The Three Kings [1]

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 blacksheep 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 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;
For though I’ve had a rocky time I’ll never quite forget,
And though I never was so deep in trouble and in debt,
And though I never was so poor nor in a fix so tight—
The tracks that run by India are shining in my sight.
The roads that run by India, and all the ports of call—
I’m going back to London first to raise the wherewithal.
I’ll call at Suez and Port Said as I am going past
(I was too worried to take notes when I was that way last),
At Naples and at Genoa, and, if I get the chance,
Who knows but I might run across the pleasant land of France.


The track that runs by India goes up the hot Red Sea—
The other side of Africa is far too dull for me.
(I fear that I have missed a chance I’ll never get again
To see the land of chivalry and bide awhile in Spain.)
I’ll graft a year in London, and if fortune smiles on me
I’ll take the track to India by France and Italy.


’Tis sweet to court some foreign girl with eyes of lustrous glow,
Who does not know my language and whose language I don’t know;
To loll on gently-rolling decks beneath the softening skies,
While she sits knitting opposite, and make love with our eyes—
The glance that says far more than words, the old half-mystic smile—
The track that runs by India will wait for me awhile.


The tracks that run by India to China and Japan,
The tracks where all the rovers go—the tracks that call a Man!
I’m wearied of the formal lands of parson and of priest,
Of dollars and of fashions, and I’m drifting towards the East;
I’m tired of cant and cackle, and of sordid jobbery—
The mystery of the East hath cast its glamour over me.

The Teams

A cloud of dust on the long white road,

And the teams go creeping on
Inch by inch with the weary load;
And by the power of the green-hide goad

The distant goal is won.

With eyes half-shut to the blinding dust,

And necks to the yokes bent low,
The beasts are pulling as bullocks must;
And the shining tires might almost rust

While the spokes are turning slow.

With face half-hid 'neath a broad-brimmed hat

That shades from the heat's white waves,
And shouldered whip with its green-hide plait,
The driver plods with a gait like that

Of his weary, patient slaves.

He wipes his brow, for the day is hot,

And spits to the left with spite;
He shouts at `Bally', and flicks at `Scot',
And raises dust from the back of `Spot',

And spits to the dusty right.

He'll sometimes pause as a thing of form

In front of a settler's door,
And ask for a drink, and remark `It's warm,
Or say `There's signs of a thunder-storm';

But he seldom utters more.

But the rains are heavy on roads like these;

And, fronting his lonely home,
For weeks together the settler sees
The teams bogged down to the axletrees,

Or ploughing the sodden loam.

And then when the roads are at their worst,

The bushman's children hear
The cruel blows of the whips reversed
While bullocks pull as their hearts would burst,

And bellow with pain and fear.

And thus with little of joy or rest

Are the long, long journeys done;
And thus -- 'tis a cruel war at the best --
Is distance fought in the mighty West,

And the lonely battles won.

The Stringy-Bark Tree

There's the whitebox and pine on the ridges afar,
Where the iron-bark, blue-gum, and peppermint are;
There is many another, but dearest to me,
And the king of them all was the stringy-bark tree.
Then of stringy-bark slabs were the walls of the hut,
And from stringy-bark saplings the rafters were cut;
And the roof that long sheltered my brothers and me
Was of broad sheets of bark from the stringy-bark tree.


And when sawn-timber homes were built out in the West,
Then for walls and for ceilings its wood was the best;
And for shingles and palings to last while men be,
There was nothing on earth like the stringy-bark tree.


Far up the long gullies the timber-trucks went,
Over tracks that seemed hopeless, by bark hut and tent;
And the gaunt timber-finder, who rode at his ease,
Led them on to a gully of stringy-bark trees.


Now still from the ridges, by ways that are dark,
Come the shingles and palings they call stringy-bark;
Though you ride through long gullies a twelve months you’ll see
But the old whitened stumps of the stringy-bark tree.

The Star of Australasia

We boast no more of our bloodless flag, that rose from a nation's slime;
Better a shred of a deep-dyed rag from the storms of the olden time.
From grander clouds in our `peaceful skies' than ever were there before
I tell you the Star of the South shall rise -- in the lurid clouds of war.
It ever must be while blood is warm and the sons of men increase;
For ever the nations rose in storm, to rot in a deadly peace.
There comes a point that we will not yield, no matter if right or wrong,
And man will fight on the battle-field


while passion and pride are strong --
So long as he will not kiss the rod, and his stubborn spirit sours,
And the scorn of Nature and curse of God are heavy on peace like ours.

