Do You Think That I Do Not Know?

They say that I never have written of love,
As a writer of songs should do;
They say that I never could touch the strings
With a touch that is firm and true;
They say I know nothing of women and men
In the fields where Love's roses grow,
And they say I must write with a halting pen
Do you think that I do not know?


When the love-burst came, like an English Spring,
In days when our hair was brown,
And the hem of her skirt was a sacred thing
And her hair was an angel's crown.
The shock when another man touched her arm,
Where the dancers sat round in a row;
The hope and despair, and the false alarm
Do you think that I do not know?


By the arbour lights on the western farms,
You remember the question put,
While you held her warm in your quivering arms
And you trembled from head to foot.
The electric shock from her finger tips,
And the murmuring answer low,
The soft, shy yielding of warm red lips
Do you think that I do not know?


She was buried at Brighton, where Gordon sleeps,
When I was a world away;
And the sad old garden its secret keeps,
For nobody knows to-day.
She left a message for me to read,
Where the wild wide oceans flow;
Do you know how the heart of a man can bleed
Do you think that I do not know?


I stood by the grave where the dead girl lies,
When the sunlit scenes were fair,
And the white clouds high in the autumn skies,
And I answered the message there.
But the haunting words of the dead to me
Shall go wherever I go.
She lives in the Marriage that Might Have Been
Do you think that I do not know?


They sneer or scoff, and they pray or groan,
And the false friend plays his part.
Do you think that the blackguard who drinks alone
Knows aught of a pure girl's heart?
Knows aught of the first pure love of a boy
With his warm young blood aglow,
Knows aught of the thrill of the world-old joy



Do you think that I do not know?


They say that I never have written of love,
They say that my heart is such
That finer feelings are far above;
But a writer may know too much.
There are darkest depths in the brightest nights,
When the clustering stars hang low;
There are things it would break his strong heart to write
Do you think that I do not know?

Dawgs of War

Comes the British bulldog first—solid as a log—
He’s so ugly in repose that he’s a handsome dog;
Full of mild benevolence as his years increase;
Silent as a china dog on the mantelpiece.
Rub his sides and point his nose,
Click your tongue and in he goes,
To the thick of Britain’s foes—
Enemies behind him close—
(
Silence for a while
).


Comes a very different dog—tell him at a glance.
Clipped and trimmed and frilled all round. Dandy dog of France.
(Always was a dandy dog, no matter what his age)
Now his every hair and frill is stiff as wire with rage.
Rub his sides and point his nose,
Click your tongue and in he goes,
While behind him France’s foes
Reel and surge and pack and close.
(
Silence for a while
.)


Next comes Belgium’s market dog—hard to realise.
Go-cart dog and barrow dog—he’s a great surprise.
Dog that never hurt a cat, did no person harm;
Friendly, kindly, round and fat as a “Johnny Darm.”
Rub his sides and point his nose,
Click your tongue and in he goes,
At the flank of Belgium’s foes
Who could not behind him close—
(
Silence for a while
).


Next comes Servia’s mongrel pup—mongrel dawgs can fight;
Up or down, or down or up, whether wrong or right.
He was mad the other day—he is mad today,
Hustling round and raising dust in his backyard way.
Rub his sides and point his nose,
Click your tongue and in he goes,
’Twixt the legs of Servia’s foes,
Biting tails and rearmost toes—
(
Silence for a while
.)



There are various terrier dawgs mixed up in the scrap,
Much too small for us to see, and too mad to yap.
Each one, on his frantic own—heard the row commence—
Tore with tooth and claw a hole in the backyard fence.
No one called, but in they go,
Dogs with many a nameless woe,
Tripping up their common foe—
(
Silence for a while
).


From the snows of Canada, dragging box and bale,
Comes the sledge-dog toiling on, sore-foot from the trail.
He’ll be useful in the trench, when the nose is blue—
Winter dog that knows the French and the English too.
Rub his sides and point his nose,
Click your tongue and in he goes,
At his father’s country’s foes,
And his mother’s country’s foes.
(
Silence for a while
.)


