Book: For Australia

• Every Man Should Have A Rifle

  So I sit and write and ponder, while the house is deaf and dumb,
  Seeing visions "over yonder" of the war I know must come.

  12 lines
• To Be Amused

  You ask me to be gay and glad
  While lurid clouds of danger loom,

  81 lines
• The Bards Who Lived at Manly

  The camp  of high-class spielers,
      Who sneered in summer dress,

  169 lines
• '39'

  I only  woke this morning
      To find the world is fair—

  54 lines, 1 comment
• Cypher Seven [07]

  The nearer camp fires lighted,
      The distant beacons bright—

  97 lines
• 'Bound for the Lord-Knows-Where'

  'Where are you going with your horse and bike,
      And the townsfolk still at rest?

  76 lines
• 'Bush Hay'

  THE STAMP of Scotland is on his face,
      But he sailed to the South a lad,

  34 lines
• 'Victor'

  AND his death came in December,
      When our summer was aglow—

  25 lines
• A Dan Yell

  I WISH I’d never gone to board
      In that house where I met

  52 lines
• A Word from the Bards

  IT IS New Year’s Day and I rise to state that here on the Sydney side
  The Bards have commenced to fill out of late and they’re showi

  33 lines
• The Bard of Furthest Out

  HE LONGED to be a Back-Blocks Bard,
      And fame he wished to win—

  88 lines
• Before We Were Married

  BLACKSOIL PLAINS were grey soil, grey soil in the drought.
  Fifteen years away, and five hundred miles out;

  18 lines
• The Cab Lamps

  THE CRESCENT MOON and clock tower are fair above the wall
  Across the smothered lanes of ’Loo, the stifled vice and all,

  33 lines
• Divorced

  TWO COUPLES are drifting the self-same way
      (Men of the world know well)

  34 lines
• For all the Land to See: A Song of the Tools

  THE CROSS-CUT and the crowbar cross, and hang them on the wall,
  And make a greenhide rack to fit the wedges and the maul,

  19 lines
• For He Was a Jolly Good Fellow

  THEY CHEERED him from the wharf—it was a glorious day:
  His hand went to his scarf—his thoughts were far away.

  33 lines
• Give yourself a Show: New Year's Eve

  TO my fellow sinners all, who, in hope and doubt,
  Through the Commonwealth to-night watch the Old Year out,

  28 lines
• I’m an Older Man Than You

  WHEN you’ve managed with the tailor for a rig-out of a sort
  And you find the coat or trousers are an inch or so too short,

  28 lines
• In the Height of Fashion

  SO at last a toll they’ll levy
      For the passing fool who sings—

  88 lines, 1 comment
• Macleay Street and Red Rock Lane

  MACLEAY STREET looks to Mosman,
      Across the other side,

  79 lines
• My Father-in-Law and I

  MY father-in-law is a careworn man,
      And a silent man is he;

  25 lines, 1 comment
• My Wife’s Second Husband

  THE WORLD goes round, old fellow,
      And still I’m in the swim,

  52 lines
• Our Mistress and Our Queen

  WE SET no right above hers,
      No earthly light nor star,

  188 lines
• Since the Cities are the Cities

  FOOLS can parrot-cry the prophet when the proof is close at hand,
  And the blind can see the danger when the foe is in the land!

  53 lines
• Take It Fightin’

  WHEN you’ve got no chance at all,
          Take it fightin’.

  22 lines
• That Great Waiting Silence

  WHERE shall we go for prophecy? Where shall we go for proof?
  The holiday street is crowded, pavement, window and roof;

  33 lines
• The Bush Beyond the Range

  FROM Crow’s Nest here by Sydney town
      Where crows had nests of old

  61 lines
• The Day Before I Die

  THERE’S such a lot of work to do, for such a troubled head!
  I’m scribbling this against a book, with foolscap round, in bed.

  13 lines
• The Empty Glass

  THERE ARE three lank bards in a borrowed room—
      Ah! The number is one too few—

  61 lines
• The Gathering of the Brown-Eyed

  THE BROWN EYES came from Asia, where all mystery is true,
  Ere the masters of Soul Secrets dreamed of hazel, grey, and blue;

  43 lines
• The Lily of St Leonards

  ’TIS sunrise over Watson,
      Where I sailed out to sea,

  40 lines
• The Little Native Rose

  THERE is a lasting little flower,
  That everybody knows,

  13 lines
• The Motor Car

  THE MOTOR CAR is sullen, like a thing that should not be;
  The motor car is master of Smart Society.

  52 lines
• The Muscovy Duck

  THE ROOSTER is a brainless dude, although he sports a crest,
  The hen’s an awful fool we know, though hen-eggs are the best;

  25 lines
• The Peace Maker

  It has a “point” of neither sex
      But comes in guise of both,

  68 lines
• The Prime of Life

  OH, the strength of the toil of those twenty years, with father, and master, and men!
  And the clearer brain of the business man, who

  43 lines
• The Separated Women

  THE Separated Women
      Go lying through the land,

  70 lines
• The Sorrows of a Simple Bard

  WHEN I tell a tale of virtue and of injured innocence,
  Then my publishers and lawyers are the densest of the dense:

  44 lines
• The Spirits of Our Fathers

  THE SPIRITS of our fathers rise not from every wave,
  They left the sea behind them long ago;

  77 lines
• The Stranded Ship: (The “Vincennes”)

  ’TWAS the glowing log of a picnic fire where a red light should not be,
  Or the curtained glow of a sick room light in a window that

  38 lines
• The Wantaritencant

  IT WATCHED ME in the cradle laid, and from my boyhood’s home
  It glared above my shoulder-blade when I wrote my first “pome”;

  23 lines
• Till All the Bad Things Came Untrue

  BY blacksoil plains burned grey with drought
      Where desert shrubs and grasses grow,

  34 lines
• To Jack

  SO, I’ve battled it through on my own, Jack,
      I have done with all dreaming and doubt.

  52 lines
• To Show What a Man Can Do

  THERE has been many a grander deed since man had life to give,
      And thousands have gone to certain death, eyes open, th

  23 lines
• To Victor Daley

  I THOUGHT that silence would be best,
      But I a call have heard,

  133 lines
• What Have We All Forgotten?

  WHAT have we all forgotten, at the break of the seventh year?
  With a nation born to the ages and a Bad Time borne on its bier!

  26 lines
• When Hopes Ran High

  WHEN hopes ran high the world was young,
  We thought that we would never die,

  8 lines
• When Your Sins Come Home to Roost

  When you fear the barber’s mirror when you go to get a crop,
  Or in sorrow every morning comb your hair across the top:

  23 lines
• Who’ll Wear the Beaten Colours?

  WHO’LL WEAR the beaten colours—and cheer the beaten men?
  Who’ll wear the beaten colours, till our time comes again?

  33 lines

• By me, right now

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