Let others prate of Greece and Rome, And towns where they may never be, The muse should wander nearer home. My country is enough for me; Her wooded hills that watch the sea, Her inland miles of springing corn, At Macedon or Barrakee— I love the land where I was born. On Juliet smile the autumn stars And windswept plains by Winchelsea, In summer on their sandy bars Her rivers loiter languidly. Where singing waters fall and flee The gullied ranges dip to Lorne With musk and gum and myrtle tree— I love the land where I was born.
The wild things in her tangles move As blithe as fauns in Sicily, Where Melbourne rises roof by roof The tall ships serve her at the quay, And hers the yoke of liberty On stalwart shoulders lightly worn, Where thought and speech and prayer are free— I love the land where I was born.
Princes and lords of high degree, Smile, and we fling you scorn for scorn, In hope and faith and memory I love the land where I was born.
At oldest moon the tanker is aimed at shore and scuttled like a much smaller thing; its prow cocked in the unnatural questioning of a carcass head; its waterlines, doing marked done. Empty oil-barrels thrown to sea, herded to shore, then the loosest fittings, then steeliest ego-structure: all parts can be turned to mutiny in the end. In the hull’s darkness a man, as taken as Jonah, falls off a girder and ends forty feet below, straddling a crossbeam that splits his pelvis in two.
We present this work in honor of the poet’s 175th birthday.
Louisa Lawson Australian 1848 – 1920
The waratah has stained her cheek, Her lips are even brighter, Like virgin quartz without a streak Her teeth are, but far whiter. Her eyes are large arid soft and dark, And clear as running water; And straight as any stringy bark Is Lil, the digger’s daughter.
She’ll wash a prospect quick and well, And deftly rise the ladle; The weight of gold at sight she’ll tell, And work with tub and cradle. She was her father’s only mate, And wound up wash and water, She worked all day and studied late, For all she knows he taught her.
She stood to wait the word below. A test for woman, rather; When I sprang to the windlass bow, And helped her land her father, She turned her pretty face on me To thank me, and I thought her The grandest girl of all her race Sweet Lil, the digger’s daughter.
And when my luck began to change I grew a trifle bolder, And told my love, but it was strange She knew before I told her. She said that she would be my wife, Then home I proudly brought her, To be my loving mate for life, But still the digger’s daughter.
In a white gully among fungus red Where serpent logs lay hissing at the air, I found a kangaroo. Tall dewy,dead, So like a woman, she lay silent there. Her ivory hands, black-nailed, crossed on her breast Her skin of sun and moon hues, fallen cold her brown eyes lay like rivers come to rest And death had made her black mouth harsh and old Beside her in the ashes I sat deep And mourned for her, but had no native song To flatter death, while down the ploughlands steep Dark young Camelli whistled loud and long, ‘Love, liberty and Italy are all.’ Broad golden was his breast against the sun I saw his wattle whip rise high and fall Across the slim mare’s flanks, and one by one She drew the furrows after her as he Flapped like a gull behind her, climbing high Chanting his oaths and lashing soundingly, While from the mare came once a blowing sigh. The dew upon the kangaroo’s white side Had melted. Time was whirling high around, Like the thin woomera, and from heaven wide He, the bull-roarer, made continuous sound Incarnate lay my country by my hand: Her long hot days, bushfires, and speaking rains Her mornings of opal and the copper band Of smoke around the sunlight on the plains. Globed in fire-bodies the meat- ants ran to taste her flesh and linked us as we lay, Forever Australian, listening to a man From careless Italy, swearing at our day. When golden-lipped, the eagle-hawks came down Hissing and whistling to eat of lovely her And the blowflies with their shields of purple brown Plied hatching to and fro across her fur, I burnt her with the logs, and stood all day Among the ashes, pressing home the flame Till woman, logs and dreams were scorched away And native with the night, that land from whence they came.
We present this work in honor of the 90th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Christopher Brennan Australian 1870 – 1932
Fire in the heavens, and fire along the hills, and fire made solid in the flinty stone, thick-mass’d or scatter’d pebble, fire that fills the breathless hour that lives in fire alone.
This valley, long ago the patient bed of floods that carv’d its antient amplitude, in stillness of the Egyptian crypt outspread, endures to drown in noon-day’s tyrant mood.
Behind the veil of burning silence bound, vast life’s innumerous busy littleness is hush’d in vague-conjectured blur of sound that dulls the brain with slumbrous weight, unless
some dazzling puncture let the stridence throng in the cicada’s torture-point of song.
We present this work in honor of the 100th anniversary of the poet’s death.
