Book: When I Was King

• The Never-Never Country

  By homestead, hut, and shearing-shed,
          By railroad, coach, and track —

  88 lines, 5 comments
• On the Wallaby

  Now the tent poles are rotting, the camp fires are dead,
      And the possums may gambol in trees overhead;

  40 lines
• The Secret Whisky Cure

  ’Tis no tale of heroism, ’tis no tale of storm and strife,
  But of ordinary boozing, and of dull domestic life—

  69 lines
• The Things We Dare Not Tell

  The fields are fair in autumn yet, and the sun's still shining there,
  But we bow our heads and we brood and fret, because of the masks we wear;

  16 lines, 12 comments
• To-Morrow

  When you’re suffering hard for your sins, old man,
      When you wake to trouble and sleep ill—

  27 lines
• To Hannah

  Spirit girl to whom 'twas given
          To revisit scenes of pain,

  25 lines
• Break o’ Day

  You love me, you say, and I think you do,
      But I know so many who don’t,

  43 lines
• The Ballad of the Elder Son

  A son of elder sons I am,
      Whose boyhood days were cramped and scant,

  223 lines
• The Light on the Wreck

  Out there by the rocks, at the end of the bank,
  In the mouth of the river, the Wanderer sank.

  25 lines
• The Pride That Comes After

  It knows it all, it knows it all,
      The world of groans and laughter,

  25 lines, 2 comments
• The Alleys

  I was welcome in a palace when the ball was at my feet,
  I was petted in a garden and my triumph was complete.

  77 lines
• A Voice from the City

  On western plain and eastern hill
  Where once my fancy ranged,

  64 lines
• The Women of the Town

  It is up from out the alleys, from the alleys dark and vile—
  It is up from out the alleys I have struggled for a while—

  43 lines
• On the Wallaby

  Now the tent poles are rotting, the camp fires are dead,
      And the possums may gambol in trees overhead;

  40 lines
• The Light on the Wreck

  Out there by the rocks, at the end of the bank,
  In the mouth of the river, the Wanderer sank.

  25 lines
• The Never-Never Country

  By homestead, hut, and shearing-shed,
          By railroad, coach, and track —

  88 lines, 5 comments
• The Things We Dare Not Tell

  The fields are fair in autumn yet, and the sun's still shining there,
  But we bow our heads and we brood and fret, because of the masks we wear;

  16 lines, 12 comments
• To Hannah

  Spirit girl to whom 'twas given
          To revisit scenes of pain,

  25 lines
• The Ballad of the Elder Son

  A son of elder sons I am,
      Whose boyhood days were cramped and scant,

  223 lines
• The Pride That Comes After

  It knows it all, it knows it all,
      The world of groans and laughter,

  25 lines, 2 comments
• The Secret Whisky Cure

  ’Tis no tale of heroism, ’tis no tale of storm and strife,
  But of ordinary boozing, and of dull domestic life—

  69 lines
• The Alleys

  I was welcome in a palace when the ball was at my feet,
  I was petted in a garden and my triumph was complete.

  77 lines
• Break o’ Day

  You love me, you say, and I think you do,
      But I know so many who don’t,

  43 lines
• The Women of the Town

  It is up from out the alleys, from the alleys dark and vile—
  It is up from out the alleys I have struggled for a while—

  43 lines
• To-Morrow

  When you’re suffering hard for your sins, old man,
      When you wake to trouble and sleep ill—

  27 lines
• A Prouder Man Than You

  If you fancy that your people came of better stock than mine,
  If you hint of higher breeding by a word or by a sign,

  24 lines
• Australian Engineers

  Ah, well! but the case seems hopeless, and the pen might write in vain;
  The people gabble of old things over and over again.

  39 lines
• The Bush Girl

  So you rode from the range where your brothers “select,”
  Through the ghostly grey bush in the dawn—-

  35 lines
• Waratah and Wattle

  Though poor and in trouble I wander alone,
  With rebel cockade in my hat,

  24 lines
• When Your Pants Begin to Go

  When you wear a cloudy collar and a shirt that isn't white,
      And you cannot sleep for thinking how you'll reach to-mor

  56 lines, 3 comments
• As far as your Rifles Cover

  Do you think, you slaves of a thousand years to poverty, wealth and pride,
  You can crush the spirit that has been free in a land that's new and wide?

