Edward

I took to khaki at a word,
And fashioned dreams of wonder.
I rode the great sea like a bird,
Chock full of blood and thunder.
I saw myself upon the field
Of battle, framed in glory,
Compelling stubborn foes to yield
As captives to my sword and shield,
This is another story.

We sat about in sun and sand,
We broke old Cairo's images,
Met here and there a swarthy band
In little, friendly scrimmages,
And here it is I start to kid
No Moslem born can hit me.
The Germ then that had long laid hid
Came out of Pharaoh's pyramid,
And covertly he bit me.

For some few days I wore an air
Of pensive introspection,
And then I curled down anywhere.
They whispered of infection,
And hoist me on two sticks as though
I bore the leper'...

I said: “I leave my bit of land,
In khaki they've entwined me,
I go abroad to lend a hand.”
Said she: “My love, I understand.
I will be true, and though we part
A thousand years you hold my heart",
The girl I left behind me.

I went away to fight the Huns,
No coward thought could bind me,
I sizzled n the tropic suns,
I faced the bayonets and the guns.
And when in daring deeds I shone
One little woman spurred me on,
The girl I left behind me.

Out there, in grim Gallipoli.
Hard going they assigned me,
I pricked the Turk up from the sea;
I riddled him, he punctured me;
And, bleeding in my rags, I said:
“She'll meet me somewhere if I'm dead,
The girl I left behind me.

In France we broke the German's face,
They tried w...

“A soldier braving disease and death on the battlefield has a seven times better chance of life than a new-born baby.” - Secretary of War, U.S.A.


The Hapless Army from the dark
That lies beyond creation,
All blinded by the solar spark,
And leaderless in lands forlorn,
Come stumbling through the mists of morn;
And foes in close formation,
With taloned fingers dripping red,
Bestrew the sodden world with dead.

The Hapless Army bears no sword;
Fell destiny fulfilling,
It marches where the murder horde,
Amid the fair new urge of life,
With poison stream, and shot, and knife,
Make carnival of killing.
No war above black Hell's abyss
Knows evil grim and foul as this.

In pallid hillocks lie the slain
The callous heaven under;
Lik...

We were living in a flat; it was number eighty-three.
At eighty-four the Barleys lived, a fearsome man was he.
He had a wife and numerous kids. We heard then rip and cuss,
Some three feet and a quarter off, across the hall from us.

And when the Barley boys broke out, and ended up in fight,
Or when the Barley baby read the Riot Act at night,
And on their balcony their cat put up an eerie moan,
The fearful Barley family might as well have been our own.

When Barley after parting with some others of the ilk
Came panting up the narrow stairs, and drank our jug of milk,
Then broke out at his missus, and as fiercely answered she,
Where was the great advantage of our marked sobriety?

When Barley bedded early he would shake the common floor
And fill the gulf of nigh...

We were storemen, clerks and packers on an ammunition dump
Twice the size of Cootamundra, and the goods we had to hump
They were bombs as big as water-butts, and cartridges in tons,
Shells that looked like blessed gasmains, and a line in traction-guns.

We had struck a warehouse dignity in dealing with the stocks.
It was, “Sign here, Mr. Eddie!” “Clarkson, forward to the socks!”
Our floor-walker was a major, with a nozzle like a peach,
And a stutter in his Trilbies; and a limping kind of speech.

We were off at eight to business, we were free for lunch at one,
And we talked of new Spring fashions, and the brisk trade being done.
After five we sought our dugouts lying snug beneath the hill,
Each with hollyhocks before it and geraniums on the sill.

Singing “Home, Sw...

“Late Midshipman John Travers (Chester), aged 16 years. He was mortally wounded early in the action, yet he remained alone in a most exposed post awaiting orders, with his gun's crew dead all round him.”


We told old stories one by one,
Brave tales of men who toyed with death,
Of wondrous deeds of valor done
In days of bold Elizabeth.
“Alas! our British stock,” said we,
“Is not now what it used to be.”

We read of Drake's great sailors, or
Of fighting men that Nelson led,
Who steered the walls of oak to war.
“These were our finest souls,” we said.
“Their fame is on the ocean writ,
Nor time, nor storm may cancel it.

“The mariners of England then
Were lords of battle and of breeze.
The were, indeed the wondrous men
Who won for us the shorel...

