with a broken mast.

  No more verses in praise of Wine!
    Yet, through a tangle of years and strife,
  Constant still do her true eyes shine—
    Mother, or sweetheart, or child, or wife.
    Is there a haven where Hope is rife,
  Holding a remnant of life’s design?
    Is there a light on the shores of life,
  Pointing a course from the sea of Wine?




OUR LIMITATIONS.


  We singers standing on the outer rim,
  Who touch the fringe of poesy at times
  With half-formed thoughts, rough-set in halting rhymes,
  Through which no airy flights of fancy skim—
  We write just so, an hour to while away,
  And turn the well-thumbed stock still o’er and o’er,
  As men have done a thousand times before,
  And will again, just as we do to-day.

  We have no fire to set men’s brains aglow;
  We have no tune to set the world a-swing;
  There is no throb within the songs we sing
  To flush the heart where passions ebb and flow.
  We have no master’s hand to strike the keys;
  We lay no claim at all to bardic bays,
  But write (for coin) our topic-tinctured lays
  And come, and go, like any evening breeze.

  But I, for one, would never weep the lack
  Of monumental works, and noble themes,
  But rest content by slopes where Demos dreams
  And leave Parnassus’ heights upon my back,
  If I could write (as any man should write)
  About the world within my garden wall,
  And never dream inspired dreams at all
  To live still on when I had sought the night.

  If I could take that rosebud from its stem
  And weave its petals in a simple rhyme,
  So you could hear the bells of springtime chime,
  And you could see the flower-soul in them—
  Or else, we’ll say, a magpie on a limb,
  Greeting the sunrise with its matin song—
  To catch the music as it floats along,
  And link its spirit to a bush-child’s hymn.

  Or if—but, then, the limitations rise
  Like barriers across the mental plain,
  And mists and things obscure the rhymer’s brain
  And dull his ears, and cloud his blinking eyes.
  And so we write as Nature sets her gauge—
  No worse than most, and better, p’raps, than some,
  But should a man remain for ever dumb
  When _only_ rhythm fills his aimless page?




YOUR LEVEL BEST.


  When you stand within Life’s limelight to declaim your little piece—
      Let your hearers chip and chivvy as they may—
  And you go on nigh despairing, ’neath your mummer-paint and grease,
      As you massacre the part you have to play:
           _You may come before the curtain
                And erect your ragged crest,
            If you’re absolutely certain
                That you’ve done your level best!_

  If you’re put away like lumber, on the very topmost shelf,
      And the phalanx of Success’s pets condemn,
  Just remember most approval worth a cent comes from yourself,
      And heave brick for brick, “Old Failure!” back at them:
           _For no matter how they mutter,
                You are worthy as the rest,
            When you’re lying in the gutter,
                If the gutter is your best!_


[Illustration:
  _“Where no scallywag or sinner
  May be counted as a guest.”_]


  Mark the “pity for a failure!” as the motor-hog whisks by,
      And the derelict steps quickly from his path:
  See the supercilious patronage that lights the preacher’s eye!
      As he maunders of a glowing aftermath,
           _Where no scallywag or sinner
                May be counted as a guest
            When the trumpet sounds for dinner—
                Though he did his level best!_

  Never mind, old Rags and Tatters! when you reach the “golden stairs,”
      You may meet a Godlike cobber, who will say,
  “Though you’ve hobnobbed with the Devil, and forgot your vesper prayers,
      You were only as I fashioned forth your clay—
           _Whether scoffer who denied Me,
                Or a saint who beat his breast,
            Only he may stand beside me
                Who has done his level best!”_


FINIS

[Illustration: Man with swag boiling a billy]

       *       *       *       *       *

Morton’s Limited, Printers, 75 Ultimo Road, Sydney.




Transcriber’s Note


Inconsistent hyphenation (cocky patch/cocky-patch,
fantods/fan-tod, flower-soul/flower soul, Glory rose/glory-rose,
hobby-horse/hobby horse, inmost soul/inmost-soul, maiden
hair/maidenhair, outback/out-back, rose-leaves/rose
leaves/roseleaf, springtime/spring-time, taproom/tap-room, tempest
tossed/tempest-tossed, window pane/window-pane) and non-standard
spelling (smoothes, cris-crossed) retained.



*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 70030 ***