[3]
]

[5]
] To the West
and the People of the West
TO WESTERN AUSTRALIA
Golden State of Golden Hearts
So Warm, So True
So Generous in their Welcome of a Wanderer
TO THE MEMORY OF OLD MATES
Women and Men
The Fondest and the Best
Who, even for me, Made Life a Brave Adventure
and
TO MY MOTHER
With all the Love that I shall never speak
This poor token of reverence,
All I could, for all I would
I humbly offer.

John Philip Bourke.

[7]
]When I am dead

Bring me no roses white,

Nor lilies spotless

And immaculate,

But from the garden roses red,

Roses full blown

And by the noon sun kissed,

Bring me the roses

That my life has missed

When I am dead.

[8]
]

J. P. BOURKE.

[9]
]OFF THE BLUEBUSH

VERSES FOR AUSTRALIANS
WEST AND EAST

BY
J. P. BOURKE
(“Bluebush”)

Edited by A. G. STEPHENS
Illustrated by NED WETHERED

SYDNEY
TYRRELL’S LIMITED
22 Castlereagh Street
1915.

[10]
]Copyright—First Edition. 2,000 copies, including 30 copies for Subscribers separately printed and bound and numbered and 25 Superior copies separately bound and numbered, published 1st August, 1915.—Wholly set in type and printed in Australia by Morton’s Ltd., 75 Ultimo Road, Sydney.

[11]
]ACKNOWLEDGMENT.

J. P. Bourke’s verses were contributed originally to The Sun, Kalgoorlie—chiefly during the editorship of Mr. C. W. Andrée Hayward, for whose cultivated appreciation Western rough-writers owe much—and to The Sunday Times, Perth.

The preliminary account of Bourke is reprinted, with some revision, from a series of articles contributed to The Leeuwin, Perth.

The illustrations by Mr. Ned Wethered represent the promising effort of a Western Australian designer and illustrator, almost wholly self-taught, aged twenty. Their youthful defects are apparent; yet they depict life, character, and scenery in a Western mining town with a gusto that preserves faithfully the spirit of the verses.

On behalf of Bourke, I record his expressed gratitude for the help which, contending with many difficulties, Ned Wethered gave to his friend.

A. G. S.

[12]
]

CONTENTS :

[16]
]With head erect I fought the fight

Or mingled with the dance,

And now I merge into the night

With utter nonchalance.

[17]
]JOHN PHILIP BOURKE.

We singers standing on the outer rim,

Who touch the fringe of poesy at times

With half-formed thoughts, rough-set in halting rhymes,

Through which no airy flights of fancy skim—

We write “just so,” an hour to while away,

And turn the well-thumbed stock still o’er and o’er,

As men have done a thousand times before,

And will again, just as we do to-day ...

If I could take that rosebud from its stem,

And weave its petals in a simple rhyme,

So you could hear the bells of springtime chime

And you could see the flower soul

in them—

Or else, we’ll say, a magpie on the limb,

Greeting the sunrise with its matin song—

To catch the music as it floats along,

And link its spirit to a bush-child’s hymn.

Or, if—but then the limitations rise,

Like barriers across the mental plain,

And mists and things obscure the rhymer’s brain,

And dull his ears, and cloud his blinking eyes.

And so we write as Nature sets her gauge—

No worse than most, and better, p’raps, than some;

—But should a man remain for ever dumb

When only rhyming fills his aimless page?

J. P. BOURKE.

They say that, when Abraham Lincoln had seen Walt Whitman, he summed his impression in the emphatic “This is a man.” That is what one feels in reading the verses of Western Australian [18] ]writers—“This is a man.” The work of the tribe of pseudonymous writers in Western newspapers—especially Kalgoorlie Sun and Perth Sunday Times—the work of “Bluebush” and “Dryblower,” “Crosscut,” “Prospect Good,” and the rest—is the most virile and the most original poetry that has been made in Australia since the Commonwealth began. “Here’s manhood,” I say, and “Here’s Australian manhood.” For vigour and versatility the East at the moment has few writers to rival this little Western comradeship.

The East has more refined writers, more cultivated and more artistic writers; but not more manly writers.

Poetry is a man’s work if it performs a man’s deeds. When, on the night of 24th April, 1792, Rouget de l’Isle tramped his lodging-house room “with a head of ice and fire” to compose “The Marseillaise,” how many deeds were his exultant verses worth! How vainly he himself would have fought to achieve the feats of swelling valour to which his art inspired others. In a literary aspect the words are little more than a rant:—

“Aux armes, citoyens!

Formez vos bataillons!”

But this rant, as Carlyle says, when added to the stirring tune, “will make the blood tingle in men’s veins; and whole armies and assemblages will sing it with eyes weeping and burning, with hearts defiant of death, despot, and devil.”

The vigorous Western Australian verses that I praise are of that kind and approximate to that standard. They are written in peace, and cannot gain the hottest of mortal ardours, the exultation of war. But if there were [19] ]Australian war, here are the men to write our marching songs.

There is a literature of art, and there is a literature of humanity. The one kind does not exclude the other; the best poetry is human in impulse, artistic in expression. Yet inevitably, as verse is written, there are found writers with a languid pulse whose finest effects are gained by a decorative use of language, and opposed to these are the writers who use the oldest rhymes, the oldest rhythms, to give impetus to the messages of emotion that fly hot from their hearts.