A letter came from Dick to-day;
A greeting glad he sends to me.
He tells of one more bloody fray,
Of how with bomb and rifle they
Have put their mark for all to see
Across rock-ribbed Gallipoli.

“How are you doing? Hope all's well,
I in great nick, and like the work.
Though there may be a brimstone smell,
And other pungent hints of Hell,
Not Satan's self can make us shirk
Our task of hitting up the Turk.

“You bet old Slacks is not half bad
He knows his business in a scrim.
He gets cold steel, or we are glad
To stop him with a bullet, lad.
Or sling a bomb his hair to trim;
But, straight, we throw no mud at him.

“He fights and falls, and comes again,
And knocks our charging lines about.
He's game at heart, and tough in grain...

He rode along one splendid noon,
When all the hills were lit with Spring,
And through the bushland throbbed a croon
Of every living, hopeful thing.

Between his teeth a rose he bore
As white as milk, and passing there
He tossed it with a laugh. I wore
It as it fell among my hair.

No day a-drip with golden rain,
No heat with drench of wattle scent
Can touch the heart of me again
But with that young, sweet wonder blent.

We wed upon a gusty day,
When baffled fury whipped the sea;
And now I love the swift, wet play
Of wind and rain besetting me.

I took white roses in my hand,
A white rose on my forehead shone,
For we had come to understand
White roses bloomed for us alone.

When scarce a year had gone he sped
To...

Three other soldier blokes 'n' me packed 'ome from foreign lands;
Bit into each the God of Battles' everlastin' brands.
They limped in time, 'n' coughed in tune, 'n' one was short an ear,
'N' one was short a tier of ribs 'n' all was short of beer.
I speaks up like a temp'rance gent,
But ever since the sky was bent
The thirst of man 'as never yet bin squenched with argument.

Bill's skull was welded all across, Jim 'ad an eye in soak,
Sam 'obbled on a patent leg, 'n' every man was broke;
They sang a song of “Mother” with their faces titled up.
Says Bill-o: “'Ere's yer 'eroes, sling the bloomin' votive cup!
We got no beer, the soup was bad-
Now oo will stand the soldier lad
The swag of honest liquor that for years he hasn't 'ad?”

Sez I: “Respeck yer uniform! Re...

We don't keep a grand piano in our hut beside the creek,
And I’m pretty certain Hannah couldn’t bang it, anyhow,
But we’ve got one box of music, and I’d rather hear its squeak
Than the daisiest cantata that’s been fashioned up to now.
It’s an old camp-oven merely, with a handle made of wire,
But no organ built could nearly compensate to me for it
When I come off graft and find it playing tunes before the fire,
And I’m feeling sort of vacant, but just wonder fully fit.

In its sizzle, sizzle, sizzle,
There’s a thousand little airs,
And no man can sit and grizzle
’Bout his troubles and his cares
While the flames are gaily winding,
And the tea is down to brew,
And the old camp-oven’s grinding
All the reels he ever knew.

When the wet winds meet and whip...

He's an old grey horse, with his head bowed sadly,
And with dim old eyes and a queer roll aft,
With the off-fore sprung and the hind screwed badly
And he bears all over the brands of graft;
And he lifts his head from the grass to wonder
Why by night and day now the whim is still,
Why the silence is, and the stampers' thunder
Sounds forth no more from the shattered mill.

In that whim he worked when the night winds bellowed
On the riven summit of Giant's Hand,
And by day when prodigal Spring had yellowed
All the wide, long sweep of enchanted land;
And he knew his shift, and the whistle's warning,
And he knew the calls of the boys below;
Through the years, unbidden, at night or morning,
He had taken his stand by the old whim bow.

But the whim stands s...

Don told me that he loved me dear
Where down the range Whioola pours;
And when I laughed and would not hear
He flung away to fight the wars.
He flung away, how should he know
My foolish heart was dancin' so?
How should he know that at his word
My soul was trillin' like a bird?

He went out in the cannon smoke.
He did not seek to ask me why.
Again each day my poor heart broke
To see the careless post go by.
I cared not for their Emperors,
For me there was this in the wars;
My brown boy in the shell-clouds dim,
And savage devils killin' him!

They told me on the field he fell,
And far they bore him from the fight,
But he is whole, he will be well
Now in a ward by day and night
A fair, tall nurse with slim, neat hands
By his whi...

