Chapter I: Preface (1)

My acknowledgments of the courtesy of the editors and proprietors of the newspapers in which most of these verses were first published are due and are gratefully discharged on the eve of my departure for England. Chief among them is the Sydney _Bulletin_; others are the Sydney _Town and Country Journal_, _Freeman’s Journal_, and _Truth_, and the _New Zealand Mail_.

A few new pieces are included in the collection.

H. L.

_Sydney, March 17th, 1900._

CONTENTS

PAGE

THE PORTS OF THE OPEN SEA
Down here where the ships loom large in 1

THE THREE KINGS
The East is dead and the West is done,
and again our course lies thus:-- 5

THE OUTSIDE TRACK
There were ten of us there on the moonlit quay, 8

SYDNEY-SIDE
Where’s the steward?--Bar-room steward?
Berth? Oh, any berth will do-- 10

THE ROVERS
Some born of homely parents 13

FOREIGN LANDS
You may roam the wide seas over, follow,
meet, and cross the sun, 18

MARY LEMAINE
Jim Duff was a ‘native,’ as wild as could be; 22

THE SHAKEDOWN ON THE FLOOR
Set me back for twenty summers-- 25

REEDY RIVER
Ten miles down Reedy River 28

OLD STONE CHIMNEY
The rising moon on the peaks was blending 31

SONG OF THE OLD BULLOCK-DRIVER
Far Back in the days when the blacks
used to ramble 35

THE LIGHTS OF COBB AND CO.
Fire lighted, on the table a meal for sleepy men, 39

HOW THE LAND WAS WON
The future was dark and the past was dead 45

THE BOSS OVER THE BOARD
When he’s over a rough and unpopular
shed, 48

WHEN THE LADIES COME TO THE SHEARING SHED
‘The ladies are coming,’ the super says 52

THE BALLAD OF THE ROUSEABOUT
A rouseabout of rouseabouts, from any
land--or none-- 55

YEARS AFTER THE WAR IN AUSTRALIA
The big rough boys from the runs out
back were first where the balls flew free, 60

THE OLD JIMMY WOODSER
The old Jimmy Woodser comes into the bar, 67

THE CHRIST OF THE ‘NEVER’
With eyes that seem shrunken to pierce 69

THE CATTLE-DOG’S DEATH
The plains lay bare on the homeward route, 71

THE SONG OF THE DARLING RIVER
The skies are brass and the plains are bare, 73

RAIN IN THE MOUNTAINS
The valley’s full of misty cloud, 75

A MAY NIGHT ON THE MOUNTAINS
’Tis a wonderful time when these hours begin, 76

THE NEW CHUM JACKAROO
Let bushmen think as bushmen will, 78

THE DONS OF SPAIN
The Eagle screams at the beck of trade,
so Spain, as the world goes round, 81

THE BURSTING OF THE BOOM
The shipping office clerks are ‘short,’ the
manager is gruff-- 84

ANTONY VILLA
Over there, above the jetty, stands the
mansion of the Vardens, 90

SECOND CLASS WAIT HERE
On suburban railway stations--you may
see them as you pass-- 96

THE SHIPS THAT WON’T GO DOWN
We hear a great commotion 99

THE MEN WE MIGHT HAVE BEEN
When God’s wrath-cloud is o’er me 101

THE WAY OF THE WORLD
When fairer faces turn from me, 103

THE BATTLING DAYS
So, sit you down in a straight-backed
chair, with your pipe and your wife content, 105

WRITTEN AFTERWARDS
So the days of my tramping are over, 108

THE UNCULTURED RHYMER TO HIS CULTURED CRITICS
Fight through ignorance, want, and care-- 111

THE WRITER’S DREAM
A writer wrote of the hearts of men, and
he followed their tracks afar; 113

THE JOLLY DEAD MARCH
If I ever be worthy or famous-- 121

MY LITERARY FRIEND
Once I wrote a little poem which I
thought was very fine, 125

MARY CALLED HIM ‘MISTER’
They’d parted but a year before--she
never thought he’d come, 127

REJECTED
She says she’s very sorry, as she sees you to the gate; 130

O’HARA, J.P.
James Patrick O’Hara, the Justice of Peace, 134

BILL AND JIM FALL OUT
Bill and Jim are mates no longer--they
would scorn the name of mate-- 138

THE PAROO
It was a week from Christmas-time, 142

THE GREEN-HAND ROUSEABOUT
Call this hot? I beg your pardon. Hot!--you
don’t know what it means. 146

THE MAN FROM WATERLOO
It was the Man from Waterloo, 151

SAINT PETER
Now, I think there is a likeness 155

THE STRANGER’S FRIEND
The strangest things, and the maddest
things, that a man can do or say, 158

THE GOD-FORGOTTEN ELECTION
Pat M‘Durmer brought the tidings to the
town of God-Forgotten: 162

THE BOSS’S BOOTS
The shearers squint along the pens, they
squint along the ‘shoots;’ 168

THE CAPTAIN OF THE PUSH
As the night was falling slowly down on
city, town and bush, 174

BILLY’S ‘SQUARE AFFAIR’
Long Bill, the captain of the push, was
tired of his estate, 181

A DERRY ON A COVE
’Twas in the felon’s dock he stood, his
eyes were black and blue; 185

RISE YE! RISE YE!
Rise ye! rise ye! noble toilers! claim
your rights with fire and steel! 187

THE BALLAD OF MABEL CLARE
Ye children of the Land of Gold, 190

CONSTABLE M‘CARTHY’S INVESTIGATIONS
Most unpleasantly adjacent to the haunts
of lower orders 196

AT THE TUG-OF-WAR
’Twas in a tug-of-war where I--the
guvnor’s hope and pride-- 205

HERE’S LUCK!
Old Time is tramping close to-day--you
hear his bluchers fall, 208

THE MEN WHO COME BEHIND
There’s a class of men (and women) who
are always on their guard-- 211

