Australiana

An angel stood beside the bed
Where lay the living and the dead.
He gave the mother — her who died —

A kiss that Christ the Crucified
Had sent to greet the weary soul
When, worn and faint, it reached its goal.

West of Dubbo the west begins
The land of leisure and hope and trust,
Where the black man stalks with his dogs and gins
And Nature visits the settlers’ sins
With the Bogan shower, that is mostly dust.

I bought a run a while ago,
On country rough and ridgy,
Where wallaroos and wombats grow —
The Upper Murrumbidgee.

Ambition
I am the maid of the lustrous eyes
Of great fruition,
Whom the sons of men that are over-wise
Have called Ambition.

He had drifted in among us as a straw drifts with the tide,
He was just a wand’ring mongrel from the weary world outside;
He was not aristocratic, being mostly ribs and hair,
With a hint of spaniel parents and a touch of native bear.

Now the new chum loaded his three-nought-three,
It’s a small-bore gun, but his hopes were big.
“I am fed to the teeth with old ewe,” said he,
“And I might be able to shoot a pig.”

I’m travellin’ down the Castlereagh, and I’m a station hand,
I’m handy with the ropin’ pole, I’m handy with the brand,
And I can ride a rowdy colt, or swing the axe all day,
But there’s no demand for a station-hand along the Castlereagh.

When Ironbark the turtle came to Anthony’s lagoon
The hills were hid behind a mist of equinoctal rain,
The ripple of the rivulets was like a cheerful tune
And wild companions waltzed among the grass as tall as grain.

Roses ruddy and roses white,
What are the joys that my heart discloses?
Sitting alone in the fading light
Memories come to me here tonight