This Western Australian poetry is often inartistic; it is often a poor thing considered as literature; but how broadly and strongly it appeals to our humanity! how graphic it is! how humorous or tragic! and how natural! It is written, for the greater part, not from a head to a head, but from a heart to a heart; and in its most effective passages it has the same force of sincerity, the same truth of vision, the same sympathy, that make the old ballads a precious possession, and that have captivated thirty centuries with the stories and descriptions of Homer.

There must be allowed, also, to the little school of Western Australian writers, besides their vigour and vivacity, a real singing talent, and no slight mastery of striking phraseology. Often enough their subjects are commonplace, yet it is rarely that their treatment of a subject is entirely commonplace. Almost always there is found a personal touch that in its way and to its extent is a true style, and a style effective to move the readers to whom it is addressed. It is said that the Arabs are careful not to tread on any scrap of written paper lest [20] ]it should contain the sacred name of Allah. In the same manner I think that every lover of poetry is careful not to contemn the rudest rhyme that may contain a heartbeat. That is to say that every lover of poetry is a faithful Catholic. He may like some kinds of poetry better than others, yet he finds every kind a good kind—however stiffly or crudely it succeeds in transferring its content of emotion. If it does not hold and convey emotion, then it is not poetry, no matter how fine its form or how famous the name of its author. I value this little wild garden of verses the more because it grows in Australia. Doubtless, its Australian appeal detracts from its quality considered as universal literature; yet that detraction is balanced by the additional attraction it has for readers here and now. I am not concerned to measure out comparative credit, but only to emphasise the point that we have here something that is worthy our credit.

The opinion offered, the attitude taken, follow after reading some hundreds of representative Western verses. The merit of those verses is to be found in the impression one receives from the whole—an impression gained from many patches of gold that shine in the quartz. An artist may touch everything with mastery. These writers are not artists, but men who utter the measures and rhymes that come to them often unsought; they are poetical interpreters of life and manhood. Accept them in that guise, and they need no justification from another’s hand: they justify themselves.

John Philip Bourke, who wrote for The Sun, Kalgoorlie, scores of stanzas that ring harshly or melodiously, but that ring true, has set down his page of Western history over the signature of “Bluebush.” Between East [21] ]and West his honours are easy; for he springs from the East, but it is the West that has inspired him. He was born in August, 1860, on the Peel River Diggings, New South Wales; he was born with the wandering blood. At the age of seventeen he sold his first reef to Clarke, of Gullandaddy station, for £600; then for seventeen years he settled down as a school teacher. In 1894 he went West and roughed it on the mining track.

He was pretty consistently lucky in making small “rises” of from £200 to £1000 (with a “record” of £1,250), but he never handled a wingless coin. His old Hunter River stock was mostly of Irish blood: does that account for a free hand and a blessing on a generous heart? Yet until his death he faced the world with a roguish eye and with bright and dark years of experience to write about. He died at Boulder, W.A., on 13th January, 1914.

The Sun praised him justly. “He was a writer of verse that appealed to everyone by its rugged force, its fertility of ideas, its truth and the spirit of human sympathy and true mateship which permeated every line. Straight as a gunbarrel and unfaltering in his denunciation of all that savoured of the mean, the paltry, or the unjust, Bourke was the whitest and the most lovable of men. Gifted with a keen insight into human nature and unlimited power of happy expression, he was a staunch friend and a true mate, and no man on the fields was more personally popular.”

What did Bourke write? The verse that appeals to wanderers, to reckless men, to men who have fought and lost, fought and won, fought and wasted their winnings [22] ]in all the ways of all the earth. Wasted? Not all wasted; not most, it may be.

What is a purse? A thing to scatter free.

What is a talent but a gift for joy?

What is life’s lesson? To live heartily

To man’s utmost, like a happy boy.

It is a doctrine that must be preached cautiously; yet it is the best doctrine of all. So many people miss life by not grasping it; in saving other things they spend life itself: and at the end there is pity for those who cannot say “Vixi!” Let Bourke express himself:

I have no wild desire to sing and sing

Or kneel at Nature’s feet, and be her mummer.

Poetic fancies are not rioting

For liberty, like prisoned birds in summer.

No thoughts, like maiden hair

, climb round and cling

To rhyming roosters writing on a thrummer;

But frowsy devils, round the camp to-night,

Suggest alone the commonplace and trite.

There is no bubbling spring within my clay;

I hold no lyrics straining at the tether;

My bones would drift right into blanket hay

If it were not such rough financial weather.

I’d never pen a par, or lay a lay,

Or deck ambition’s cady with a feather

If I could clutch a whisky piping hot,

A plate of hash, a pension and a pot.

But Bourke does himself injustice. His is a strain of toiling life once again made vocal—the real truth of real toil, as it may happen, as it has happened to thousands who have struggled “to gain from the West her [23] ]glorious golden prize”—and who have gained and have squandered, or have died struggling, or have “gone out on flukes,” as Bayley did, “with the new life just begun.”

Got no time to ruminate! Got no time to read!

Got no time to foller on! Got no time to lead!

Got no time to stoop and pluck the daisies by the pad!

Got no time for triflin’, for hobby-horse

or fad!

Got no time to pass remarks! Got no time to write!