THE DAYS WHEN WE WENT SWIMMING
The breezes waved the silver grass, 214

THE OLD BARK SCHOOL
It was built of bark and poles, and the
floor was full of holes 216

TROUBLE ON THE SELECTION
You lazy boy, you’re here at last, 220

THE PROFESSIONAL WANDERER
When you’ve knocked about the country--been
away from home for years; 222

A LITTLE MISTAKE
’Tis a yarn I heard of a new-chum ‘trap’ 225

A STUDY IN THE “NOOD”
He was bare--we don’t want to be rude-- 228

A WORD TO TEXAS JACK
Texas Jack, you are amusin’. By Lord
Harry, how I laughed 231

THE GROG-AN’-GRUMBLE STEEPLECHASE
’Twixt the coastline and the border lay
the town of Grog-an’-Grumble 237

BUT WHAT’S THE USE
But what’s the use of writing ‘bush’-- 242

VIGNETTES BY FRANK P. MAHONY

PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR _facing title page_

THE LIGHTS OF COBB AND CO. _title page_

MY LITERARY FRIEND _page_ xvi.

_“Once I wrote a little poem which I thought was very fine,
And I showed the printer’s copy to a critic friend of mine,
First he praised the thing a little....”_

_page 125._ ]

THE PORTS OF THE OPEN SEA

Down here where the ships loom large in
The gloom when the sea-storms veer,
Down here on the south-west margin
Of the western hemisphere,
Where the might of a world-wide ocean
Round the youngest land rolls free--
Storm-bound from the world’s commotion,
Lie the Ports of the Open Sea.

By the bluff where the grey sand reaches
To the kerb of the spray-swept street,
By the sweep of the black sand beaches
From the main-road travellers’ feet,
By the heights like a work Titanic,
Begun ere the gods’ work ceased,
By a bluff-lined coast volcanic
Lie the Ports of the wild South-east.

By the steeps of the snow-capped ranges,
By the scarped and terraced hills--
Far away from the swift life-changes,
From the wear of the strife that kills--
Where the land in the Spring seems younger
Than a land of the Earth might be--
Oh! the hearts of the rovers hunger
For the Ports of the Open Sea.

But the captains watch and hearken
For a sign of the South Sea wrath--
Let the face of the South-east darken,
And they turn to the ocean path.
Ay, the sea-boats dare not linger,
Whatever the cargo be;
When the South-east lifts a finger
By the Ports of the Open Sea.

South by the bleak Bluff faring,
North where the Three Kings wait,
South-east the tempest daring--
Flight through the storm-tossed strait;
Yonder a white-winged roamer
Struck where the rollers roar--
Where the great green froth-flaked comber
Breaks down on a black-ribbed shore.

For the South-east lands are dread lands
To the sailor in the shrouds,
Where the low clouds loom like headlands,
And the black bluffs blur like clouds.
When the breakers rage to windward
And the lights are masked a-lee,
And the sunken rocks run inward
To a Port of the Open Sea.

But oh! for the South-east weather--
The sweep of the three-days’ gale--
When, far through the flax and heather,
The spindrift drives like hail.
Glory to man’s creations
That drive where the gale grows gruff,
When the homes of the sea-coast stations
Flash white from the dark’ning bluff!

When the swell of the South-east rouses
The wrath of the Maori sprite,
And the brown folk flee their houses
And crouch in the flax by night,
And wait as they long have waited--
In fear as the brown folk be--
The wave of destruction fated
For the Ports of the Open Sea.

* * * * *

Grey cloud to the mountain bases,
Wild boughs that rush and sweep;
On the rounded hills the tussocks
Like flocks of flying sheep;
A lonely storm-bird soaring
O’er tussock, fern and tree;
And the boulder beaches roaring
The Hymn of the Open Sea.

THE THREE KINGS[A]

[A] Three sea-girt pinnacles off North Cape, New Zealand.

The East is dead and the West is done, and again our course lies thus:--
South-east by Fate and the Rising Sun where the Three Kings wait for us.
_When our hearts are young and the world is wide, and the heights seem grand
to climb--
We are off and away to the Sydney-side; but the Three Kings bide their
time._

‘I’ve been to the West,’ the digger said: he was bearded, bronzed and old;
‘Ah, the smothering curse of the East is wool, and the curse of the West is
gold.
‘I went to the West in the golden boom, with Hope and a life-long mate,
‘They sleep in the sand by the Boulder Soak, and long may the Three Kings
wait.’

‘I’ve had my fling on the Sydney-side,’ said a black-sheep to the sea,
‘Let the young fool learn when he can’t be taught: I’ve learnt what’s good
for me.’
And he gazed ahead on the sea-line dim--grown dim in his softened eyes--
With a pain in his heart that was good for him--as he saw the Three Kings
rise.

A pale girl sits on the foc’sle head--she is back, Three Kings! so soon;
But it seems to her like a life-time dead since she fled with him ‘saloon.’
There is refuge still in the old folks’ arms for the child that loved too
well;
They will hide her shame on the Southern farm--and the Three Kings will not
tell.

’Twas a restless heart on the tide of life, and a false star in the skies
That led me on to the deadly strife where the Southern London lies;
But I dream in peace of a home for me, by a glorious southern sound,
As the sunset fades from a moonlit sea, and the Three Kings show us round.

_Our hearts are young and the old hearts old, and life on the farms is
slow,_
_And away in the world there is fame and gold--and the Three Kings watch us
go._
_Our heads seem wise and the world seems wide, and its heights are ours to
climb,_
_So it’s off and away in our youthful pride--but the Three Kings bide our
time._

THE OUTSIDE TRACK

There were ten of us there on the moonlit quay,
And one on the for’ard hatch;
No straighter mate to his mates than he
Had ever said: ‘Len’s a match!’
’Twill be long, old man, ere our glasses clink,
’Twill be long ere we grip your hand!--
And we dragged him ashore for a final drink
Till the whole wide world seemed grand.

For they marry and go as the world rolls back,
They marry and vanish and die;
But their spirit shall live on the Outside Track
As long as the years go by.