See, in sunny Southern France a dog that runs by sight,
Lean and yellow, sharp of nose, long of leg and light,
Silent and bloodthirsty, too; Distance in his eyes,
Leaping high to gain his view, the Kangaroo Dog flies!
Rub his sides and point his nose,
Click your tongue and up he goes,
Lands amongst his country’s foes—
And his country’s country’s foes;
While they sway and while they close—
(
Silence for a while
).


See across the early snow, far across the plain,
Where the clouds are grey and low and winter comes again;
By the sand-dune and the marsh—and forest black and dumb—
As dusky white as their winter’s night, the Russian wolf-hounds come!
(
Silence for a while
.)

Dan Wasn’t Thrown from His Horse

THEY SAY he was thrown and run over,
But that is sheer nonsense, of course:
I taught him to ride when a kiddy,
And Dan wasn’t thrown from his horse.


The horse that Dan rode was a devil—
The kind of a brute I despise,
With nasty white eyelashes fringing
A pair of red, sinister eyes.


And a queerly-shaped spot on his forehead,
Where I put a conical ball
The day that he murdered Dan Denver,
The pluckiest rider of all.


’Twas after the races were over
And Duggan (a Talbragar man)
And two of the Denvers, and Barney
Were trying a gallop with Dan.


Dan’s horse on a sudden got vicious,
And reared up an’ plunged in the race,
Then threw back his head, hitting Dan like
A sledge-hammer, full in the face.


Dan stopped and got down, stood a moment,
Then fell to the ground like a stone,
And died about ten minutes after;
But they’re liars who say he was thrown.

Cromwell


They took dead Cromwell from his grave,
And stuck his head on high;
The Merry Monarch and his men,
They laughed as they passed by
The common people cheered and jeered,
To England’s deep disgrace—
The crowds who’d ne’er have dared to look
Live Cromwell in the face.


He came in England’s direst need
With law and fire and sword,
He thrashed her enemies at home
And crushed her foes abroad;
He kept his word by sea and land,
His parliament he schooled,
He made the nations understand
A Man in England ruled!


Van Tromp, with twice the English ships,
And flushed by victory—
A great broom to his masthead bound—
Set sail to sweep the sea.
But England’s ruler was a man
Who needed lots of room—
So Blake soon lowered the Dutchman’s tone,
And smashed the Dutchman’s broom.


He sent a bill to Tuscany
For sixty thousand pounds,
For wrong done to his subjects there,
And merchants in her bounds.
He sent by Debt Collector Blake,
And—you need but be told
That, by the Duke of Tuscany
That bill was paid in gold.


To pirate ports in Africa
He sent a message grim
To have each captured Englishman
Delivered up to him;
And every ship and cargo’s worth,
And every boat and gun—
And this—all this, as Dickens says—
“Was gloriously done.”


They’d tortured English prisoners
Who’d sailed the Spanish Main;
So Cromwell sent a little bill
By Admiral Blake to Spain.
To keep his hand in, by the way.
He whipped the Portuguese;
And he made it safe for English ships



To sail the Spanish seas.


The Protestants in Southern lands
Had long been sore oppressed;
They sent their earnest prayers to Noll
To have their wrongs redressed.
He sent a message to the Powers,
In which he told them flat,
All men must praise God as they chose,
Or he would see to that.


And, when he’d hanged the fools at home
And settled foreign rows,
He found the time to potter round
Amongst his pigs and cows.
Of private rows he never spoke,
That grand old Ironsides.
They said a father’s strong heart broke
When Cromwell’s daughter died.


(They dragged his body from its grave,
His head stuck on a pole,
They threw his wife’s and daughter’s bones
Into a rubbish hole
To rot with those of two who’d lived
And fought for England’s sake,
And each one in his own brave way—
Great Pym, and Admiral Blake.)


