60 Classic Australian Poems for Children Read online

  In the gully-deeps the blind creek sleeps,

  And the silver, showery, moon

  Glides over the hills, and floats, and fills,

  And dreams in the dark lagoon;

  While halting hard by the station yard,

  Aghast at the hut-flame nigh,

  The Warrigal yells—and the flats and fells

  Are loud with his dismal cry.

  On the topmost peak of mountains bleak

  The south wind sobs, and strays

  Through moaning pine, and turpentine,

  And the rippling runnel ways;

  And strong streams flow, and great mists go,

  Where the Warrigal starts to hear

  The watch-dog’s bark break sharp in the dark,

  And flees like a phantom of Fear!

  * * *

  This poem is often found starting with the lines The Warrigal’s lair but in another edition Kendall begins with the current second verse!

  * * *

  The swift rains beat, and the thunders fleet

  On the wings of the fiery gale,

  And down in the glen of pool and fen,

  The wild gums whistle and wail,

  As over the plains and past the chains

  Of waterholes glimmering deep,

  The Warrigal flies from the Shepherd’s cries,

  And the clamour of dogs and sheep.

  The Warrigal’s lair is pent in bare

  Black rocks at the gorge’s mouth:

  It is set in ways where Summer strays

  With the sprites of flame and drouth;

  But when the heights are touched with lights

  Of hoarfrost, sleet, and shine,

  His bed is made of the dead grass-blade

  And the leaves of the windy pine.

  He roves through the lands of sultry sands,

  He hunts in the iron range,

  Untamed as surge of the far sea verge,

  And fierce and fickle and strange.

  The white man’s track and the haunts of the black

  He shuns, and shudders to see;

  For his joy he tastes in lonely wastes

  Where his mates are torrent and tree.

  Leaves from Australian Forests, 1869

  57

  Where the Dead Men Lie

  Barcroft Henry Boake

  Out on the wastes of the ‘Never, Never,’

  That’s where the dead men lie!

  There where the heat-waves dance for ever,

  That’s where the dead men lie;

  That’s where the earth’s lov’d sons are keeping

  Endless tryst—not the west wind sweeping

  Feverish pinions can wake their sleeping—

  Out where the dead men lie.

  Where brown Summer and Death have mated—

  That’s where the dead men lie,

  Loving with fiery lust unsated,

  That’s where the dead men lie;

  Out where the grinning skulls bleach whitely,

  Under the saltbush sparkling brightly,

  Out where the wild dogs chorus nightly,

  That’s where the dead men lie.

  Deep in the yellow, flowing river,

  That’s where the dead men lie,

  Under its banks where the shadows quiver,

  That’s where the dead men lie;

  Where the platypus twists and doubles,

  Leaving a train of tiny bubbles;

  Rid at last of their earthly troubles,

  That’s where the dead men lie!

  East and backward pale faces turning,

  That’s how the dead men lie,

  Gaunt arms stretched with a voiceless yearning,

  That’s how the dead men lie.

  Oft in the fragrant hush of nooning

  Hearing again their mother’s crooning,

  Wrapt for aye in a dreamful swooning,

  That’s how the dead men lie.

  Naught but the hand of night can free them;

  That’s when the dead men fly;

  Only the frightened cattle see them—

  See the dead men go by;

  Cloven hoofs beating out one measure,

  Bidding the stockmen know no leisure,

  That’s where the dead men take their pleasure,

  That’s when the dead men fly.

  Ask too, the never-sleeping drover,

  He sees the dead pass by,

  Hearing them call to their friends—the plover,

  Hearing the dead men cry.

  Seeing their faces stealing, stealing,

  Hearing their laughter, pealing, pealing,

  Watching their grey forms wheeling, wheeling

  Round where the cattle lie.

  Strangled by thirst and fierce privation,

  That’s how the dead men die!

  Out on ‘Moneygrub’s’ farthest station,

  That’s how the dead men die!

  Hardfaced greybeards, youngsters callow,

  Some mounds cared for, others fallow,

  Some deep down, yet others shallow,

  Some having but the sky.

  ‘Moneygrub,’ as he sips his claret,

  Looks with complacent eye

  Down at his watch-chain, eighteen-carat,

  There, in his club, hard by;

  Recks not that every link is stamped with

  Names of the men whose limbs are cramped with

  Too long lying in grave mould, camped with

  Death where the dead men lie.

  The Bulletin (Christmas edition), 1891

  * * *

  The title for this poem in the original manuscript is ‘Where the Dead Lie’. It was first printed in The Bulletin on 19 December, 1891 as ‘Where the Dead Men Lie’. Boake himself was dead five months later.

  * * *

  58

  Where the Pelican Builds

  Mary Hannay Foott

  [The unexplored parts of Australia are sometimes spoken of by the bushmen of Western Queensland as the home of the pelican, a bird whose nesting-place, so far as the writer knows, is seldom, if ever found.]