The port-lights glowed in the morning mist
That rolled from the waters green;
And over the railing we grasped his fist
As the dark tide came between.

We cheered the captain and cheered the crew,
And our mate, times out of mind;
We cheered the land he was going to
And the land he had left behind.

We roared Lang Syne as a last farewell,
But my heart seemed out of joint;
I well remember the hush that fell
When the steamer had passed the point
We drifted home through the public bars,
We were ten times less by one
Who sailed out under the morning stars,
And under the rising sun.

And one by one, and two by two,
They have sailed from the wharf since then;
I have said good-bye to the last I knew,
The last of the careless men.
And I can’t but think that the times we had
Were the best times after all,
As I turn aside with a lonely glass
And drink to the bar-room wall.

But I’ll try my luck for a cheque Out Back,
Then a last good-bye to the bush;
For my heart’s away on the Outside Track,
On the track of the steerage push.

SYDNEY-SIDE

Where’s the steward?--Bar-room steward? Berth? Oh, any berth will do--
I have left a three-pound billet just to come along with you.
Brighter shines the Star of Rovers on a world that’s growing wide,
But I think I’d give a kingdom for a glimpse of Sydney-Side.

Run of rocky shelves at sunrise, with their base on ocean’s bed;
Homes of Coogee, homes of Bondi, and the lighthouse on South Head;
For in loneliness and hardship--and with just a touch of pride--
Has my heart been taught to whisper, ‘You belong to Sydney-Side.’

Oh, there never dawned a morning, in the long and lonely days,
But I thought I saw the ferries streaming out across the bays--
And as fresh and fair in fancy did the picture rise again
As the sunrise flushed the city from Woollahra to Balmain.

And the sunny water frothing round the liners black and red,
And the coastal schooners working by the loom of Bradley’s Head;
And the whistles and the sirens that re-echo far and wide--
All the life and light and beauty that belong to Sydney-Side.

And the dreary cloud-line never veiled the end of one day more,
But the city set in jewels rose before me from ‘The Shore.’
Round the sea-world shine the beacons of a thousand ports o’ call,
But the harbour-lights of Sydney are the grandest of them all!

Toiling out beyond Coolgardie--heart and back and spirit broke,
Where the Rover’s Star gleams redly in the desert by the ‘soak’--
But says one mate to the other, ‘Brace your lip and do not fret,
We will laugh on trains and ’buses--Sydney’s in the same place yet.’

Working in the South in winter, to the waist in dripping fern,
Where the local spirit hungers for each ‘saxpence’ that we earn--
We can stand it for a season, for our world is growing wide,
And they all are friends and strangers who belong to Sydney-Side.

‘T’other-siders! T’other-siders!’ Yet we wake the dusty dead;
It is we that send the backward province fifty years ahead;
We it is that ‘trim’ Australia--making narrow country wide--
Yet we’re always T’other-siders till we sail for Sydney-side.

THE ROVERS

Some born of homely parents
For ages settled down--
The steady generations
Of village, farm, and town:
And some of dusky fathers
Who wandered since the flood--
The fairest skin or darkest
Might hold the roving blood--

Some born of brutish peasants,
And some of dainty peers,
In poverty or plenty
They pass their early years;
But, born in pride of purple,
Or straw and squalid sin,
In all the far world corners
The wanderers are kin.

A rover or a rebel,
Conceived and born to roam,
As babies they will toddle
With faces turned from home;
They’ve fought beyond the vanguard
Wherever storm has raged,
And home is but a prison
They pace like lions caged.

They smile and are not happy;
They sing and are not gay;
They weary, yet they wander;
They love, and cannot stay;
They marry, and are single
Who watch the roving star,
For, by the family fireside,
Oh, lonely men _they_ are!

They die of peace and quiet--
The deadly ease of life;
They die of home and comfort;
They _live_ in storm and strife;
No poverty can tie them,
Nor wealth nor place restrain--
Girl, wife, or child might draw them,
But they’ll be gone again!

Across the glowing desert;
Through naked trees and snow;
Across the rolling prairies
The skies have seen them go;
They fought to where the ocean
Receives the setting sun;--
But where shall fight the rovers
When all the lands are won?

They thirst on Greenland snowfields,
On Never-Never sands;
Where man is not to conquer
They conquer barren lands;
They feel that most are cowards,
That all depends on ‘nerve,’
They lead who cannot follow,
They rule who cannot serve.

Across the plains and ranges,
Away across the seas,
On blue and green horizons
They camp by twos and threes;
They hold on stormy borders
Of states that trouble earth
The honour of the country
That only gave them birth.

Unlisted, uncommissioned,
Untaught of any school,
In far-away world corners
Unconquered tribes they rule;
The lone hand and revolver--
Sad eyes that never quail--
The lone hand and the rifle
That win where armies fail.

They slumber sound where murder
And treachery are bare--
The pluck of self-reliance,
The pluck of past despair;
Thin brown men in pyjamas--
The thin brown wiry men!--
The helmet and revolver
That lie beside the pen.

Through drought and desolation
They won the way Out Back;
The commonplace and selfish
Have followed on their track;
They conquer lands for others,
For others find the gold,--
But where shall go the rovers
When all the lands are old?

A rover and a rebel--
And so the worlds commence!
Their hearts shall beat as wildly
Ten generations hence;
And when the world is crowded--
’Tis signed and sealed by Fate--
The roving blood will rise to make
The countries desolate.

FOREIGN LANDS

You may roam the wide seas over, follow, meet, and cross the sun,
Sail as far as ships can sail, and travel far as trains can run;
You may ride and tramp wherever range or plain or sea expands,
But the crowd has been before you, and you’ll not find ‘Foreign Lands;’
For the Early Days are over,
And no more the white-winged rover
Sinks the gale-worn coast of England bound for bays in Foreign Lands.

Foreign Lands are in the distance dim and dream-like, faint and far,
Long ago, and over yonder, where our boyhood fancies are,
For the land is by the railway cramped as though with iron bands,
And the steamship and the cable did away with Foreign Lands.
Ah! the days of blue and gold!
When the news was six months old--
But the news was worth the telling in the days of Foreign Lands.