From Charles to Charles, throughout the world
Old England’s name was high,
And that’s a thing no Royalist
Could ever yet deny.
Long shameful years have passed since then,
In spite of England’s boast—
But Englishmen were Englishmen,
While Cromwell carved the roast.


And, in my country’s hour of need—
For it shall surely come,
While run by fools who’ll never heed
The beating of the drum.
While baffled by the fools at home,
And threatened from the sea—
Lord! send a man like Oliver—
And let me live to see.

Clinging Back

When you see a man come walking down through George Street loose and free,
Suit of saddle tweed and soft shirt, and a belt and cabbagetree,
With the careless swing and carriage, and the confidence you lack—
There is freedom in Australia! he’s a man that’s clinging back.
Clingin’ back,
Holdin’ back,
To the old things and the bold things clinging back.
When you see a woman riding as I saw one ride to-day
Down the street to Milson’s Ferry on a big, upstanding bay,
With her body gently swaying to the horse-shoes’ click-a-clack,
You might lift your hat (with caution)—she’s a girl who’s clinging back.
Clinging back,
Swinging back.
To the old things and the bold things clinging back.


When you see a rich man pulling on the harbour in a boat,
With the motor launches racing till they scarcely seem to float,
And the little skiff is lifting to his muscles tense and slack,
You say “Go it” to a sane man. He’s a man that’s clinging back.
Clinging back,
Swinging back,
To the old things and the bold things clinging back.


When you see two lovers strolling, arm-in-arm—or round the waist,
And they never seem to loiter, and they never seem to haste,
But indifferent to others take the rock or bush-hid track
You be sure about their future, they’re a pair that’s clinging back.
Clinging back,
Holding back,
To the old things and the bold things clinging back.


I, a weary picture writer in a time that’s cruel plain,
Have been clinging all too sadly to what shall not come again,
To what shall not come and should not! for the silver’s mostly black,
And the gold a dull red copper by the springs where I held back.
Clinging back,
Holding back,
To the old things and the cold things clinging back.


But if you should read a writer sending truths home every time,
While his every “point” goes ringing like the grandest prose in rhyme,
Though he writes the people’s grammar, and he spreads the people’s “clack,”
He is stronger than the Public! and he’ll jerk the mad world back.
Yank it back,
Hold it back,
For the love of little children hold it back.

Coomera


THERE’S a pretty little story with a touch of moonlit glory
Comes from Beenleigh on the Logan, but we don’t know if it’s true;
For we scarcely dare to credit ev’rything they say who edit
Those unhappy country papers ’twixt the ocean and Barcoo.


’Twas the man who owned the wherry at the first Coomera ferry
Who was sitting cold and lonely while he counted out his tin;
When the cloudy curtain lifting let the moonlight on a drifting
Boat, that floated down the river with a pallid form therein.


And they say that Sergeant Carey (with the man who ran the ferry),
Started down to save the body from the cruel heartless sea,
And in spite of wind and water, soon they reached the barque and caught her;
And they tied the boat behind them while they wondered “who was he?”


O the moon shone bright as ever as they towed him up the river,
And they found within the pocket that was nearest to his breast—
Just an antidote for sorrow, that would tide him o’er the morrow—
(Flask of Brandy); but we’d better draw the curtain o’er the rest.


Yet, in case the point’s too finely drawn (we know we joke divinely),
And the reader fails to see it with a magnifying glass,
We will say the man who floated, while the moonlight o’er him gloated,
Was not dead and gone to heaven—he was only drunk, alas!THERE’S a pretty little
story with a touch of moonlit glory
Comes from Beenleigh on the Logan, but we don’t know if it’s true;
For we scarcely dare to credit ev’rything they say who edit
Those unhappy country papers ’twixt the ocean and Barcoo.


’Twas the man who owned the wherry at the first Coomera ferry
Who was sitting cold and lonely while he counted out his tin;
When the cloudy curtain lifting let the moonlight on a drifting
Boat, that floated down the river with a pallid form therein.