. . . . .

There are boys out there by the western creeks, who hurry away from school
To climb the sides of the breezy peaks or dive in the shaded pool,
Who'll stick to their guns when the mountains quake

to the tread of a mighty war,
And fight for Right or a Grand Mistake as men never fought before;
When the peaks are scarred and the sea-walls crack

till the furthest hills vibrate,
And the world for a while goes rolling back in a storm of love and hate.

. . . . .

There are boys to-day in the city slum and the home of wealth and pride
Who'll have one home when the storm is come, and fight for it side by side,
Who'll hold the cliffs 'gainst the armoured hells

that batter a coastal town,
Or grimly die in a hail of shells when the walls come crashing down.
And many a pink-white baby girl, the queen of her home to-day,
Shall see the wings of the tempest whirl the mist of our dawn away --
Shall live to shudder and stop her ears to the thud of the distant gun,
And know the sorrow that has no tears when a battle is lost and won, --
As a mother or wife in the years to come, will kneel, wild-eyed and white,
And pray to God in her darkened home for the `men in the fort to-night'.

. . . . .

But, oh! if the cavalry charge again as they did when the world was wide,
'Twill be grand in the ranks of a thousand men
in that glorious race to ride
And strike for all that is true and strong,

for all that is grand and brave,
And all that ever shall be, so long as man has a soul to save.
He must lift the saddle, and close his `wings', and shut his angels out,
And steel his heart for the end of things,

who'd ride with a stockman scout,
When the race they ride on the battle track, and the waning distance hums,
And the shelled sky shrieks or the rifles crack

like stockwhip amongst the gums -



And the `straight' is reached and the field is `gapped'

and the hoof-torn sward grows red
With the blood of those who are handicapped with iron and steel and lead;
And the gaps are filled, though unseen by eyes,

with the spirit and with the shades
Of the world-wide rebel dead who'll rise and rush with the Bush Brigades.

. . . . .

All creeds and trades will have soldiers there -


give every class its due --
And there'll be many a clerk to spare for the pride of the jackeroo.
They'll fight for honour and fight for love, and a few will fight for gold,
For the devil below and for God above, as our fathers fought of old;
And some half-blind with exultant tears, and some stiff-lipped, stern-eyed,
For the pride of a thousand after-years and the old eternal pride;
The soul of the world they will feel and see

in the chase and the grim retreat -They'll
know the glory of victory -- and the grandeur of defeat.

The South will wake to a mighty change ere a hundred years are done
With arsenals west of the mountain range and every spur its gun.
And many a rickety son of a gun, on the tides of the future tossed,
Will tell how battles were really won that History says were lost,
Will trace the field with his pipe, and shirk


the facts that are hard to explain,
As grey old mates of the diggings work the old ground over again --
How `this was our centre, and this a redoubt,

and that was a scrub in the rear,
And this was the point where the guards held out,
and the enemy's lines were here.'

. . . . .

They'll tell the tales of the nights before

and the tales of the ship and fort
Till the sons of Australia take to war as their fathers took to sport,
Their breath come deep and their eyes grow bright

at the tales of our chivalry,
And every boy will want to fight, no matter what cause it be --
When the children run to the doors and cry:

`Oh, mother, the troops are come!'
And every heart in the town leaps high at the first loud thud of the drum.
They'll know, apart from its mystic charm, what music is at last,
When, proud as a boy with a broken arm, the regiment marches past.
And the veriest wreck in the drink-fiend's clutch,

no matter how low or mean,
Will feel, when he hears the march, a touch

of the man that he might have been.
And fools, when the fiends of war are out and the city skies aflame,
Will have something better to talk about than an absent woman's shame,
Will have something nobler to do by far than jest at a friend's expense,


Or blacken a name in a public bar or over a backyard fence.
And this you learn from the libelled past,

though its methods were somewhat rude --
A nation's born where the shells fall fast, or its lease of life renewed.
We in part atone for the ghoulish strife,

and the crimes of the peace we boast,
And the better part of a people's life in the storm comes uppermost.

