My Australia series
Some Australian Poems
by well-known Australian poets.
Far from the trouble and toil of town,
Where the reed-beds sweep and shiver,
Look at a fragment of velvet brown --
Old Man Platypus drifting down,
Drifting along the river.
And he plays and dives in the river bends
In a style that is most elusive;
With few relations and few friends,
For Old man Platypus descends
From a family most exclusive.
With his wife and his son and daughter
At the roots of the reeds and the grasses rank;
And the bubbles show where our hero sank
To its entrance under the water.
Safe in their burrow below the falls
They live in a world of wonder,
Where no one visits and no one calls
They sleep like little brown billiard balls
With their beaks tucked neatly under.
As he goes on his journey lonely;
For he's no relation to fish nor fowl,
Nor to bird, nor beast, nor to horned owl,
In fact, he's the one and only!
by A.B. Paterson.
THE FREE SELECTOR'S DAUGHTER.
I met her on the Lachlan-side -- a darling girl I thought her,
And ere I left I swore I'd win the free-selector's daughter.
I milked her father's cows a month, I brought the wood and water,
I mended all the broken fence, before I won the daughter.
I listened to her father's yarns, I did just what I 'oughter',
And what you'll have to do to win a free-selector's daughter.
And washed my mouth with water;
I had a shave before I kissed
The free selector's daughter.
Then, rising in the frosty morn,
I brought the cows for Mary,
And when I'd milked a bucketful
I took it to the dairy.
I summoned heart to speak my wish and oh! her blush grew plainer.
I t old her I must leave the place, I said that I would miss her;
At first she turned away her face and then she let me kiss her.
I put the bucket on the ground, and in my arms I caught her;
I'd give the world to hold again, that free-selector's daughter!
by Henry Lawson
There was no stir among the trees,
No pulse in the earth,
No movement in the doid;
The grass was a dry white fire.
Then in the distance rose a cloud,
And a swift rain came;
Like a woman running,
The wind in her hair.
by Mary Gilmore (later Dame Mary Gilmore)
So here, twisted in steel, and spoiled with red your sunlight hide, smelling of death and fear,
they crushed out of your throat the terrible song you sang in the dark ranges.
With what crying you mourned him! -- the drinker of blood, the swift death-bringer
who ran with you many a night; and the night was long.
Achilles is overcome, and Hector dead, and clay stops many a warrior's mouth, wild singer.
Hurling your woes at the moon, that old cleaned bone, till the white shorn mobs of stars on the hill of the sky huddled and trembled, you tolled him, the rebel one.
Insane Andromache, pacing your towers alone, death ends the verse you chanted; here you lie.
The lover, the maker of elegies is slain, and veiled with blood her body's stealthy sun.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
His rusted billy left beside the tree;
Under a root, most carefully tucked away,
His steel-rimmed glasses folded in their case
Of mildewed purple velvet; there he lies
In the sunny afternoon, and takes his ease,
Curled like a possum within the hollow trunk.
He came one winter evening when the tree
Hunched its broad back against the rain, and made
His camp, and slept, and did not wake again.
Now white ants make a home within his skull;
His old friend Fire has walked across the hill
And blackened the old tree and the old man
And buried him half in ashes where he lay.
It might be called a lonely death. The tree
Led its own alien life beneath the sun,
Yet both belonged to the Bush, and now are one;
The roots and bones lie close among the soil,
And he ascends in leaves towards the sky.