And they say that Sergeant Carey (with the man who ran the ferry),
Started down to save the body from the cruel heartless sea,
And in spite of wind and water, soon they reached the barque and caught her;
And they tied the boat behind them while they wondered “who was he?”


O the moon shone bright as ever as they towed him up the river,
And they found within the pocket that was nearest to his breast—
Just an antidote for sorrow, that would tide him o’er the morrow—
(Flask of Brandy); but we’d better draw the curtain o’er the rest.


Yet, in case the point’s too finely drawn (we know we joke divinely),
And the reader fails to see it with a magnifying glass,
We will say the man who floated, while the moonlight o’er him gloated,
Was not dead and gone to heaven—he was only drunk, alas!
For we scarcely dare to credit ev’rything they say who edit
Those unhappy country papers ’twixt the ocean and Barcoo.


’Twas the man who owned the wherry at the first Coomera ferry



Who was sitting cold and lonely while he counted out his tin;
When the cloudy curtain lifting let the moonlight on a drifting
Boat, that floated down the river with a pallid form therein.


And they say that Sergeant Carey (with the man who ran the ferry),
Started down to save the body from the cruel heartless sea,
And in spite of wind and water, soon they reached the barque and caught her;
And they tied the boat behind them while they wondered “who was he?”


O the moon shone bright as ever as they towed him up the river,
And they found within the pocket that was nearest to his breast—
Just an antidote for sorrow, that would tide him o’er the morrow—
(Flask of Brandy); but we’d better draw the curtain o’er the rest.


Yet, in case the point’s too finely drawn (we know we joke divinely),
And the reader fails to see it with a magnifying glass,
We will say the man who floated, while the moonlight o’er him gloated,
Was not dead and gone to heaven—he was only drunk, alas!

Caricatures


There are writers great and writers small
And writers on the spree;
And writers short and writers tall,
And bards of low degree.


There are artists small and artist great,
With lines both bold and free –
It takes a Low to illustrate
Us bards of low degree.

Cherry- Tree Inn

The rafters are open to sun, moon, and star,
Thistles and nettles grow high in the bar --
The chimneys are crumbling, the log fires are dead,
And green mosses spring from the hearthstone instead.
The voices are silent, the bustle and din,
For the railroad hath ruined the Cherry-tree Inn.


Save the glimmer of stars, or the moon's pallid streams,
And the sounds of the 'possums that camp on the beams,
The bar-room is dark and the stable is still,
For the coach comes no more over Cherry-tree Hill.
No riders push on through the darkness to win
The rest and the comfort of Cherry-tree Inn.


I drift from my theme, for my memory strays
To the carrying, digging, and bushranging days --
Far back to the seasons that I love the best,
When a stream of wild diggers rushed into the west,
But the `rushes' grew feeble, and sluggish, and thin,
Till scarcely a swagman passed Cherry-tree Inn.


Do you think, my old mate (if it's thinking you be),
Of the days when you tramped to the goldfields with me?
Do you think of the day of our thirty-mile tramp,
When never a fire could we light on the camp,
And, weary and footsore and drenched to the skin,
We tramped through the darkness to Cherry-tree Inn?


Then I had a sweetheart and you had a wife,
And Johnny was more to his mother than life;
But we solemnly swore, ere that evening was done,
That we'd never return till our fortunes were won.
Next morning to harvests of folly and sin
We tramped o'er the ranges from Cherry-tree Inn.


. . . . .

The years have gone over with many a change,
And there comes an old swagman from over the range,
And faint 'neath the weight of his rain-sodden load,
He suddenly thinks of the inn by the road.
He tramps through the darkness the shelter to win,
And reaches the ruins of Cherry-tree Inn.