_Here we slave the dull years hopeless for the sake of Wool and Wheat--
Here the homes of ugly Commerce--niggard farm and haggard street;
Yet our mothers and our fathers won the life the heart demands--
Less than fifty years gone over, we were born in Foreign Lands._

When the gipsies stole the children still, in village tale and song,
And the world was wide to travel, and the roving spirit strong;
When they dreamed of South Sea Islands, summer seas and coral strands--
Then the bravest hearts of England sailed away to Foreign Lands,
‘Fitting foreign’--flood and field--
Half the world and orders sealed--
And the first and best of Europe went to fight in Foreign Lands.

Canvas towers on the ocean--homeward bound and outward bound--
Glint of topsails over islands--splash of anchors in the sound;
Then they landed in the forests, took their strong lives in their hands,
And they fought and toiled and conquered--making homes in Foreign Lands,
Through the cold and through the drought--
Further on and further out--
Winning half the world for England in the wilds of Foreign Lands.

Love and pride of life inspired them when the simple village hearts
Followed Master Will and Harry--gone abroad to ‘furrin parts’--

By our townships and our cities, and across the desert sands
Are the graves of those who fought and died for us in Foreign Lands--
Gave their young lives for our sake
(Was it all a grand mistake?)
Sons of Master Will and Harry born abroad in Foreign Lands!

_Ah, my girl, our lives are narrow, and in sordid days like these,
I can hate the things that banished ‘Foreign Lands across the seas,’
But with all the world before us, God above us--hearts and hands,
I can sail the seas in fancy far away to Foreign Lands._

MARY LEMAINE

Jim Duff was a ‘native,’ as wild as could be;
A stealer and duffer of cattle was he,
But back in his youth he had stolen a pearl--
Or a diamond rather--the heart of a girl;
She served with a squatter who lived on the plain,
And the name of the girl it was Mary Lemaine.

’Twas a drear, rainy day and the twilight was done,
When four mounted troopers rode up to the run.
They spoke to the squatter: he asked them all in.
The homestead was small and the walls they were thin;
And in the next room, with a cold in her head,
Our Mary was sewing on buttons--in bed.

She heard a few words, but those words were enough--
The troopers were all on the track of Jim Duff.
The super, his rival, was planning a trap
To capture the scamp in Maginnis’s Gap.
‘I’ve warned him before, and I’ll do it again;--
_I’ll_ save him to-night,’ whispered Mary Lemaine.

No petticoat job--there was no time to waste,
The suit she was mending she slipped on in haste,
And five minutes later they gathered in force,
But Mary was off, on the squatter’s best horse;
With your hand on your heart, just to deaden the pain,
Ride hard to the ranges, brave Mary Lemaine!

She rode by the ridges all sullen and strange,
And far up long gullies that ran through the range,
Till the rain cleared away, and the tears in her eyes
Caught the beams of the moon from Maginnis’s Rise.
A fire in the depths of the gums she espied--
‘Who’s there?’ shouted Jim. ‘It is Mary!’ she cried.

Next morning the sun rose in splendour again,
And two loving sinners rode out on the plain;
And baffled, and angry, and hungry and damp,
The four mounted troopers rode back to the camp.
But they hushed up the business--the reason is plain,
They all had been ‘soft’ on fair Mary Lemaine.

The squatter got back all he lost from his mob,
And old Sergeant Kennedy winked at the job;
Jim Duff keeps a shanty far out in the west,
And the sundowners call it the ‘Bushranger’s Rest.’
But the bushranger lives a respectable life,
And the law never troubles Jim Duff or his wife.

THE SHAKEDOWN ON THE FLOOR

Set me back for twenty summers--
For I’m tired of cities now--
Set my feet in red-soil furrows
And my hands upon the plough,
With the two ‘Black Brothers’ trudging
On the home stretch through the loam--
While, along the grassy siding,
Come the cattle grazing home.

And I finish ploughing early,
And I hurry home to tea--
There’s my black suit on the stretcher,
And a clean white shirt for me;
There’s a dance at Rocky Rises,
And, when all the fun is o’er,
For a certain favoured party
There’s a shake-down on the floor.

You remember Mary Carey,
Bushmen’s favourite at the Rise?
With her sweet small freckled features,
Red-gold hair, and kind grey eyes;
Sister, daughter, to her mother,
Mother, sister, to the rest--
And of all my friends and kindred,
Mary Carey loved me best.

Far too shy, because she loved me,
To be dancing oft with me;
What cared I, because she loved me,
If the world were there to see?
But we lingered by the slip rails
While the rest were riding home,
Ere the hour before the dawning,
Dimmed the great star-clustered dome.

Small brown hands that spread the mattress
While the old folk winked to see
How she’d find an extra pillow
And an extra sheet for me.
For a moment shyly smiling,
She would grant me one kiss more--
Slip away and leave me happy
By the shake-down on the floor.

Rock me hard in steerage cabins,
Rock me soft in wide saloons,
Lay me on the sand-hill lonely
Under waning western moons;
But wherever night may find me
Till I rest for evermore--
I will dream that I am happy
On the shake-down on the floor.

Ah! she often watched at sunset--
For her people told me so--
Where I left her at the slip-rails
More than fifteen years ago.
And she faded like a flower,
And she died, as such girls do,
While, away in Northern Queensland,
Working hard, I never knew.

And we suffer for our sorrows,
And we suffer for our joys,
From the old bush days when mother
Spread the shake-down for the boys.
But to cool the living fever,
Comes a cold breath to my brow,
And I feel that Mary’s spirit
Is beside me, even now.

REEDY RIVER

Ten miles down Reedy River
A pool of water lies,
And all the year it mirrors
The changes in the skies,
And in that pool’s broad bosom
Is room for all the stars;
Its bed of sand has drifted
O’er countless rocky bars.