  The horses were ready, the rails were down,

  But the riders lingered still,—

  One had a parting word to say,

  And one had his pipe to fill.

  Then they mounted, one with a granted prayer,

  And one with a grief unguessed.

  ‘We are going,’ they said, as they rode away—

  ‘Where the pelican builds her nest!’

  They had told us of pastures wide and green,

  To be sought past the sunset’s glow;

  Of rifts in the ranges by opal lit;

  And gold ’neath the river’s flow.

  And thirst and hunger were banished words

  When they spoke of that unknown West;

  No drought they dreaded, no flood they feared,

  Where the pelican builds her nest!

  The creek at the ford was but fetlock deep

  When we watched them crossing there;

  The rains have replenished it twice since then,

  And thrice has the rock lain bare.

  But the waters of Hope have flowed and fled,

  And never from blue hill’s breast

  Come back—by the sun and the sands devoured—

  Where the pelican builds her nest!

  The Bulletin, 1881

  * * *

  ‘Where the Pelican Builds’ is Hannay Foott’s most famous poem and comes from the collection Where the Pelican Builds, published in 1885. This poem is about the legendary paradise in the centre of Australia where they thought there was an inland sea … where the pelican builds her nest.

  * * *

  59

  The Women of the West

  George Essex Evans

  They left the vine-wreathed cottage and the mansion on the hill,

  The houses in the busy streets where life is never still,

  The pleasur
es of the city, and the friends they cherished best:

  For love they faced the wilderness—the Women of the West.

  The roar, and rush, and fever of the city died away,

  And the old-time joys and faces—they were gone for many a day;

  In their place the lurching coach-wheel, or the creaking bullock chains,

  O’er the everlasting sameness of the never-ending plains.

  In the slab-built, zinc-roofed homestead of some lately-taken run,

  In the tent beside the bankment of a railway just begun,

  In the huts on new selections—in the camps of man’s unrest,

  On the frontiers of the Nation, live the Women of the West.

  The red sun robs their beauty and, in weariness and pain,

  The slow years steal the nameless grace that never comes again;

  And there are hours men cannot soothe, and words men cannot say—

  The nearest woman’s face may be a hundred miles away.

  The wide Bush holds the secrets of their longing and desires,

  When the white stars in reverence light their holy altar-fires,

  And silence, like the touch of God, sinks deep into the breast—

  Perchance He hears and understands the Women of the West.

  For them no trumpet sounds the call, no poet plies his arts—

  They only hear the beating of their gallant, loving hearts.

  But they have sung with silent lives the song all songs above—

  The holiness of sacrifice, the dignity of love.

  Well have we held our fathers’ creed. No call has passed us by.

  We faced and fought the wilderness, we sent our sons to die.

  And we have hearts to do and dare, and yet, o’er all the rest,

  The hearts that made the Nation were the Women of the West.

  The Brisbane Courier, 1901

  Woolloomooloo

  CJ Dennis

  Here’s a ridiculous riddle for you:

  How many o’s are in Woolloomooloo?

  Two for the W, two for the m,

  Four for the l’s, and that’s plenty for them.

  A Book for Kids, 1921

  Poet Biographies

  Barcroft Henry Boake

  Born:

  26 March 1866, Balmain (NSW)

  Died:

  2 May 1892, Middle Harbour (NSW)

  In his short life, Barcroft Henry Thomas Boake (who also wrote under the name Surcingle) was a surveyor’s field assistant, boundary rider, drover, stockman, draftsman and poet. Many of his poems were first printed in The Bulletin and his first collection of poetry was not published until after his death. The unusual name Barcroft had been handed down through the family for generations. Boake loved the poetry of Adam Lindsay Gordon. He is buried at North Sydney cemetery.

  CJ Dennis

  Born:

  7 September 1876, Auburn (South Australia)

  Died:

  22 June 1938, Melbourne (Victoria)

  Clarence Michael James Dennis had a variety of jobs—including at a stock and station agency, as a bar tender, clerk, secretary to a senator, and journalist or editor for a number of newspapers, one of which he started—but it is his humorous stories and verse in major city newspapers for which he is most fondly remembered. Much of his writing appeared in The Bulletin and The Herald. After his early years growing up in South Australia, Dennis lived and worked in cities, including Melbourne, Sydney and Broken Hill. National memorials for Australia’s ‘laureate of the larrikin’ are located in South Australia and in Victoria. He is buried at Box Hill Cemetery. He also wrote under pseudonyms including ‘The Den’ and ‘CJD’.

  Edward Dyson

  Born:

  4 March 1865, Morrison (Victoria)

  Died:

  22 August 1931, Elwood (Victoria)

  George Edward Dyson was a freelance writer. He was another writer who loved names, his pseudonyms including ‘Billy T’, ‘Billy Tea’, ‘Silas Snell’ and ‘E.D.’ His literary work included plays, stories, humorous verse, and jokes. He wrote in notebooks and on anything else that might be able to store his ideas. He also worked as a miner and in factories, but it was his experience growing up surrounded by the miners and the people he encountered while moving around early in life that became the source for much of his writing. He wrote for The Bulletin and many other papers.