Cameron's Heart

The diggings were just in their glory when Alister Cameron came,
With recommendations, he told me, from friends and a parson `at hame';
He read me his recommendations -- he called them a part of his plant --
The first one was signed by an Elder, the other by Cameron's aunt.
The meenister called him `ungodly -- a stray frae the fauld o' the Lord',
And his aunt set him down as a spendthrift, `a rebel at hame and abroad'.


He got drunk now and then and he gambled (such heroes are often the same);
That's all they could say in connection with Alister Cameron's name.
He was straight and he stuck to his country


and spoke with respect of his kirk;
He did his full share of the cooking, and more than his share of the work.
And many a poor devil then, when his strength and his money were spent,
Was sure of a lecture -- and tucker, and a shakedown in Cameron's tent.

He shunned all the girls in the camp,

and they said he was proof to the dart --
That nothing but whisky and gaming had ever a place in his heart;
He carried a packet about him, well hid, but I saw it at last,
And -- well, 'tis a very old story -- the story of Cameron's past:
A ring and a sprig o' white heather, a letter or two and a curl,
A bit of a worn silver chain, and the portrait of Cameron's girl.

. . . . .

It chanced in the first of the Sixties that Ally and I and McKean
Were sinking a shaft on Mundoorin, near Fosberry's puddle-machine.
The bucket we used was a big one, and rather a weight when 'twas full,
Though Alister wound it up easy, for he had the strength of a bull.
He hinted at heart-disease often, but, setting his fancy apart,
I always believed there was nothing the matter with Cameron's heart.


One day I was working below -- I was filling the bucket with clay,
When Alister cried, `Pack it on, mon! we ought to be bottomed to-day.'
He wound, and the bucket rose steady and swift to the surface until
It reached the first log on the top,


where it suddenly stopped, and hung still.
I knew what was up in a moment when Cameron shouted to me:
`Climb up for your life by the footholes.

I'LL STICK TAE TH' HAUN'LE -- OR DEE!'

And those were the last words he uttered.

He groaned, for I heard him quite plain -There's
nothing so awful as that when it's wrung from a workman in pain.
The strength of despair was upon me; I started, and scarcely drew breath,
But climbed to the top for my life in the fear of a terrible death.
And there, with his waist on the handle, I saw the dead form of my mate,
And over the shaft hung the bucket, suspended by Cameron's weight.

I wonder did Alister think of the scenes in the distance so dim,
When Death at the windlass that morning took cruel advantage of him?



He knew if the bucket rushed down it would murder or cripple his mate --
His hand on the iron was closed with a grip that was stronger than Fate;
He thought of my danger, not his, when he felt in his bosom the smart,
And stuck to the handle in spite of the Finger of Death on his heart.

By Hut, Homestead And Shearing Shed,

By hut, homestead and shearing shed,
By railroad, coach and track-
By lonely graves where rest the dead,
Up-Country and Out-Back:
To where beneath the clustered stars
The dreamy plains expand-


My home lies wide a thousand miles
In Never-Never Land.
It lies beyond the farming belt,
Wide wastes of scrub and plain,
A blazing desert in the drought,
A lake-land after rain;
To the skyline sweeps the waving grass,
Or whirls the scorching sand-
A phantom land, a mystic realm!
The Never-Never Land.


Where lone Mount Desolation lies
Mounts Dreadful and Despair'
Tis lost beneath the rainless skies
In hopeless deserts there;
It spreads nor-west by No-Man's Land
Where clouds are seldom seen
To where the cattle stations lie
Three hundred miles between.


The drovers of the Great Stock Routes
The strange Gulf country Know
Where, travelling from the southern droughts,
The big lean bullocks go;
And camped by night where plains lie wide,
Like some old ocean's bed,
The watchmen in the starlight ride
Round fifteen hundred head.


Lest in the city I forget
True mateship after all,
My water-bag and billy yet
Are hanging on the wall;
And I, to save my soul again,
Would tramp to sunsets grand
With sad-eyed mates across the plain
In Never-Never Land.