Around the lower edges
There waves a bed of reeds,
Where water rats are hidden
And where the wild duck breeds;
And grassy slopes rise gently
To ridges long and low,
Where groves of wattle flourish
And native bluebells grow.

Beneath the granite ridges
The eye may just discern
Where Rocky Creek emerges
From deep green banks of fern;
And standing tall between them,
The grassy sheoaks cool
The hard, blue-tinted waters
Before they reach the pool.

Ten miles down Reedy River
One Sunday afternoon,
I rode with Mary Campbell
To that broad bright lagoon;
We left our horses grazing
Till shadows climbed the peak,
And strolled beneath the sheoaks
On the banks of Rocky Creek.

Then home along the river
That night we rode a race,
And the moonlight lent a glory
To Mary Campbell’s face;
And I pleaded for my future
All thro’ that moonlight ride,
Until our weary horses
Drew closer side by side.

Ten miles from Ryan’s crossing
And five below the peak,
I built a little homestead
On the banks of Rocky Creek;
I cleared the land and fenced it
And ploughed the rich red loam,
And my first crop was golden
When I brought Mary home.

* * * * *

Now still down Reedy River
The grassy sheoaks sigh,
And the waterholes still mirror
The pictures in the sky;
And over all for ever
Go sun and moon and stars,
While the golden sand is drifting
Across the rocky bars;

But of the hut I builded
There are no traces now.
And many rains have levelled
The furrows of the plough;
And my bright days are olden,
For the twisted branches wave
And the wattle blossoms golden
On the hill by Mary’s grave.

OLD STONE CHIMNEY

The rising moon on the peaks was blending
Her silver light with the sunset glow,
When a swagman came as the day was ending
Along a path that he seemed to know.
But all the fences were gone or going--
The hand of ruin was everywhere;
The creek unchecked in its course was flowing,
For none of the old clay dam was there.

Here Time had been with his swiftest changes,
And husbandry had westward flown;
The cattle tracks in the rugged ranges
Were long ago with the scrub o’ergrown.
It must have needed long years to soften
The road, that as hard as rock had been;
The mountain path he had trod so often
Lay hidden now with a carpet green.

He thought at times from the mountain courses
He heard the sound of a bullock bell,
The distant gallop of stockmen’s horses,
The stockwhip’s crack that he knew so well:
But these were sounds of his memory only,
And they were gone from the flat and hill,
For when he listened the place was lonely,
The range was dumb and the bush was still.

The swagman paused by the gap and faltered,
For down the gully he feared to go,
The scene in memory never altered--
The scene before him had altered so.
But hope is strong, and his heart grew bolder,
And over his sorrows he raised his head,
He turned his swag to the other shoulder,
And plodded on with a firmer tread.

Ah, hope is always the keenest hearer,
And fancies much when assailed by fear;
The swagman thought, as the farm drew nearer,
He heard the sounds that he used to hear.
His weary heart for a moment bounded,
For a moment brief he forgot his dread;
For plainly still in his memory sounded
The welcome bark of a dog long dead.

A few steps more and his face grew ghostly,
Then white as death in the twilight grey;
Deserted wholly, and ruined mostly,
The Old Selection before him lay.
Like startled spectres that paused and listened,
The few white posts of the stockyard stood;
And seemed to move as the moonlight glistened
And paled again on the whitened wood.

And thus he came, from a life long banished
To other lands, and of peace bereft,
To find the farm and the homestead vanished,
And only the old stone chimney left.
The field his father had cleared and gardened
Was overgrown with saplings now;
The rain had set and the drought had hardened
The furrows made by a vanished plough.

And this, and this was the longed-for haven
Where he might rest from a life of woe;
He read a name on the mantel graven--
The name was his ere he stained it so.
‘And so remorse on my care encroaches--
I have not suffered enough,’ he said;
‘That name is pregnant with deep reproaches--
The past won’t bury dishonoured dead!’

Ah, now he knew it was long years after,
And felt how swiftly a long year speeds;
The hardwood post and the beam and rafter
Had rotted long in the tangled weeds.
He found that time had for years been sowing
The coarse wild scrub on the homestead path,
And saw young trees by the chimney growing,
And mountain ferns on the wide stone hearth.

He wildly thought of the evil courses
That brought disgrace on his father’s name;
The escort robbed, and the stolen horses,
The felon’s dock with its lasting shame.
‘Ah, God! Ah, God! is there then no pardon?’
He cried in a voice that was strained and hoarse;
He fell on the weeds that were once a garden,
And sobbed aloud in his great remorse.

But grief must end, and his heart ceased aching
When pitying sleep to his eye-lids crept,
And home and friends who were lost in waking,
They all came back while the stockman slept.
And when he woke on the empty morrow,
The pain at his heart was a deadened pain;
And bravely bearing his load of sorrow,
He wandered back to the world again.

SONG OF THE OLD BULLOCK-DRIVER

Far back in the days when the blacks used to ramble
In long single file ’neath the evergreen tree,
The wool-teams in season came down from Coonamble,
And journeyed for weeks on their way to the sea.
’Twas then that our hearts and our sinews were stronger,
For those were the days when the bushman was bred.
We journeyed on roads that were rougher and longer
Than roads where the feet of our grandchildren tread.

With mates who have gone to the great Never-Never,
And mates whom I’ve not seen for many a day,
I camped on the banks of the Cudgegong River
And yarned at the fire by the old bullock-dray.
I would summon them back from the far Riverina,
From days that shall be from all others distinct,
And sing to the sound of an old concertina
Their rugged old songs where strange fancies were linked.

We never were lonely, for, camping together,
We yarned and we smoked the long evenings away,
And little I cared for the signs of the weather
When snug in my hammock slung under the dray.
We rose with the dawn, were it ever so chilly,
When yokes and tarpaulins were covered with frost,
And toasted the bacon and boiled the black billy,
Where high on the camp-fire the branches were tossed.

On flats where the air was suggestive of ’possums,
And homesteads and fences were hinting of change,
We saw the faint glimmer of appletree blossoms,
And far in the distance the blue of the range;
And here in the rain, there was small use in flogging
The poor, tortured bullocks that tugged at the load,
When down to the axles the waggons were bogging
And traffic was making a marsh of the road.

