AROUND THE BOREE

LOG

AND OTHER VERSES

By

“JOHN O’BRIEN”

ANGUS AND ROBERTSON

First published in 1921 by

ANGUS & ROBERTSON LTD

89 Castlereagh Street, Sydney

54 Bartholomew Close, London

107 Elizabeth Street, Melbourne

This impression 1964

Copyright

Registered in Australia for transmission by post as a book

PRINTED IN AUSTRALIA BY HALSTEAD PRESS, SYDNEY

CONTENTS

AROUND THE BOREE LOG

Oh, stick me in the old caboose this night of wind and rain,

And let the doves of fancy loose to bill and coo again.

I want to feel the pulse of love that warmed the blood like wine;

I want to see the smile above this kind old land of mine.

So come you by your parted ways that wind the wide world through,

And make a ring around the blaze the way we used to do;

The “fountain” on the sooted crane will sing the old, old song

Of common joys in homely vein forgotten, ah, too long.

The years have turned the rusted key, and time is on the jog,

Yet spend another night with me around the boree log.[^[1]]

Now someone driving through the rain will happen in, I bet;

So fill the fountain up again, and leave the table set.

For this was ours with pride to say—and all the world defy—

No stranger ever turned away, no neighbour passed us by.

Bedad, he’ll have to stay the night; the rain is going to pour—

So make the rattling windows tight, and close the kitchen door,

And bring the old lopsided chair, the tattered cushion, too—

We’ll make the stranger happy there, the way we used to do.

The years have turned the rusted key, and time is on the jog,

Yet spend another night with me around the boree log.

He’ll fill his pipe, and good and well, and all aglow within

We’ll hear the news he has to tell, the yarns he has to spin;

Yarns—yes, and super-yarns, forsooth, to set the eyes agog,

And freeze the blood of trusting youth around the boree log.

Then stir it up and make it burn; the poker’s next to you;

Come, let us poke it all in turn, the way we used to do.

There’s many a memory bright and fair will tingle at a name—

But leave unstirred the embers there we cannot fan to flame.

For years have turned the rusted key, and time is on the jog;

Still, spend this fleeting night with me around the boree log.

CALLING TO ME

Through the hush of my heart in the spell of its dreaming

Comes the song of a bush boy glad-hearted and free;

Oh, the gullies are green where the sunlight is streaming,

And the voice of that youngster is calling to me.

It is calling to me with a haunting insistence,

And my feet wander off on a hoof-beaten track,

Till I hear the old magpies away in the distance

With a song of the morning that’s calling me back.

It is calling me back, for the dew’s on the clover,

And the colours are mellow on mountain and tree;

Oh, the gold has gone gray in the heart of the rover,

And the bush in the sunshine is calling to me.

It is calling to me, though the breezes are telling

Gay troubadour tales to the stars as they roam;

For the tapers are lit in the humble old dwelling,

And the love that it sheltered is calling me home.

It is calling me home—but the white road lies gleaming,

And afar from it all must I tarry and dree;

Just an echo far off, in the hush of my dreaming,

Is the voice of a youngster that’s calling to me.

THE LITTLE IRISH MOTHER

Have you seen the tidy cottage in the straggling, dusty street,

Where the roses swing their censers by the door?

Have you heard the happy prattle and the tramp of tiny feet

As the sturdy youngsters romp around the floor?

Did you wonder why the wiree[^[2]] comes to sing his sweetest song?

Did the subtle charm of home upon you fall?

Did you puzzle why it haunted you the while you passed along?—

There’s a Little Irish Mother there; that’s all.

When you watched the children toiling at their lessons in the school,

Did you pick a winsome girleen from the rest,

With her wealth of curl a-cluster as she smiled upon the stool,

In a simple Monday-morning neatness dressed?

Did you mark the manly bearing of a healthy-hearted boy

As he stood erect his well-conned task to tell?

Did you revel in the freshness with a pulse of wholesome joy?—

There a Little Irish Mother there as well.

There’s a Little Irish Mother that a lonely vigil keeps

In the settler’s hut where seldom stranger comes,

Watching by the home-made cradle where one more Australian sleeps

While the breezes whisper weird things to the gums,

Where the settlers battle gamely, beaten down to rise again,

And the brave bush wives the toil and silence share,

Where the nation is a-building in the hearts of splendid men—

There’s a Little Irish Mother always there.