  Louis Esson

  Born:

  10 August 1878, Edinburgh (Scotland)

  Died:

  27 November 1943, Sydney (NSW)

  Three-year-old Thomas Louis Buvelot Esson arrived in Australia with his mother and siblings after his father’s death. He grew up in Melbourne. As an adult he worked as a library assistant and journalist, and also wrote plays and poems. He was passionate about the theatre. His work was often about being Australian and ‘Australianness’ and was published in The Bulletin and other newspapers. He travelled back to the land of his birth but returned to Australia a few years later, immersed himself in theatre and began publishing plays.

  George Essex Evans

  Born:

  18 June 1863, London (England)

  Died:

  10 November 1909, Toowoomba (Queensland)

  In 1881 at the age of eighteen, George Essex Evans migrated with his brother and two sisters to Queensland. He attempted farming at which he was unsuccessful. More success came as a teacher and then a journalist, editing and writing articles and stories. He also owned a newspaper and later worked as a public servant where he wrote books for the government tourist bureau. He was also a successful playwright. Essex’s poetry, immensely patriotic and lovingly portraying the remote parts of Queensland, was written while he was employed in other occupations. It was sometimes written under the pseudonym of ‘Christophus’. His poem ‘Ode for Commonwealth Day’ was entered into the inaugural Federation Day competition sponsored by the NSW government, and won the fifty-guinea first prize. Alfred Deakin, Australia’s second Prime Minister, described Evans as Australia’s national poet. Evans was buried at the Drayton and Toowoomba Cemetery and the Broken Column memorial was erected to his memory.

  Mary Hannay Foott

  Born:

  26 September 1846, Glasgow (Scotland)

  Died:

  12 October 1918, Bundaberg (Queensland)

  Mary Hannay Foott was just seven years old when her family arrived in Melbourne from Glasgow in 1853. She was a landowner, a schoolteacher, a governess, a journalist, an editor and writer of poems, plays and articles, and a licensed teacher of drawing. She studied art in Melbourne and used the income she gained from her writing to support her. After she married she lived in outback NSW in Bourke and later on the Paroo River in Queensland. Following her husband’s death she moved with her young sons to Toowoomba and later Brisbane where she began writing for local newspapers. She eventually became an editor. Her poetry, often reflecting the landscape and her experiences of the places she had lived, appeared in newspapers and periodicals.

  WT Goodge

  Born:

  28 September 1862, Middlesex (England)

  Died:

  28 November 1909, North Sydney (NSW)

  At the age of eighteen, William Thomas Goodge took a job as a ship’s steward and travelled to Sydney, where he decided to jump ship in 1882. He spent the next twelve years in outback NSW, where he was employed on some Cobb & Co. properties, but left and later became a newspaper journalist on regional newspapers. He eventually became an editor, freelance writer and part-owner of some newspapers. Much of his work was published in The Bulletin, as well as other newspapers. Only one collection, Hits! Skits! and Jingles! was published in his lifetime.

  Adam Lindsay Gordon

  Born:

  19 October 1833, Fayal, Azores (Portugal)

  Died:

  24 June 1870, Brighton Beach (Victoria)

  Growing up in England, Adam Lindsay Gordon was a restless youth (which is one way of saying that he got into a fair bit of trouble w
ith the law). He emigrated to Adelaide in 1854 and, ironically, joined the South Australian mounted police. When he resigned from the force he successfully took up horse-breaking and riding horses in steeple chases. Gordon also became a South Australian Member of Parliament, later resigning and becoming a sheep farmer in Western Australia. His poetry, some of which was very romantic, was published in magazines Australia-wide. One collection was published the day before he died.

  Gordon is buried at Brighton Cemetery in Victoria. In 1932 his statue was unveiled at Parliament House in Victoria and in 1934 he became the first Australian to have a memorial bust placed in Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey.

  PJ Hartigan (John O’Brien)

  Born:

  13 October 1878, Yass (NSW)

  Died:

  27 December 1952, Lewisham (NSW)

  Patrick Joseph Hartigan was ordained as a Catholic priest in 1903 and was one of the first curates to have a motor car. He was an inspector of Catholic schools, a religious historian, a short story writer and (most famously) a poet. His early poetry (published in newspapers, the Catholic press and also The Bulletin) was written under the pen-name ‘Mary Ann’ while he was at the seminary. After his appointment as parish priest of Narrandera, he began writing as ‘John O’Brien’. He loved the verse of Lawson and Paterson because their poems were of ‘real’ Australia and his own poetry also reflected his experience of Australia. He wrote about the struggle of life on the land, the humorous side of life, the bravery and endurance and the love of being Australian. When he died, a requiem Mass was said for him at Saint Mary’s Cathedral. He is buried beside his parents in the North Rocks Cemetery.