When the white sun scorches the fair, green land in the rage of his fierce desires,
Or looms blood red on the Western hills, through the smoke of their waning fires;
When the winds at war strew the mountain side with limbs of the mangled trees,
Or the flood tides wheel in the valleys low, or sweep to the distant seas,
We are leading back, and the faintest track that we leave in the desert wild
Or we blaze for fear through the forest drear will be tramped by the settler’s child.

We have turned our backs on the City’s joys, on the glare of its myriad lights,
On the measured peace of its bloodless days, and the strife of its shining nights;
We have fled the pubs in the dull bush towns and the furthermost shanty bars,
And have camped away at the edge of space, or aloft by the brooding stars.<...

There's a sudden, fierce clang of the knocker, then the sound of a voice in the shaft,
Shrieking words that drum hard on the centres, and the braceman goes suddenly daft:
‘Set the whistle a-blowing like blazes! Billy, run, give old Mackie a call,
Run, you fool! Number Two’s gone to pieces, and Fred Baker is caught in the fall!
Say, hello! there below,any hope, boys, any chances of saving his life?
‘Heave away!’ says the knocker. ‘They’ve started. God be praised, he’s no youngsters or wife!’

Screams the whistle in fearful entreaty, and the wild echo raves on the spur,
And the night, that was still as a sleeper in soft, charmed sleep, is astir
With the fluttering of wings in the wattles, and the vague frightened murmur of birds,
With far cooeys that carry the warning, running feet, inarticu...

There are tracks through the scrub, there’s a track down the hill,
And a track round the bend from M‘Courteney’s mill,
Where they slyly emerge from the bush and converge,
You’ll discover the humpy—the theme of this dirge,
That is used for the sale of O’Sullivan’s ‘purge.’
And if curses and cries,
And a blasting of eyes,
And a series of blasphemies fearful arise,
And a lunatic din,
And a racket like sin,
You can bet all you own the O’Sullivan’s in.

It’s a bark and slab hut, with a bar and a bunk,
And a man propped before it disgustingly drunk,
And a nameless galoot in a hand-me-down suit,
Straddling out on the grass, grim as death, and as mute,
Trapping millions of rabbits that run from his boot.
When eleven lie round
In all shapes on the mound,

We’re more than partners, Ned 'n' me,
Two sections permanently righted.
Yiv seen us on the mooch, maybe,
Like remnants lovin'ly united.
Ned's only got one stump, the left;
By 'appy chance I've got its brother,
Of his two dukes he's been bereft;
My left was mauled, 'n' had to go,
It fortunitly 'appens though,
I kept the other.

Ned lost one ear, the left, 'n' struth,
He dropped the correspondin' weeper.
A Hun he crooled me lovely youth
By bombin' out me right 'and peeper.
He done a guy too with me ear,
The right, 'n' now I dunno whether
'Twas Fate's intention, butt it's clear
When trimmed each as the other's mate
'Twas up to us two, soon or late,
To get together.

'Board ship there's me like arf a peach,
'N' Ned's the other ar...

In the morn when the keen blade bites the tree,
And the chips on the dead leaves dance,
And the bush echoes back right merrily
Blow for blow as the sunbeams glance
From the axe when it sweeps in circles true,
Then the splitter at heart is gay;
He exults in the work he’s set to do,
And he feels like a boy at play.

Swinging free with a stroke that’s straight and strong
To the heart of the messmate sent,
He is cheered by the magpie’s morning song
With the ring of the metal blent,
But the birds in their terror scatter high
When she falls with a rush and bound,
And the quivering saplings split and fly,
And the ranges all roar around.

Who is lord when the axeman mounts his spar,
And the breeze on his brown breast blows,
When the scent of the ne...

’Tis the tale of Simon Steven, braceman at the Odd-and-Even,
At The Nations, in the gully. They were sinking in the rock.
Sim was small and wiry rather, and a husband and a father,
But he’s gone and left his family as a consequence of shock.

Shock was Sim’s disease, we reckoned, for it took him in a second,
And no doctor born could dognose what the symptoms were, I think,
But we’re missin’ Sim completely, he could play the whistle sweetly,
And was always very sociable and brotherly in drink.

That was how poor Steven drifted into trouble, being gifted,
He was hungry for an audience, and it led him up to Coy’s;
But his wife made no deductions for the artist, and the ructions
What she raised around that public were just fireworks for the boys.

When she caught him o...