’Twas hard on the beasts on the terrible pinches,
Where two teams of bullocks were yoked to a load,
And tugging and slipping, and moving by inches,
Half-way to the summit they clung to the road.
And then, when the last of the pinches was bested,
(You’ll surely not say that a glass was a sin?)
The bullocks lay down ’neath the gum trees and rested--
The bullockies steered for the bar of the inn.

Then slowly we crawled by the trees that kept tally
Of miles that were passed on the long journey down.
We saw the wild beauty of Capertee Valley,
As slowly we rounded the base of the Crown.
But, ah! the poor bullocks were cruelly goaded
While climbing the hills from the flats and the vales;
’Twas here that the teams were so often unloaded
That all knew the meaning of ‘counting your bales.’

And, oh! but the best-paying load that I carried
Was one to the run where my sweetheart was nurse.
We courted awhile, and agreed to get married,
And couple our futures for better or worse.
And as my old feet grew too weary to drag on
The miles of rough metal they met by the way,
My eldest grew up and I gave him the waggon--
He’s plodding along by the bullocks to-day.

THE LIGHTS OF COBB AND CO.

Fire lighted, on the table a meal for sleepy men,
A lantern in the stable, a jingle now and then;
The mail coach looming darkly by light of moon and star,
The growl of sleepy voices--a candle in the bar;
A stumble in the passage of folk with wits abroad;
A swear-word from a bedroom--the shout of ‘All aboard!’
‘Tchk-tchk! Git-up!’ ‘Hold fast, there!’ and down the range we go;
Five hundred miles of scattered camps will watch for Cobb and Co.

Old coaching towns already ‘decaying for their sins,’
Uncounted ‘Half-Way Houses,’ and scores of ‘Ten Mile Inns;’
The riders from the stations by lonely granite peaks;
The black-boy for the shepherds on sheep and cattle creeks;
The roaring camps of Gulgong, and many a ‘Digger’s Rest;’
The diggers on the Lachlan; the huts of Furthest West;
Some twenty thousand exiles who sailed for weal or woe;
The bravest hearts of twenty lands will wait for Cobb and Co.

The morning star has vanished, the frost and fog are gone,
In one of those grand mornings which but on mountains dawn;
A flask of friendly whisky--each other’s hopes we share--
And throw our top-coats open to drink the mountain air.
The roads are rare to travel, and life seems all complete;
The grind of wheels on gravel, the trot of horses’ feet,
The trot, trot, trot and canter, as down the spur we go--
The green sweeps to horizons blue that call for Cobb and Co.

We take a bright girl actress through western dust and damps,
To bear the home-world message, and sing for sinful camps,
To wake the hearts and break them, wild hearts that hope and ache--
(Ah! when she thinks of those days her own must nearly break!)
Five miles this side the gold-field, a loud, triumphant shout:
Five hundred cheering diggers have snatched the horses out:
With ‘Auld Lang Syne’ in chorus through roaring camps they go--
That cheer for her, and cheer for Home, and cheer for Cobb and Co.

Three lamps above the ridges and gorges dark and deep,
A flash on sandstone cuttings where sheer the sidings sweep,
A flash on shrouded waggons, on water ghastly white;
Weird bush and scattered remnants of ‘rushes in the night;’
Across the swollen river a flash beyond the ford:
Ride hard to warn the driver! He’s drunk or mad, good Lord!’
But on the bank to westward a broad, triumphant glow--
A hundred miles shall see to-night the lights of Cobb and Co.!

Swift scramble up the siding where teams climb inch by inch;
Pause, bird-like, on the summit--then breakneck down the pinch
Past haunted half-way houses--where convicts made the bricks--
Scrub-yards and new bark shanties, we dash with five and six--
By clear, ridge-country rivers, and gaps where tracks run high,
Where waits the lonely horseman, cut clear against the sky;
Through stringy-bark and blue-gum, and box and pine we go;
New camps are stretching ’cross the plains the routes of Cobb and Co.

* * * * *

Throw down the reins, old driver--there’s no one left to shout;
The ruined inn’s survivor must take the horses out.
A poor old coach hereafter!--we’re lost to all such things--
No bursts of songs or laughter shall shake your leathern springs
When creeping in unnoticed by railway sidings drear,
Or left in yards for lumber, decaying with the year--
Oh, who’ll think how in those days when distant fields were broad
You raced across the Lachlan side with twenty-five on board.

Not all the ships that sail away since Roaring Days are done--
Not all the boats that steam from port, nor all the trains that run,
Shall take such hopes and loyal hearts--for men shall never know
Such days as when the Royal Mail was run by Cobb and Co.
The ‘greyhounds’ race across the sea, the ‘special’ cleaves the haze,
But these seem dull and slow to me compared with Roaring Days!
The eyes that watched are dim with age, and souls are weak and slow,
The hearts are dust or hardened now that broke for Cobb and Co.

HOW THE LAND WAS WON

The future was dark and the past was dead
As they gazed on the sea once more--
But a nation was born when the immigrants said
‘Good-bye!’ as they stepped ashore!
In their loneliness they were parted thus
Because of the work to do,
A wild wide land to be won for us
By hearts and hands so few.

The darkest land ’neath a blue sky’s dome,
And the widest waste on earth;
The strangest scenes and the least like home
In the lands of our fathers’ birth;
The loneliest land in the wide world then,
And away on the furthest seas,
A land most barren of life for men--
And they won it by twos and threes!

With God, or a dog, to watch, they slept
By the camp-fires’ ghastly glow,
Where the scrubs were dark as the blacks that crept
With ‘nulla’ and spear held low;
Death was hidden amongst the trees,
And bare on the glaring sand
They fought and perished by twos and threes--
And that’s how they won the land!