There’s a Little Irish Mother—and her head is bowed and gray,

And she’s lonesome when the evening shadows fall;

Near the fire she “do be thinkin’,” all the “childer” are away,

And their silent pictures watch her from the wall.

For the world has claimed them from her; they are men and women now,

In their thinning hair the tell-tale silver gleams;

But she runs her fingers, dozing, o’er a tousled baby brow—

It is “little Con” or “Bridgie” in her dreams.

There’s a Little Irish Mother sleeping softly now at last

Where the tangled grass is creeping all around;

And the shades of unsung heroes troop about her from the past

While the moonlight scatters diamonds on the mound.

And a good Australian’s toiling in the world of busy men

Where the strife and sordid grinding cramp and kill;

But his eyes are sometimes misted, and his heart grows brave again—

She’s the Little Irish Mother to him still.

When at last the books are balanced in the settling-up to be,

And our idols on the rubbish-heap are hurled,

Then the Judge shall call to honour—not the “stars,” it seems to me,

Who have posed behind the footlights of the world;

But the king shall doff his purple, and the queen lay by her crown,

And the great ones of the earth shall stand aside

While a Little Irish Mother in her tattered, faded gown

Shall receive the crown too long to her denied.

ONE BY ONE

With trust in God and her good man

She settled neath the spur;

The old slab dwelling, spick and span,

Was world enough for her;

The lamp-light kissed her raven hair

As, when her work was done,

She lined us up beside her chair

And taught us one by one.

And weaving memories, haunting sweet,

With threads of weal and woe,

The years went by on velvet feet—

We did not hear them go.

The world was calling everywhere

Beneath the golden sun;

When silver streaked her raven hair,

We left her one by one.

Then, turning back on cogs of pain,

The spool that ran so fast

Unwound before her eyes again

The pictures of the past.

The shadows played around her chair,

Where fancy’s web was spun;

When time had bleached her raven hair,

She called us one by one.

Oh, say not that we loved her less!

But write them to our shame,

The silence and the loneliness;

And then the summons came—

We found the dark clouds banking there

To hide the setting sun.

Ah, white threads in her children’s hair!—

We gathered one by one.

How quaintly sere, how small and strange

The old home and the spur;

But stranger this—the only change

Was wrought in us and her.

The lamp-light kissed her faded chair,

Where, ere the sands had run,

The sheen still on her raven hair,

She’d nursed us one by one.

Oh, vain the word that each could tell

With full heart brimming o’er,

That we, who ever loved her well,

Might still have loved her more!

Then back into the world of care—

To bless till life is done—

A memory crowned with milk-white hair

We carried one by one.

TEN LITTLE STEPS AND STAIRS

There were ten little Steps and Stairs.

Round through the old bush home all day

Romping about in the old bush way.

They were ten little wild March hares,

Storming the kitchen in hungry lines,

With their naked feet, doing mud designs,

“All over the place like punkin vines.”

There were ten little Steps and Stairs.

There were ten little Steps and Stairs.

In their home-made frocks and their Sunday suits,

Up through the church with their squeaky boots,

While the folk went astray in their prayers,

They hustled along, all dressed and neat—

Oh, they bustled a bit as they filled the seat;

From the first to the last, the lot complete.

There were ten little Steps and Stairs.

There were ten little Steps and Stairs.

But the years have shuffled them all about,

Have worn them thin, and straightened them out

With the tramp of a hundred cares;

Ay, and each grim scar has a tale to tell

Of a knock and a blow and a hand that fell,

And a break in the line, and a gap. Ah, well—

There were ten little Steps and Stairs.

THE TRIMMIN’S ON THE ROSARY

Ah, the memories that find me now my hair is turning gray,

Drifting in like painted butterflies from paddocks far away;

Dripping dainty wings in fancy—and the pictures, fading fast,

Stand again in rose and purple in the album of the past.

There’s the old slab dwelling dreaming by the wistful, watchful trees,

Where the coolabahs are listening to the stories of the breeze;

There’s a homely welcome beaming from its big, bright friendly eyes,

With The Sugarloaf behind it blackened in against the skies;

There’s the same dear happy circle round the boree’s cheery blaze

With a little Irish mother telling tales of other days.

She had one sweet, holy custom which I never can forget,

And a gentle benediction crowns her memory for it yet;

I can see that little mother still and hear her as she pleads,

“Now it’s getting on to bed-time; all you childer get your beads.”