Got no time to sky the wipe—only time to fight!

Only time for graft and grind, dog and dough and dust!

That’s the tune the music plays—scratchin’ for a crust.

From such a life as that stanza depicts, almost inevitably men turn to intoxicating liquor for consolation or for oblivion. Any reader of Western verses must see first how large a part liquor plays in life, and secondly, how large a part of that life, that life in the desert, in the sand, in the wilderness, can only be assuaged by liquor. Bourke writes:

What’s the use of sittin’

Dry as blessed chips?

What’s the use of spittin’

Through our corn-beef lips?

What’s the use of drinkin’?

Well, that ain’t so clear

To my way of thinkin’—

Let us have a beer.

“A Drunk’s Defiance” is a human plea. But Bourke urges the other side still more strongly—“No more verses in praise of wine!”

Shirking the fight that a man should fight,

Dodging the joys that a man should know,

Scorning the breath of a plumed thought’s flight—

Down with the swine and the husks below!

[24] ]’Tis thus we reap from the seeds we sow—

Hearts grow withered and locks grow white,

Dodging the joys that a man should know,

Shirking the fight that a man should fight.

There are keen sight and shrewd sense underlying Bourke’s verses. There is sentiment, too, intermingled with pathos, in many places—as in “His Letter from W.A.”

It’s scarcely six months since I left Cooranbean,

But seems longer than all of last year;

The moon ain’t so bright and the grass ain’t so green,

And the sky, somehow, isn’t so clear.

Oh! I’d give all their towns to the very last brick,

And the mines with the forchins they yield,

Just to hear the old ripple of Cooranbean crick,

And the rustle of corn in the field.

And “Her Letter” came back:

You mind the moss rose that grew over our gate,

Our old gate where we whispered “Good-bye”?

Oh, how often I go there and wonder if Fate

Has one blessing a girl’s wish could buy—

I am wearin’ a bunch in your favourite dress,

With the flounces and streamers of blue,

And though p’r’aps it is silly, I have to confess

I am wearin’ my heart out for you.

Is that not a sympathetic expression of honest feeling, of true affection, that has gone out thousands of times to “the boys in the West”? In pieces like “Old Bill Bates” the note of mateship is struck; the note that has been the keynote of so many Western lives linked in the hearty give-and-take comradeship of two men—two bound closer, almost, than husband and wife, by long-shared [25] ]years of effort together. “At Bummer’s Creek” warrants all that has been said of the manly virtue of Western poetry—and is there anyone who has worked with men who has not found Dave’s mate?

We two were fitted, j’int for j’int,

And toiled and starved and spreed,

But one’d watch around the stump

When t’other one was treed,

The same when Luck was in full bloom

As when she run ter seed.

That is not refined poetry; but it is essentially poetry; and let us never forget that all the refinements of life spring from precisely such realities as are illustrated by this humble “battler.” That a lady from whose body and mind every speck and thought of defilement are kept, may walk sedately down the shady side of St. George’s Terrace, some such man as Bill’s mate must have sweated crudely in the region of Kalgoorlie. The fancy is far-fetched, but it has a real basis; a large part of the burden of civilization is borne by “humble battlers;” and it is to the breed of these “battlers” that we look for civilization’s defence in the day of challenge. Let not the flower despise its roots.

The lines for “Our Goldfields Spring” are outspoken:

For here you are thus early soiled and tanned

A sorry subject for a verse creator,

A damned inverted pewter in your hand,

Some draggled immortelles around your crater.

They speak, somehow, of drought, and dust, and sand,

And summer’s hell that’s waiting for us later,

And flies innumerable and small black ants,

And several thousand other irritants.

[26]
]“Beer is Enough” is another piece full of racy virtue, expressed with perverse ingenuity:

Beer is enough. Let Love roost on his perch,

And coo and coo his breath away at will—

The bride in orange blooms—the ivied church—

The two-roomed kipsy sheltered by the hill—

Sweep them aside and fetch the frothing bowl

To warm the cockles of one’s inmost soul.

Beer is enough.

Or take this sardonic expression of the doubt of Love:

There’s a new chap born in the world to-day,

And an axe laid close to the root of doubt.

When I hear you speak in that soulful way

Of a love to last till the stars go out—

But Mignonette!

Will you love me yet

When the duns come in? ... ’Tis an even bet.

Will your faith still shine when the world grows grey?

When the Autumn comes, will your heart grow sere?

Will you wear the smile that you wear to-day

When you wear the hat you wore last year?

Many such stanzas may deserve to be called coarse. A man can defend them and enjoy them, because they are not vulgar; they are not affected or insincere; they express the primitive man as he is found—under more or fewer layers of veneer—in every other man who is worth a woman’s salt. The work of John Philip Bourke must be taken now and then with a good deal of salt; but it holds the meat and mettle of manhood.

[27]
]

[29]
]THE VERSEMAKERS.

Just now and then when evenings creep

With languid feet to meet the sea,

The days go by to sleep their sleep

With all the past eternity—

When earth takes on the wondrous hue

Far shed from arcs beyond our ken,

We weave a vagrant verse or two,

Just now and then.

Just now and then, ere shadows fall

Across the threshold of the door,

And restless hands upon the wall

Retrace Ambition’s creed no more—

Apart from cankered strife and stress

That urge the stumbling feet of men,

We scrawl a verselet purposeless,

Just now and then.