It was two that failed by the dry creek bed,
While one reeled on alone--
The dust of Australia’s greatest dead
With the dust of the desert blown!
Gaunt cheek-bones cracking the parchment skin
That scorched in the blazing sun,
Black lips that broke in a ghastly grin--
And that’s how the land was won!

Starvation and toil on the tracks they went,
And death by the lonely way;
The childbirth under the tilt or tent,
The childbirth under the dray!
The childbirth out in the desolate hut
With a half-wild gin for nurse--
That’s how the first were born to bear
The brunt of the first man’s curse!

They toiled and they fought through the shame of it--
Through wilderness, flood, and drought;
They worked, in the struggles of early days,
Their sons’ salvation out.
The white girl-wife in the hut alone,
The men on the boundless run,
The miseries suffered, unvoiced, unknown--
And that’s how the land was won.

No armchair rest for the old folk then--
But, ruined by blight and drought,
They blazed the tracks to the camps again
In the big scrubs further out.
The worn haft, wet with a father’s sweat,
Gripped hard by the eldest son,
The boy’s back formed to the hump of toil--
And that’s how the land was won!

And beyond Up Country, beyond Out Back,
And the rainless belt, they ride,
The currency lad and the ne’er-do-weel
And the black sheep, side by side;
In wheeling horizons of endless haze
That disk through the Great North-west,
They ride for ever by twos and by threes--
And that’s how they win the rest.

THE BOSS OVER THE BOARD

When he’s over a rough and unpopular shed,
With the sins of the bank and the men on his head;
When he musn’t look black or indulge in a grin,
And thirty or forty men hate him like Sin--
I am moved to admit--when the total is scored--
That it’s just a bit off for the Boss-of-the-board.
I have battled a lot,
But my dream’s never soared
To the lonely position of Boss-of-the-board.

’Twas a black-listed shed down the Darling: the Boss
Was a small man to see--though a big man to cross--
We had nought to complain of--except what we thought,
And the Boss didn’t boss any more than he ought;
But the Union was booming, and Brotherhood soared,
So we hated like poison the Boss-of-the-board.
We could tolerate ‘hands’--
We respected the cook;
But the name of a Boss was a blot in our book.

He’d a row with Big Duggan--a rough sort of Jim--
Or, rather, Jim Duggan was ‘laying for’ him!
His hate of Injustice and Greed was so deep
That his shearing grew rough--and he ill-used the sheep.
And I fancied that Duggan his manliness lower’d
When he took off his shirt to the Boss-of-the-board,
For the Boss was ten stone,
And the shearer full-grown,
And he might have, they said, let the crawler alone.

Though some of us there wished the fight to the strong,
Yet we knew in our hearts that the shearer was wrong.
And the crawler was plucky, it can’t be denied,
For he had to fight Freedom and Justice beside,
But he came up so gamely, as often as floored,
That a blackleg stood up for the Boss-of-the-board!
And the fight was a sight,
And we pondered that night--
‘It’s surprising how some of those blacklegs can fight!’

Next day at the office, when sadly the wreck
Of Jim Duggan came up like a lamb for his cheque,
Said the Boss, ‘Don’t be childish! It’s all past and gone;
I am short of good shearers. You’d _better_ stay on.’
And we fancied Jim Duggan _our_ dignity lower’d
When he stopped to oblige a damned Boss-of-the-board.
We said nothing to Jim,
For a joke might be grim,
And the subject, we saw, was distasteful to him.

The Boss just went on as he’d done from the first,
And he favoured Big Duggan no more than the worst;
And when we’d cut out and the steamer came down--
With the hawkers and spielers--to take us to town,
And we’d all got aboard, ’twas Jim Duggan, good Lord!
Who yelled for three cheers for the Boss-of-the-board.
’Twas a bit off, no doubt--
And with Freedom about--
But a lot is forgot when a shed is cut out.

With Freedom of Contract maintained in his shed,
And the curse of the Children of Light on his head,
He’s apt to long sadly for sweetheart or wife,
And his views be inclined to the dark side of life.
The Truth must be spread and the Cause must be shored--
But it’s just a bit rough on the Boss-of-the-board.
I am all for the Right,
But perhaps (out of sight)
As a son or a husband or father he’s white.

WHEN THE LADIES COME TO THE SHEARING SHED

‘The ladies are coming,’ the super says
To the shearers sweltering there,
And ‘the ladies’ means in the shearing shed:
‘Don’t cut ’em too bad. Don’t swear.’
The ghost of a pause in the shed’s rough heart,
And lower is bowed each head;
And nothing is heard, save a whispered word,
And the roar of the shearing-shed.

The tall, shy rouser has lost his wits,
And his limbs are all astray;
He leaves a fleece on the shearing-board,
And his broom in the shearer’s way.
There’s a curse in store for that jackaroo
As down by the wall he slants--
And the ringer bends with his legs askew
And wishes he’d ‘patched them pants.’

They are girls from the city. (Our hearts rebel
As we squint at their dainty feet.)
And they gush and say in a girly way
That ‘the dear little lambs’ are ‘sweet.’
And Bill, the ringer, who’d scorn the use
Of a childish word like ‘damn,’
Would give a pound that his tongue were loose
As he tackles a lively lamb.

Swift thoughts of homes in the coastal towns--
Or rivers and waving grass--
And a weight on our hearts that we cannot define
That comes as the ladies pass.
But the rouser ventures a nervous dig
In the ribs of the next to him;
And Barcoo says to his pen-mate: ‘Twig
The style of the last un, Jim.’

Jim Moonlight gives her a careless glance--
Then he catches his breath with pain--
His strong hand shakes and the sunlights dance
As he bends to his work again.
But he’s well disguised in a bristling beard,
Bronzed skin, and his shearer’s dress;
And whatever Jim Moonlight hoped or feared
Were hard for his mates to guess.

Jim Moonlight, wiping his broad, white brow,
Explains, with a doleful smile:
‘A stitch in the side,’ and ‘he’s all right now’--
But he leans on the beam awhile,
And gazes out in the blazing noon
On the clearing, brown and bare--
She has come and gone, like a breath of June,
In December’s heat and glare.