  8 lines, 1 comment
• For Australia

  Now, with the wars of the world begun, they'll listen to you and me,
  Now while the frightened nations run to the arms of democracy,

  30 lines
• From the Bush

  The Channel fog has lifted –
  And see where we have come!

  43 lines
• In the Storm that is to come

  By our place in the midst of the furthest seas we were fated to stand alone -
  When the nations fly at each other's throats let Australia look to her own;

  32 lines
• My Land and I

  They have eaten their fill at your tables spread,
  Like friends since the land was won;

  48 lines
• The Wander-Light

  And they heard the tent-poles clatter,
  And the fly in twain was torn –

  68 lines
• The Heart of Australia

  When the wars of the world seemed ended, and silent the distant drum,
  Ten years ago in Australia, I wrote of a war to come:

  40 lines
• The Afterglow

  OH, for the fire that used to glow
      In those my days of old!

  70 lines, 2 comments
• The Cross-Roads

  Once more I write a line to you,
      While darker shadows fall;

  34 lines
• When I Was King

  The second time I lived on earth
      Was several hundred years ago;

  213 lines
• The Author's Farewell to the Bushmen

  Some carry their swags in the Great North-West,
      Where the bravest battle and die,

  24 lines
• Heed Not!

  Heed not the cock-sure tourist,
      Seeing with English eyes;

  33 lines
• 'GS' [or the Fourth Cook]

  He has notions of Australia from the tales that he’s been told—
  Land of leggings and revolvers, land of savages and gold;

  33 lines, 1 comment
• Jack Cornstalk

  I met with Jack Cornstalk in London to-day,
  He saw me and coo-eed from over the way.

  25 lines
• The Bulletin Hotel

  I was drifting in the drizzle past the Cecil in the Strand—
  Which, I’m told, is very tony—and its front looks very grand;

  37 lines
• Sacred to the Memory of “Unknown”

  Oh, the wild black swans fly westward still,
      While the sun goes down in glory—

  30 lines
• With Dickens

  In Windsor Terrace, number four,
      I’ve taken my abode—

  295 lines
• The Drums of Battersea

  They can’t hear in West o’ London, where the worst dine with the best—
  Deaf to all save lies and laughter, they can’t hear in London

  45 lines, 1 comment
• Gipsy Too

  If they missed my face in Farmers’ Arms
      When the landlord lit the lamp,

  43 lines
• Genoa

  A long farewell to Genoa
      That rises to the skies,

  43 lines
• The Tracks That Lie By India

  Now this is not a dismal song, like some I’ve sung of late,
  When I’ve been brooding all day long about my muddled fate;

  32 lines
• Say Goodbye when your Chum is Married

  Now this is a rhyme that might well be carried
      Gummed in your hat till the end of things:

  15 lines
• The Separation

  We knew too little of the world,
      And you and I were good—

  24 lines
• Ruth

  All is well—in a prison—to-night, and the warders are crying ‘All’s Well!’
  I must speak, for the sake of my heart—if it’s but to the

  294 lines
• The Cliffs

  They sing of the grandeur of cliffs inland,
  But the cliffs of the ocean are truly grand;

  33 lines
• Bourke

  I’ve followed all my tracks and ways,from old bark school to Leicester Square,
  I’ve been right back to boyhood’s days, and found no

  67 lines
• The Stringy-Bark Tree

  There's the whitebox and pine on the ridges afar,
  Where the iron-bark, blue-gum, and peppermint are;

  22 lines
• The Bush Fire

  Ah, better the thud of the deadly gun, and the crash of the bursting shell,
  Than the terrible silence where drought is fought out th

  58 lines
• The Bill of the Ages

  He shall live to the end of this mad old world, he has lived since the world began,
  He never has done any good for himself, but was good to every man.