Just now and then, though time glides on

From scene to scene, from year to year,

Till every “Cloth of Gold” is gone,

Till every leaf is brown and sere,

Life’s picture holds no glinting sheen,

We seek the inky shrine again

To paint our landscape gold and green,

Just now and then.

[30]
]Just now and then a lilting thought

May break the reign of monotone

That claims our camp to hold its court,

That claims our chair to hold its throne.

Thrice welcome, then! on silent wing,

The friends who come from hill or glen

To overthrow life’s tyrant king,

Just now and then.

Just now and then, when skies are clear,

And winter evenings wilt and wane,

Beside the glowing hearth we hear

The echo of some old refrain—

Some half-remembered distant dream

That calls the rhymer’s halting pen

To mend a broken rhythmic theme

Just now and then.

[31]
]DREAMS.

Away! Away!

Let sluggards stay

The sluggish ruck within,

While Beauty stands

With outstretched hands

To welcome those who win!

And gems divine

And wealth and wine

Are strewn upon the board,

Where life and love

Go hand and glove,

Like slaves before their lord!

The motors fly,

The ships go by,

The tram-cars whizz and whirr—

I see them pass

As in a glass,

Where dim-limned shadows stir:

I long to hail

Some friendly sail

Ere all the throng be past—

Then failure’s sense

And indolence

Reach down and hold me fast.

[32]
]Away! Away!

To act to-day!

The victor’s creed is Now—

A cloudless brain,

An easy rein,

A firm hand on the plough!

Aside is flung

The pall that hung

From damned Inaction’s mast ...

Then half-thought themes

And dreamer’s dreams

Reach down ... and hold me fast.

[33]
]TILL DAY IS DONE.

What does it matter

Though wealth pass by,

Where follies flatter

And red lips lie—

Though cloud shades darken

The spring-time sheen,

And dull threads mingle

Life’s woof between—

Which winds blow whither

O’er land and sea—

What does it matter

To you and me?

Here at the door of

Our Peace-thatched cot

Cosmea nods, and

Forget-me-not

Seems to say from

Its eyes of blue,

“Life is fairest

Where hearts are true!”

[34]
]And far beyond, where

The world is wide,

Where wrecked lives drift on

An ebbing tide,

There is a garland

A queen may wear,

Of sweet boronia

And maidenhair.

Never grey thyme, or

A spray of rue

Tarnish the garland

I’ve twined for you!

Let love-fires light, in

Each fragrant gem

A setting fair for

Your diadem!

What though its petals

May, one by one,

Pale grow and pass with

The mid-day’s sun—

Though velvet fingers

At midnight’s hush

Shall paint your tresses

With silvered brush—

Though shadows creep, and

The earth grows wan,

Our love will last

As the years roll on!

[35]
]With hand in hand, with

Our hearts that beat

Time to the music

Of twinkling feet—

Wrapped in a dream that

Will live and last

Into the night

When the day is past—

Though sails be set for

The shoreless sea—

What will it matter

To you and me?

[36]
]TO YOU.

I love you, Sweetheart! better far than all;

And still will love, with love that makes or mars,

When round my head eternal curtains fall,

And sleep shall close the eyelids of the stars:

Though all the houris of celestial bars

Should lure me on with eyes of liquid light,

Joined to the wondrous music of guitars,

Without you there, my blood were cold and white!

Beyond that phase of something some call death

I want to love you always, just as now—

To feel my cheek fanned by your clover breath,

And feel your hand press sometimes on my brow:

I would not turn one instant from the plough,

But follow on from starry fence to fence,

And question not the whither, whence, or how,

With you as earnest of God’s providence!

And when at last my evening glooms and greys,

And when, at last, my last sun westward dips,

And I go out upon dim, unknown ways

Where men are borne on heavenly spirit-ships,

I’ll watch and wait their oft-returning trips,

Hoping for you to step upon the quay,

That I may clasp you heart to heart with me,

And kiss you ... thus ... upon your rose-red lips!

[37]
]THE GOSPEL OF SHIRK.

The strenuous rhymer appals me to-night

With the pitch of his strenuous song

That shrieks for the god or the goddess of Right!

Or that lashes the legions of Wrong

With a vicious and venomous thong—

By Crumbs!

With a knotted and merciless thong!

He points, with the pointer of arrogant rhyme,

To the pathway of Wealth and Renown,

Where weary fools falter and fall, as they climb

To their Goal, that so grimly looks down

From its gloomy and sinister crown—

Ah me!

From its blasted and desolate crown!

And still, on the stretch of the moon-silvered sand,

With the ripple of waves on the bar

There comes, from a point jutting down from the land,

A discordant Voice, echoing far:

“Steer your boat, steer your boat for a star!”

There you are!

And the Voice is quite sure of the star!

[38]
]And to-night, dear Eileen! in our cockle-shell ship,

To our star that is constant and true,

We will float on the stream where the willow-boughs dip

’Neath a sky that is wondrously blue,

And a myriad eyes twinkle through—

All for you!

And for me, while I live loving you!

Let earnest men answer the crack of the whip,

With their shibbolethed banners aflap—

On the fur-covered planks of our cockle-shell ship,

As I lie with my head on your lap,

I do not care one Commonwealth rap

What may hap!