The bushmen are big rough boys at the best,
With hearts of a larger growth;
But they hide those hearts with a brutal jest,
And the pain with a reckless oath.
Though the Bills and Jims of the bush-bard sing
Of their life loves, lost or dead,
The love of a girl is a sacred thing
Not voiced in a shearing-shed.

THE BALLAD OF THE ROUSEABOUT

A rouseabout of rouseabouts, from any land--or none--
I bear a nick-name of the bush, and I’m--a woman’s son;
I came from where I camp’d last night, and, at the day-dawn glow,
I rub the darkness from my eyes, roll up my swag, and go.

Some take the track for bitter pride, some for no pride at all--
(But--to us all the world is wide when driven to the wall)
Some take the track for gain in life, some take the track for loss--
And some of us take up the swag as Christ took up the Cross.

Some take the track for faith in men--some take the track for doubt--
Some flee a squalid home to work their own salvation out.
Some dared not see a mother’s tears nor meet a father’s face--
Born of good Christian families some leap, head-long, from Grace.

Oh we are men who fought and rose, or fell from many grades;
Some born to lie, and some to pray, we’re men of many trades;
We’re men whose fathers were and are of high and low degree--
The sea was open to us and we sailed across the sea.

And--were our quarrels wrong or just?--has no place in my song--
We seared our souls in puzzling as to what was right or wrong;
We judge not and we are not judged--’tis our philosophy--
There’s something wrong with every ship that sails upon the sea.

From shearing shed to shearing shed we tramp to make a cheque--
Jack Cornstalk and the ne’er-do-weel--the tar-boy and the wreck.
We learn the worth of man to man--and this we learn too well--
The shanty and the shearing shed are warmer spots in hell!

I’ve humped my swag to Bawley Plain, and further out and on;
I’ve boiled my billy by the Gulf, and boiled it by the Swan--
I’ve thirsted in dry lignum swamps, and thirsted on the sand,
And eked the fire with camel dung in Never-Never Land.

I know the track from Spencer’s Gulf and north of Cooper’s Creek--
Where falls the half-caste to the strong, ‘black velvet’ to the weak--
(From gold-top Flossie in the Strand to half-caste and the gin--
If they had brains, poor animals! we’d teach them how to sin.)

I’ve tramped, and camped, and ‘shore’ and drunk with many mates Out Back--
And every one to me is Jack because the first was Jack--
A ‘lifer’ sneaked from jail at home--the ‘straightest’ mate I met--
A ‘ratty’ Russian Nihilist--a British Baronet!

I know the tucker tracks that feed--or leave one in the lurch--
The ‘Burgoo’ (Presbyterian) track--the ‘Murphy’ (Roman Church)--
But more the _man_, and not the _track_, so much as it appears,
For ‘battling’ is a trade to learn, and I’ve served seven years.

We’re haunted by the past at times--and this is very bad,
And so we drink till horrors come, lest, sober, we go mad--
So much is lost Out Back, so much of hell is realised--
A man might skin himself alive and no one be surprised.

A rouseabout of rouseabouts, above--beneath regard,
I know how soft is this old world, and I have learnt how hard--
A rouseabout of rouseabouts--I know what men can feel,
I’ve seen the tears from hard eyes slip as drops from polished steel.

I learned what college had to teach, and in the school of men
By camp-fires I have learned, or, say, unlearned it all again;
But this I’ve learned, that truth is strong, and if a man go straight
He’ll live to see his enemy struck down by time and fate!

We hold him true who’s true to one however false he be
(There’s something wrong with every ship that lies beside the quay);
We lend and borrow, laugh and joke, and when the past is drowned,
We sit upon our swags and smoke and watch the world go round.

YEARS AFTER THE WAR IN AUSTRALIA

The big rough boys from the runs out back were first where the balls flew
free,
And yelled in the slang of the Outside Track: ‘By God, it’s a
Christmas spree!’
‘It’s not too rusty’--and ‘Wool away!--stand clear of the blazing
shoots!’--
‘Sheep O! Sheep O!’--‘We’ll cut out to-day’--‘Look out for the boss’s
boots!’--
‘What price the tally in camp to-night!’--‘What price the boys Out Back!’--
‘Go it, you tigers, for Right or Might and the pride of the Outside
Track!’--
‘Needle and thread!’--‘I have broke my comb!’--‘Now ride, you flour-bags,
ride!’--
‘Fight for your mates and the folk at home!’--‘Here’s for the Lachlan
side!’
Those men of the West would sneer and scoff at the gates of hell ajar,
And oft the sight of a head cut off was hailed by a yell for ‘Tar!’

* * * * *

I heard the push in the Red Redoubt, irate at a luckless shot:
‘Look out for the blooming shell, look out!’--‘Gor’ bli’ me, but that’s
red-hot!’--
‘It’s Bill the Slogger--poor bloke--he’s done. A chunk of the shell was his;
I wish the beggar that fired that gun could get within reach of Liz.’
‘Those foreign gunners will give us rats, but I wish it was Bill they
missed.’
‘I’d like to get at their bleeding hats with a rock in my (something)
fist.’

‘Hold up, Billy; I’ll stick to you; they’ve hit you under the belt;
If we get the waddle I’ll swag you through, if the blazing mountains melt;
You remember the night when the traps got me for stoushing a bleeding
Chow,
And you went for ’em proper and laid out three, and I won’t forget it
now.’
And, groaning and swearing, the pug replied: ‘I’m done ... they’ve
knocked
me out!
I’d fight them all for a pound a-side, from the boss to the rouseabout.
My nut is cracked and my legs is broke, and it gives me worse than hell;
I trained for a scrap with a twelve-stone bloke, and not with a bursting
shell.
You needn’t mag, for I knowed, old chum, I _knowed_, old pal, you’d stick;
But you can’t hold out till the reg’lars come, and you’d best be nowhere
quick.
They’ve got a force and a gun ashore, both of our wings is broke;
They’ll storm the ridge in a minute more, and the best you can do is
smoke.’