The self-same spirit that drives the man to the depths of drink and crime
Will do the deeds in the heroes' van that live till the end of time.
The living death in the lonely bush, the greed of the selfish town,
And even the creed of the outlawed push is chivalry -- upside down.
'Twill be while ever our blood is hot, while ever the world goes wrong,
The nations rise in a war, to rot in a peace that lasts too long.
And southern nation and southern state, aroused from their dream of ease,
Must sign in the Book of Eternal Fate their stormy histories.

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 faced the sea.
But the Manly lights seemed the Sydney lights, and the bluffs as the “Heads” were
seen;
And the Manly beach was the channel then—and the captain steered between.


The croakers said with a shoulder shrug, and a careless, know-all glance:
“You might pull out her stem, or pull out her stern—but she’ll sail no more for France!”
Her stem was dry when the tide was out, and behind her banked the sand,
Where strong gales come from the Hurricane east and the sun sets on the land.


When the tide was high and the rollers struck she shuddered as if in pain,
She had no hope for the open sea and the fair full breeze again.
She turned her side to the pounding seas and the foam glared over the rails,
It seemed her fate to be sold and stripped, and broken by winter gales.


But they sent strong gear, and they sent the gangs, and they sent her a man who
knew,
And the tugs came nosing round from the Heads to see what a tug could do;
The four-ton anchors they laid to sea in the waves and the wind and rain,
And the great steel hawser they hove aboard made fast to her cable chain.


And then, while the gaping townsfolk stared from the shining beach in doubt,
The crew and the shore-gangs lowered her yards and they hove the ballast out.
(To lie like a strange sea-grave upheaved on the smooth sand by her side)
And they made all ready and clear for the tugs to come on the rising tide.


And so, in the night when the tide was in and a black sky hid the stars,
The shoremen worked at the jumping winch and the crew at the capstan bars.
To seaward the two tugs rose and fell in their own wild stormy glare
And her head came round for a fathom’s length! for a mighty heave was there.


So, tide by tide, and yard by yard, they hove her off the shore
To fit, and load for her ports of call, and to sail for France once more.
Till at last she came with the wild blind rush of a frightened thing set free,
And they towed her round to the Sydney Heads and in from the stormy sea.


And the croakers say, when a man is down, with a shrug and a know-all glance,
Oh, he’ll never get out of the gutter again, he has done with every chance;
But we’ll “haul and heave on the block and sheeve”, wave-beaten and black-rock
hemmed,
And we’ll sail with cargoes that they shall buy, when their ships are all condemned.

The Spirits for Good

We come with peace and reason,
We come with love and light,
To banish black self-treason
And everlasting night.


We know no god nor devil,
We neither drive nor lead—
We come to banish evil
In thought as well as deed.


And this our grandest mission,
And this our purest worth;
To banish superstition,
The blackest curse on earth.


We come to pass no sentence,
For ours is not the power—
The coward’s vain repentance
But wastes the waiting hour.


’Tis not for us to lengthen
The years of wasted lives;
We come to help and strengthen
The goodness that survives.


We promise nought hereafter,
We cannot conquer pain,
But work, and rest, and laughter,
Will soothe the tortured brain.


That which is lost, we cannot
Restore to any one—
But Truth and Right must triumph,
And Justice must be done!


We come in many guises;
But every one is plain
To each pure thought that rises
Again and yet again.


We are ourselves and human,
And ours our destiny;
The souls of Man and Woman
Divorced by Vanity.

The Squatter, Three Cornstalks, and the Well

There was a Squatter in the land—
So runs the truthful tale I tell—
There also were three cornstalks, and
There also was the Squatter’s Well.


Singing (slowly): “Sin and sorrer, sin and sor-rer, sin and sor-r-r-rer.”


The Squatter he was full of pluck,
The Cornstalks they were full of sin,
The well it was half full of muck
That many rains had drifted in.


Singing (with increased feeling): “Sin, &c.”


The Squatter hired the Cornstalks Three
To cleanse the well of mud and clay;
And so they started willing-lee
At five-and-twenty bob a day.


Singing (apprehensively): “Sin, &c.”


At five-and-twenty bob the lot—
That’s eight-and-four the day would bring
To each; and so they thought they’d got
A rather soft and easy thing.