Not — one — blooming — young — Commonwealth — rap!

Let other hands delve ’mid the garbage and grime,

And let other lips puff till they blaze—

Oh! ’tis weary work marching when fools beat the time—

But ’tis easy to drift and to laze

All our nights and our jubilant days,

Sweet Eileen!

All our nights, starry nights, and our days!

[39]
]UNDER THE HEEL OF FATE.

Stay we here as the crowd goes by,

Twining along the street—

Listless steps and a half-breathed sigh;

Laughter and twinkling feet:

Care-worn faces where Time has set

Pathos in every line:

Budding Hope with a dead Regret—

Rue and roses and mignonette

Bunched in a queer design!

One is clad in a purple gown;

One in a skirt of grey;

Brushing past where the lights beat down,

Following each her way:

One is marked by a barefoot son;

One by a florid beau,

Tangled still was the skein she spun—

She who slept when the day was done ...

Say—was it ordered so?

See who comes with the drunkard’s gait

Out from the taproom door!

He was born to a man’s estate,

White to his inmost core:

Few were turned from the Master’s hand

Fit to compare with Jim ...

Now by the world despised and banned,

Clear as day shows the damning brand

Destiny placed on him!

[40]
]Fools may prate of a will that’s free,

Else of their strength and brain:

Know they not that the jarrah tree

Only splits with the grain?

Think they not that a man denies,

Or takes his faith on trust—

Not from the words of the foolish wise,

Not from the vision of sightless eyes—

But just because he must!

So pass they, while the music plays,

Tramping to God knows where:

Some goal His in the outer haze

Waiting the pilgrims there;

But if, as preachers aver, it be

Part of some changeless plan

Typed in the shop of Eternity,

Never a sentence, my friends, did we

Write for the play of “Man”!

[41]
]DREAMING THE DREAM OF LIFE.

A fig for the world and its carping cares,

Its worry and wear and fret—

A fig for the poppies that passion wears,

Fast followed by dull regret:

A fig for the glitter, and gilt, and gaud

That’s won in a tawdry strife,

Filling the world with the clash of swords—

Marring the sweetest of human chords

Born in the valleys where dreamers wait,

Dreaming the dream of Life.

If I own no love for the arts that mould

The minds and the souls of men,

There lurks no charm in the miser’s gold,

Or the heft of the writer’s pen.

I wear no frown for the clod below,

No cringe for the clown above;

For I tread but the path where the roses blow,

And I pin one bud to her breast of snow,

And I weave a glorious wreath to crown

My goddess of Peace and Love.

[42]
]Her liquid eyes are a hazel grey

And her lips are ruby red,

And the dusk of the night and the light of day

In the depths of her glance are wed.

The old world hustles on eager feet,

And its songs are the songs of strife,

But we stand aside from the glare and heat

And we draw the curtain of Love’s retreat—

This dainty spirit of youth and I

Dreaming the dream of Life.

A fig for the warrior’s crown of fame!

For the faithless world’s caress!

A fig for the poet’s or painter’s name

Whose haven is nothingness!

A fig for the transient light divine

That halos some godlike head!

For the Spring-time breaks and the stars all shine,

And the world goes round for this wife of mine ...

Oh, the spirit of languorous love will live

When the spirit of strife is dead!

[43]
]A GLIMPSE OF SUMMER.

While the world’s a-bustle

On the upward grade—

Straining brain and muscle,

Plying pen and spade—

Let us go a-dreaming,

With your hair a-streaming ...

Cupid lies a-scheming

’Neath the mulga shade.

How the rabble clatters

As it hurries by!

Chasing Passion’s tatters,

Sighing Passion’s sigh.

Soft airs, sandal-scented,

Fan us: golden-tinted,

Like a landscape minted,

Plain and hill-top lie.

Willy-willies whirling

Play for me and you,

Curling up, and curling,

Till they reach the blue:

Like a giant sweeping,

Creeping on, and creeping

’Mongst the trees, a-sleeping

Mid-day’s languor through.

[44]
]Bell-bird notes are swelling

Upward from the glade;

Lovelorn swains are telling

Love-tales worn and frayed:

Let them strain their tether!

You and I together

Never wilt a feather,

Lolling in the shade.

Earnest souls, or sighing,

Death has ever paid!

See pale Effort lying

Rue- and wreath-arrayed!

Come then, Jean, a-dreaming,

With your hair a-streaming ...

Cupid lies a-scheming

’Neath the mulga shade.

[45]
]THE END OF THE EPISODE.

There is no need to say Good-bye,

And weep;

There is no call on us for tear or sigh.

Men say: “Just as ye sow, so shall ye reap.”

Is that, think you, a lie?

Now fate points out our different ways,

And so

We leave the spot where glamour clothed the days—

Leave for those duller worlds that lie below,

With something like amaze.

No use to curse: whatever crossed

Our way:

No need for words: when hearts are tempest-tossed—

But those alone may know the cost, who pay,

And bankrupt, pay the cost.

[46]
]THE GOLDEN AGE.

Then life was young

And roses hung

In gay festoons from star to star,

And o’er the farm

A silvered charm,

The moonlight, flooded full and far—

The moonlight, telling wondrous tales

Of things that are not, and that are.

How strange the thrall

Around it all!