Henry Lawson Australian 1867 – 1922
“Where are you going with your horse and bike, And the townsfolk still at rest? Where are you going, with your swag and pack, And the night still in the West? Your clothes are worn, and your cheques are gone, But your eyes are free from care?” “We’re bushmen down for a spree in town, And we’re bound for the Lord-knows-where, Old chap-we’re bound for the Lord-knows-where.” (There are great dark scrubs in the Lord-knows-where, Where they fight it out alone, There are wide wide plains in the Lord-knows-where, Where a man’s soul is his own. There is healthy work, there is healthy rest, There is peace from self-torture there, And the glorious freedom from paltriness! And they’re bound for the Lord-knows-where.) “Now, where are you going in your Sunday suit, And a bag for your second best? Now where are you going with your chest of tools, And the old togs in the chest? With your six clean shirts and a pound of ‘weed’, And enough for a third-class fare?” “Oh! I’ll be afloat by the very next boat, And I’m bound for the Lord-knows-where, Old chap-I’m bound for the Lord-knows-where.” (There are wide wide seas to the Lord-knows-where, Where a man might have a spell, The things turn up in the Lord-knows-where that We waited for too well. There’s a stranger land in the Lord-knows-where, And a show for the stranger there. There is war and quake more work to make, And he’s bound for the Lord-knows-where.) “Now where are you going with your Gladstone bag, With your shirt-case and valise? Now where are you going with your cap and shoes, And your looks of joyful peace? Now where are you going with your money belts, And your drafts on the first bank there?” “‘We have made a hit,’ or ‘we’ve made a bit,’ And we’re bound for the Lord-knows-where, Old chap-we’re bound for the Lord-knows-where.” (There are sinful ports in the Lord-knows-where, There are marvellous sights to see, There are high old games in the Lord-knows-where, That were known to you and me. There is love and music, and life and light from The Heads to “Lester” Square, There is more than space for their high young hearts There is safety or danger there, And they’ll come back wild, or they’ll come back tamed When they’ve been to the Lord-knows-where.) “Now where am I going with my whisky flask, And with little else beside? Now where am I going with my second shirt, To wear while the first is dried? I have marred my name, and I’ve lost my fame, But my hope’s in good repair. There are lies about, there are warrants out- And I’m bound for the Lord-knows-where, Old Chap-and I’m bound for the Lord-knows-where.” (There’s a rise and fall of the sloping decks, That is good for a soul in pain; There’s the drowsy rest on the sunlight sea Till your strength comes back again. Oh, the wild mad spirit is hypnotized, And nerves are tranquil there, And the past is hushed in forgetfulness, On the road to the Lord-knows-where.)
Sing the evil days we see, and the worse that are to be, In such doggerel as dejection will allow, We are pilgrims, sorrow-led, with no Beulah on ahead, No elysian Up the Country for us now.
For the settlements extend till they seem to have no end; Spreading silently, you can’t tell when or how; And a home-infested land stretches out on every hand, So there is no Up the Country for us now.
On the six-foot Mountain peak, up and down the dubious creek, Where the cockatoos alone should make a row, There the rooster tears his throat, to announce with homely note, That there is no Up the Country for us now.
Where the dingo should be seen, sounds the Army tambourine, While the hardest case surrenders with a vow; And the church-bell, going strong, makes us feel we’ve lived too long, Since there is no Up the Country for us now.
And along the pine-ridge side, where the mallee-hen should hide, You will see some children driving home a cow; Whilst, ballooning on a line, female garniture gives sign, That there is no Up the Country for us now.
Here, in place of emu’s eggs, you will find surveyors’ pegs, And the culvert where there ought to be a slough; There, a mortise in the ground, shows the digger has been round, And has left no Up the Country for us now.
And across this fenced-in view, like our friend the well-sung Jew, Goes the swaggy, with a frown upon his brow, He is cabin’d, cribb’d, confin’d, for the thought is on his mind, That there is no Up the Country for him now.
And the boy that bolts from home has no decent place to roam, No region with adventure to endow, But his ardent spirit cools at the sight of farms and schools, Hence, there is no Up the Country for him now.
Such a settling, spreading curse must infallibly grow worse, Till the saltbush disappears before the plough, But the future, evil-fraught, is forgotten in the thought, That there is no Up the Country for us now.
We must do a steady shift, and devote our minds to thrift, Till we reach at length the standard of the Chow, For we’re crumpled side by side in a world no longer wide, And there is no Up the Country for us now.
Better we were cold and still, with our famous Jim and Bill, Beneath the interdicted wattle-bough, For the angels made our date five-and-twenty years too late, And there is no Up the Country for us now.
Poets Corner 