Singing (sadly): “Sin, &c.”


The Cornstalks cleaned the well within
A day or two, or thereabout—
And then they worked an awful sin—
A scheme to make the job last out.


Singing (reproachfully): “Sin and sorrer, &c.”


For when the well was cleaned out quite
Of all its logs and muck and clay
They tipped a drayload down at night
And worked to haul it up next day.


Singing (dismally): “Sin, &c.”


But first the eldest, christened Hodge,
He greased the dray-wheel axles, so
The super wouldn’t smell the dodge
And couldn’t let the Squatter know.


Singing (hopelessly): “Sin and sorrer, &c.”


The stuff they surfaced out each day
With some surprise the Squatter saw.
He never dreamt the sand and clay



Was three miles off the night before.

Singing (mournfully): “Sin and sorrer, &c.”

But he got something in his eye;
It wasn’t green, that’s very plain.
He said the well was rather dry,
And they could fill it up again.


Singing (mournfully and dismally): “Sin and sorrer, &c.”


The Cornstalks went to work next day
In hope, of course, of extra tin—
The Squatter watched, and, sad to say,
The mullock wouldn’t all go in.


Singing (with great pathos): “Sin and sorrer, &c.”


And though the Cornstalks twigged the ruse
Whereby the boss had done ’em brown,
They argued that the clay was loose,
And wanted time to settle down.


Singing (hopelessly): “Sin and sorrer, &c.”


The boss began to rave and tear,
And yelled with a most awful frown,
“I will not settle up, I swear,
Till that there clay is settled down!”


Singing (hopefully): “Sin, &c.”


“Before my cheques yer’Il pocket, boys,
Yer’ll put a mountain in a well”—
The Cornstalks didn’t make a noise,
They only murmured sadly—!


Singing (triumphantly): “Sin and sorrer, &c.”


MORAL:
There is a moral to my rhyme—
A moral to the dirge I sing—
That when you do go in for crime
You mustn’t overdoo the thing.


Singing (more dismally than ever): “Sin and sorrer, s-i-n and sor-r-r-r-rer!”

The Soul of a Poet

I HAVE written, long years I have written
For the sake of my people and right,
I was true when the iron had bitten
Deep into my soul in the night;
And I wrote not for praise nor for money,
I craved but the soul and the pen,
And I felt not the sting in the honey
Of praising the kindness of men.


You read and you saw without seeing,
My work seemed a trifle apart,
While the truth of things thrilled through my being,
And the wrong of things murdered my heart!
Cast out and despised and neglected,
And weak, and in fear, and in debt,
My songs, mutilated, rejected,
Shall ring through the Commonwealth yet!


And you, too, the pure and the guileless,
In the peace of your comfort and pride,
You have mocked at my bodily vileness,
You have tempted and cast me aside.
But wronged, and cast out, drink-sodden,
But shunned, and insane and unclean,
I have dared where few others have trodden,
I have seen what few others have seen.


I have seen your souls bare for a season,
I have heard as a deaf man can hear,
I have seen you deprived of your reason
And stricken with deadliest fear.
And when beautiful night hid the shocking
Black shame of the day that was past,
I felt the great universe rocking
With the truth that was coming at last!

The Song of the Waste-Paper Basket

O BARD of fortune, you deem me nought
But a mark for your careless scorn.
For I am the echo-less grave of thought
That is strangled before it’s born.
You think perchance that I am a doom
Which only a dunce should dread—
Nor dream I’ve been the dishonoured tomb
Of the noblest and brightest dead.


The brightest fancies that e’er can fly
From the labouring minds of men
Are often written in lines awry,
And marred by a blundering pen;
And thus it comes that I gain a part
Of what to the world is loss—
Of genius lost for the want of art,
Of pearls that are set in dross.


And though I am of a lowly birth
My fame has been cheaply bought,
A power am I, for I rob the earth
Of the brightest gems of thought;
The Press gains much of my lawful share,
I am wronged without redress—
But I have revenge, for I think it fair
That I should plunder the Press.


You’d pause in wonder to read behind
The lines of some songs I see;
The soul of the singer I often find
In songs that are thrown to me.
But the song of the singer I bury deep
With the scrawl of the dunce and clown,
And both from the eyes of the world I keep,
And the hopes of both I drown.