The subtle flapping of a wing!

You plainly hear

Each wheaten spear

Unto its neighbour whispering,

And almost catch their secrets, too—

Those kindred children of the Spring!

And, watching so,

The branches throw

Fantastic shadows on the grass:

How quaint and clear

Their lines appear!

A woven way where fancies pass—

Those secret bairns, that come to most,

And live and breathe—but die—alas!

[47]
] No longer chimes

The gold of rhymes

That would make music, ay or nay!

I number still

The month, at will,

Clare gave to me a lilac spray ...

’Tis dead and withered now—how long?

An age, a year, or yesterday.

Thus rhyme and spray

Have turned to clay,

While Discord plays on life’s guitar ...

’Twere wise and meet

To book a seat,

A cushioned seat, in Daphne’s car,

While bright eyes shine, and roses twine

In gay festoons from star to star!

[48]
]AT PARTING.

I sit beside you, this last afternoon,

And watch the sunset’s change from gold to grey,

That mirrors well my life of yesterday

Where shadows, born of twilight, fell so soon.

And yet, you seemed so womanly and true—

I never guessed “’Twas but to kill the time!”

For I, who dwelt in Passion’s summer clime,

Played for a life that centred all in you.

I’ve spun no webs, as money-spiders spin,

Nor stacked the shining shekels row on row;

And yet I have one plea—I love you so!

And fatuously dreamed that love might win.

For me this old world smiled when you were by;

Life’s circles spread their limits wider yet;

There came no grey train-bearers of regret

To grace the triumph of hypocrisy.

My heart throbbed to the rustle of your dress;

My soul drank in each message of your eyes;

For Love, they say, is all our paradise,

And wanting Love, this life were nothingness.

But ere we part—O girl grown worldly-wise!—

I place one glory-rose amid your hair,

And kiss your lips, with something of despair:

For, Dear, I love you yet—and yet despise.

[49]
]THE LEADEN HOOF.

What use to puff a blackened fire

Grown emberless within the grate?

What use to twang a damaged lyre

That’s only half articulate?

What use for dumb

Desire to thumb

The leaves of a curriculum

When other men matriculate?

’Tis vain to plan a fabric gay

With tangled warp and broken woof—

Just listen for a moment, pray,

—A magpie singing on the roof—

Just hear, and then

Throw down the pen:

The songs and wings of common men

Are anchored to a leaden hoof.

And yet, are other days, that bear

No weight of pessimistic sin—

A laurel leaf for me to wear,

A thought to stir, a smile to win;

And o’er the sea

There comes to me

The echo of a symphony

That sets the smiling world a-spin.

[50]
]Now carmine-hued are Renée’s lips,

A thousand gleams light life’s old wine—

I tremble to the finger tips

To breathe devotion at her shrine;

But while I write,

Some blasting light

Reveals my rose an ashen white

That crumbles in these hands of mine.

What use to fret a halting brain

While inspiration holds aloof?

And hark! the voice bursts forth again,

—A magpie singing on the roof—

Just hear, and then

Throw down the pen:

The songs and wings of common men

Are tethered to a leaden hoof.

[51]
]THE PILGRIMAGE.

For many a year we wandered

over hill and dale and mountain,

For ever pressing onward

till we’re nearly worn and old:

Searching for some spot Elysian

where the poets’ crystal fountain

Sings its songs of calm contentment

in a valley draped with gold:

Where the flowers bloom for ever

’neath the sun’s life-giving kisses,

But never droop ’neath thirsty skies

or feel the winter’s chill:

Where roses wreath an arbour

where no fatal adder hisses,

And the promise of our youthful dreams

our later days fulfil.

Then the purple flush of morning

thrilled our careless hearts with pleasure,

And the sunbeams shooting downward

with our spirit shared their glow:

Once every bell and buttercup

that blossomed was a treasure—

In those days that we have dreamed of,

in the misty long-ago.

[52]
]But the joys of life would pall upon

the heart that they for ever,

Unbroken by a shadow,

lit with one eternal glare;

And the bonds of love are strengthened

by the thought that they may sever,

And are hallowed in the memory

of lives and loves that were.

The ropes of sand that bound us

then appeared so deftly woven

That we noticed not each single grain

the breezes swept away,

Nor underneath the robe of Beauty,

silken-cased, the cloven

Hoof of Time, that swept the garlands

into ruin and decay.

[53]
]

[55]
]

THE DIAMOND WEDDING.

To-day is our diamond wedding, old wife!

Some seventy summers and more

Since first we paired off in this battle of life

On thirty a year, and the run of a knife ...

What! You say I’m a blessed old bore!

Oh, yes, now we are, I admit, pretty right;

But still to that hard-grafting time

My mind often wanders in quiet delight

’Way down from the tree of prosperity’s height

That our industry’s helped us to climb.

And I picture the day to the station we tramped

With our characters safe in the swags—

A long weary walk, and, by George! you were camped;

And don’t you remember the lads had me stamped

As one of Glint’s runaway lags?

[56]
]Well! well! now I wonder is he living still—

The super that then bossed the run,

You know he was “Captain,” and I “Bo’s’n Bill”

In those pleasant old days when we lived on the hill,

And I scarcely knew life had begun.

A fine lot of fellows now, wife! were they not?