There were no steel-bound conventions in that old slab dwelling free;

Only this—each night she lined us up to say the Rosary;

E’en the stranger there, who stayed the night upon his journey, knew

He must join the little circle, ay, and take his decade too.

I believe she darkly plotted, when a sinner hove in sight

Who was known to say no prayer at all, to make him stay the night.

Then we’d softly gather round her, and we’d speak in accents low,

And pray like Sainted Dominic so many years ago;

And the little Irish mother’s face was radiant, for she knew

That “where two or three are gathered” He is gathered with them too.

O’er the paters and the aves how her reverent head would bend!

How she’d kiss the cross devoutly when she counted to the end!

And the visitor would rise at once, and brush his knees—and then

He’d look very, very foolish as he took the boards again.

She had other prayers to keep him. They were long, long prayers in truth;

And we used to call them “Trimmin’s” in my disrespectful youth.

She would pray for kith and kin, and all the friends she’d ever known,

Yes, and everyone of us could boast a “trimmin’ ” all his own.

She would pray for all our little needs, and every shade of care

That might darken o’er The Sugarloaf, she’d meet it with a prayer.

She would pray for this one’s “sore complaint,” or that one’s “hurted hand,”

Or that someone else might make a deal and get “that bit of land”;

Or that Dad might sell the cattle well, and seasons good might rule,

So that little John, the weakly one, might go away to school.

There were trimmin’s, too, that came and went; but ne’er she closed without

Adding one for something special “none of you must speak about.”

Gentle was that little mother, and her wit would sparkle free,

But she’d murder him who looked around while at the Rosary:

And if perchance you lost your beads, disaster waited you,

For the only one she’d pardon was “himself”—because she knew

He was hopeless, and ’twas sinful what excuses he’d invent,

So she let him have his fingers, and he cracked them as he went,

And, bedad, he wasn’t certain if he’d counted five or ten,

Yet he’d face the crisis bravely, and would start around again;

But she tallied all the decades, and she’d block him on the spot,

With a “Glory, Daddah, Glory!” and he’d “Glory” like a shot.

She would portion out the decades to the company at large;

But when she reached the trimmin’s she would put herself in charge;

And it oft was cause for wonder how she never once forgot,

But could keep them in their order till she went right through the lot.

For that little Irish mother’s prayers embraced the country wide;

If a neighbour met with trouble, or was taken ill, or died,

We could count upon a trimmin’—till, in fact, it got that way

That the Rosary was but trimmin’s to the trimmin’s we would say.

Then “himself” would start keownrawning[^[3]]—for the public good, we thought—

“Sure you’ll have us here till mornin’. Yerra, cut them trimmin’s short!”

But she’d take him very gently, till he softened by degrees—

“Well, then, let us get it over. Come now, all hands to their knees.”

So the little Irish mother kept her trimmin’s to the last,

Ever growing as the shadows o’er the old selection passed;

And she lit our drab existence with her simple faith and love,

And I know the angels lingered near to bear her prayers above,

For her children trod the path she trod, nor did they later spurn

To impress her wholesome maxims on their children in their turn.

Ay, and every “sore complaint” came right, and every “hurted hand”;

And we made a deal from time to time, and got “that bit of land”;

And Dad did sell the cattle well; and little John, her pride,

Was he who said the Mass in black the morning that she died;

So her gentle spirit triumphed—for ’twas this, without a doubt,

Was the very special trimmin’ that she kept so dark about.

* * * * *

But the years have crowded past us, and the fledglings all have flown,

And the nest beneath The Sugarloaf no longer is their own;

For a hand has written “finis” and the book is closed for good—

There’s a stately red-tiled mansion where the old slab dwelling stood;

There the stranger has her “evenings,” and the formal supper’s spread,

But I wonder has she “trimmin’s” now, or is the Rosary said?

Ah, those little Irish mothers passing from us one by one!

Who will write the noble story of the good that they have done?

All their children may be scattered, and their fortunes windwards hurled,

But the Trimmin’s on the Rosary will bless them round the world.

THE BIRDS WILL SING AGAIN

She saw The Helper standing near

When grief and care oppressed;

“A Great, Big God,” Who wiped the tear,

And soothed the aching breast.

So, in the stress of sorrows piled,

The gloom was lifted when

She pointed up and sweetly smiled

“A Great, Big God; be brave, my child,

The birds will sing again.”

When dark misfortune, hovering o’er,

Brought woes on every hand;

And care was camping by the door,