  36 lines
• The Scamps

  Of home, name and wealth and ambition bereft—
      We are children of fortune and luck:

  43 lines
• Written Out [1]

  Sing the song of the reckless, who care not what they do;
  Sing the song of a sinner and the song of a writer, too—

  28 lines
• New Life, New Love

  The breezes blow on the river below,
      And the fleecy clouds float high,

  25 lines, 1 comment
• The King and Queen and I

  Oh, Scotty, have you visited the Picture Gallery,
  And did you see the portraits of the King and Queen and me?

  27 lines
• The Water Lily

  A lonely young wife
          In her dreaming discerns

  30 lines, 5 comments
• Barta

  Wide solemn eyes that question me,
      Wee hand that pats my head—

  33 lines, 2 comments
• To Jim

  I gaze upon my son once more,
      With eyes and heart that tire,

  60 lines
• The Drunkard's Vision

  A public parlour in the slums,
      The haunt of vice and villainy,

  43 lines
• The Drovers

  Shrivelled leather, rusty buckles, and the rot is in our knuckles,
  Scorched for months upon the pommel while the brittle rein hung f

  31 lines, 1 comment
• Those Foreign Engineers

  Old Ivan McIvanovitch, with knitted brow of care,
  Has climbed up from the engine-room to get a breath of air;

  33 lines
• Skaal

  While they struggle on exhausted,
      While they plough through bog and flood,

  70 lines
• The Firing-Line

  They are creeping on through the cornfields yet, and they clamber amongst the rocks,
  Ere they rush to stab with the bayonet and smas

  27 lines
• Riding Round the Lines

  Dust and smoke against the sunrise out where grim disaster lurks
  And a broken sky-line looming like unfinished railway works,

  58 lines
• As Good as New

  OH, this is a song of the old lights, that came to my heart like a hymn;
  And this is a song for the old lights—the lights that we th

  22 lines
• The Last Review

  Turn the light down, nurse, and leave me, while I hold my last review,
  For the Bush is slipping from me, and the town is going too:

  99 lines, 1 comment
• The Brass Well

  'Tis a legend of the bushmen from the days of Cunningham,
  When he opened up the country and the early squatters came.

  27 lines
• Pigeon Toes

  A dusty clearing in the scrubs
      Of barren, western lands—

  111 lines
• Will Yer Write It Down for Me?

  In the parlour of the shanty where the lives have all gone wrong,
  When a singer or reciter gives a story or a song,

  16 lines, 2 comments
• The Good Samaritan

  He comes from out the ages dim—
      The good Samaritan;

  151 lines
• And the Bairns Will Come

  So you’ve seen at last what we have seen so long through scalding tears:
  You have found what we—the People—we have known for twenty

  27 lines
• The Vanguard [1]

  While the crippled cruisers stagger where the blind horizon dips,
  And the ocean ooze is rising round the sunken battle-ships,

  22 lines
• The Little Czar

  Oh, Great White Czar of Russia, who hid your face and ran,
  You’ve flung afar the grandest chance that ever came to man!

  28 lines
• When the Bear Comes Back Again

  Oh, the scene is wide an’ dreary an’ the sun is settin’ red,
  An’ the grey-black sky of winter’s comin’ closer overhead.

  37 lines
• The Men Who Made Australia

  There'll be royal times in Sydney for the Cuff and Collar Push,
  There’ll be lots of dreary drivel and clap-trap

  80 lines
• The Shearers

  NO church-bell rings them from the Track,
      No pulpit lights their blindness—

  42 lines
• 'Knocking Around'

  WEARY old wife, with the bucket and cow,
  ‘How’s your son Jack? and where is he now?’

  26 lines
• Eureka

  ROLL UP, Eureka’s heroes, on that grand Old Rush afar,
  For Lalor’s gone to join you in the big camp where you are;

  89 lines, 3 comments
• The Drums of Ages

  DRUMS of all that’s right and wrong—of love and hate and scorn,
  And the new-born baby hears them and it wails when it is born.

  43 lines
• The Spirits for Good

  We come with peace and reason,
      We come with love and light,

  43 lines

• By me, right now

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