And genuine, too, to the core;

And, if they weren’t quite on to the spot

In their speech—there’s one thing they never forgot:

To leave the latch key in the door!

But then one ne’er dreamed as one worked straight ahead

What the future held for us in store;

Nor that thrift would build up from this stringy-bark shed

A right little, tight little cottage instead,

With enough in the stocking—and more.

We hadn’t much then in the furniture line—

That’s not to call gorgeous, you know—

But still round it all there’s a glow of sunshine

That makes the blood dance in this old frame of mine

In a stream that naught else can make flow.

Some magic hangs round the old iron-hooped tongs

And the splutter the tallow-lamp made ...

All seem to my memory like beautiful songs

As they float on before me in numberless throngs

From the depths of a fifty years shade.

[57]
]But you must remember how proudly you’d bring

Home the cheque at the end of the year:

Then you were a queen, lass! and I was a king;

Though we usedn’t to lunch off a butterfly’s wing

Or any of that kind of cheer.

Have those pleasures all vanished, old girl! did you say?

What! Tears in those precious old eyes!

No, lass! for you’re dearest and fairest to-day

When the golden-haired girl has grown wrinkled and grey ...

We’re together, and shall be for ever and aye

In our home up above in the skies.

[58]
]A GARLAND OF SIGHS.

What is the use of a sheaf of regrets?

What is the use of a garland of sighs?

Ever is Destiny trailing her nets,

A smile on her lips, and with hate in her eyes.

Heedless the spirit, beseeching, that cries!

Helpless the mortal who sorrows and frets!

What is the use of a garland of sighs?

What is the use of a sheaf of regrets?

Cast in the midst of the limitless skies,

Lost in the æons that e’en God forgets.

Merely a life-light that flashes and dies,

Merely a soul-spark that glimmers and sets—

These are the glories that “being” begets,

Granted alike to the foolish and wise—

What is the use of a sheaf of regrets?

What is the use of a garland of sighs?

Ah! but philosophy always forgets—

Writ though the sentence, and cast though the dies—

Love may fly downward from God’s parapets,

Fanning Eternity’s breath as she flies!

Groundlings awake from their squalor and rise,

Destiny then may well gather her debts—

What is the use of a garland of sighs?

What is the use of a sheaf of regrets?

[59]
]WAITING FOR THE CALL.

Though to-day may groan ’neath its weight of care,

and the sun be a raven’s wing

That darkens the faces of children fair

and saddens the songs they sing;

I know it will change at the faintest touch

from the hand of a God-sent Spring!

And I know, though the desert be grim and grey,

and its life be a Lethe’s pond

Whose waters of indolence hold alway

the spirits of men in bond,

Full well there is room for a strenuous life

in the Land that is Just Beyond.

Thus we wait for the touch of a magic string

and a glance of a love-lit eye:

For a breath from some spirit awakening

that passes us clearly by:

—We legion of dreamers that drift and live,

and dabble and drink—and die.

[60]
]

When I tramp forth attended by

A retinue of “blues,”

And all the world and all its wife

Are clothed in sombre hues,

Then life holds nothing much to win,

And nothing much to lose.

’Tis little use to preach and pray,

And none to fume and fret—

No solace dwells within the days

Of love and lush and debt—

’Tis then I throw the bundle off

And light a cigarette.

[61]
]And seeking, so, some mental perch

Upon some mental crag,

I straightway run the colours up

Of self-assertion’s flag,

Assume a tragic air, and thus

Apostrophise the swag:

“You’ve tarried closer far than friends,

And closer too than foes;

You’re with me when the autumn falls,

And with the first spring rose;

Though whence such fond affection comes

The Devil only knows.

“You’ve driven me along the track

Like mankind’s primal curse;

You’ve driven me—behold the proof!—

To scrawling slipshod verse;

And every wrinkle in your face

Denotes an empty purse.

“I know you well from stem to stern,

From centrepiece to rim;

For many, many years ago

You cost a modest ‘jim’—

Those years, those sun-tipped years! that now

Live with the seraphim.

[62]
]“Since then I’ve marched the dusty way

That better feet have trod,

But always found, my bride! in you,

An unresponsive clod;

Until we two have grown alike

As peas within a pod.

“And yet to flirt with you I left

A woman passing fair

(A pleasant girl who had for me

A smile or two to spare),

A half-a-dozen quid a week,

A couch and easy chair.

“I left——” But, ah! a wintry wind

Awakes Matilda’s charms:

I calmly spread the old girl out

And snuggle in her arms—

Untouched by sighs or sentiment,

Unscathed by love’s alarms.

[63]
]SOAKER SMITH.

He died of thirst.

They tell no tale lugubrious

Or horror finely spun,

Of martyr’s groans and human bones

A-bleaching in the sun;

But those who cut beneath the bark

May find the very pith

Of pathos, in the yarn they spin,

Concerning Soaker Smith.

He never dogged on Bayley’s tracks,

Nor battled through with Frost,

In wild times, when the souls of men

Were torn and tempest-tossed,

Nor bore the brunt, nor claimed the rank

Of fearless pioneer—

He was, in point of fact, a joint

Who played his life for beer.

Smith sat upon the shanty floor

With blazing eyes and brain,

While, from the sand, the impish band

Of fantods sprang again:

[64] ]They mocked him with a phantom pot,

They laughed and lured and lied—

“A pint! or I,” he howled, “must die

Of thirst!”—and so he died.

Then all the tribe of whiskered wits

That nourishes up North,

From rub-a-dubs and frowsy pubs

Like one gay ghoul came forth;

And Blastus painted on a slab

A dead marine, reversed,

And wrote, the knave, beside his grave,

“Hic! jacet. Died of thirst.”

And still, around the shanty bar,

When wit and humour fly,

They greet the tale that ne’er grows stale

With wild hilarity;

But those who probe it to the core

May find the very pith

Of pathos, in the yarn they spin

Concerning Soaker Smith.

[65]
]

Did you ever drive on pay-wash in this land of boom and bust?

Did you ever see gold glitter in the dull light of the glim,

Where the face is specked and sprinkled with the best of sovereign-dust,

And you calkerlate your income at a pick-blow to the jim?

Hello, on top! Hello!

Hook on, and let her go!

Or we’ll never make our tucker in a five-ounce show!

[66]
]Oh, the days go by like drinkin’—for it’s entertainin’ graft,

And you hear your mate discoursin’ to the crowd around the brace,

As he tugs away the hide, and it goes skimmin’ up the shaft,

While a smile ’ud trip a bullock jest illumernates his face—

Hello, on top! Hello!

Ease off, and have a blow!

We’ve a crushin’ in the paddock, and there’s more below!

Then you don’t dine any more on sodden flapjacks in the pan;

And you don’t back under cover when you see a bit of skirt;

For there’s something in the atmosphere that bulges out a man

When he’s drivin’ on the gutter, and there’s pay-gold in the dirt—

Hello, on top! Hello!

Jest rosin up your bow!

For we’ve got no time for sleepin’ when there’s corn to hoe!

[67]
]But I’ll bet old Bill is dreamin’, and he’s driftin’ on the tide,

Where his wife and kids is waitin’ for a dozen lengthy years

On their cocky-patch, and hopin’ till the last hope nearly died—

And it’s safe to lay a dollar as his eyes is dim with tears—

Hello, on top! Hello!

This is boshter sile to grow,

F’r I guess our plotch ’ll answer mor’n a ’tater to the row!

But a man ain’t got no time to dream with plenty work in sight,

When he’s got the cream of all the lead right through from pay to pay;

For you can’t get rich on dreamin’, and you can’t shift dirt with skite,

And the gold stream only dribbles in a keg-o’-treacle way—

Hello, on top! Hello!

Is’t frost up there or snow?

I’d back you ’gainst a fun’ral any day for goin’ slow!

[68]
]Some day when we’ve her bones picked bare, and got her gutted clean,

We’ll travel over East, and see what yaller dust can buy;

And old Bill and me, I reckon, will be right and all serene,

If we only keep our thirst at bay, and keep our powder dry—

Hello, on top! Hello!

Let down the rope, and throw

The sling; you’d keep a man all night ’thout singin’ out “Yo, ho!”

[69]
]

OUR GOLDFIELDS SPRING.

You come not with the dainty air and grace,

And wreathing smiles, that clothe the Eastern season—

A maiden lithe of form, and fair of face,

To wheedle lovers from the ranks of reason:

You do not come in riots of pink lace,

For Western bards to perpetrate a wheeze on,

And cover, in a frenzy, page on page

With all the rhymer’s threadbare persiflage.

[70]
]We seek in vain the fern-wreaths on your gown,

The dew-drop jewels in your carpet spreading—

Those pæans from the bush-land and the town,

Suggestive, quaintly, of a fairy wedding:

We wait expectantly—then truckle down

To sleep on bags—no rose leaves for our bedding!

And wring our hands, and weep like anything ...

There is no copy in a Western Spring.

For here you are, thus early soiled and tanned,

A sorry subject for a verse creator;

A damned inverted pewter in your hand,

Some draggled immortelles around your crater:

They speak, somehow, of drought, and dust, and sand,

And summer’s hell, that’s waiting for us later,

And flies innumerable, and small black ants,

And several thousand other irritants.

I do not like your rude, precocious stare;

Your torrid temperature is disconcerting;

And, Lord! the frowsy draperies you wear

Might well be made of gunnybags, or shirting;

And one could bet you never learned the rare

And subtle art of scientific flirting—

To set the tune, and lead the boys a dance,

Through many a labyrinth of sweet romance.

[71]
]Yet still our own! though scoffers mock and mar;

And at your feet I lay this sapless jingle,

That, if too dry, may moisten at the bar

Where sundry goddesses and groundlings mingle—

Where modest Martha’s conduct grows bizarre,

And Virtue’s self is often short a shingle:

And soaked, thus, in the dregs of beer and wine,

Once more I shy the garland at your shrine!

Yet, after all, the joyous feet of Spring

Trip to the tune the pipes of Pan are playing

In every clime where Youth may have its fling,

And Love, unweighted by life’s cares, goes straying.

Look not where last year’s rose lies withering!

Heed not the pessimistic asses braying!

But fetch your gauds, and place them on Her brow—

Life’s best delusion is beside you now.

[72]
]NEARLY A PESSIMIST.

What’s the use o’ laughter,

What’s the use o’ strife,

To a gloomy shafter

In this team of Life?

Hear the whips a-crackin’