Out Of Khaki
I slung me khaki suit to-day.
Civilian now front heel to chin
I 'op round on a single shin;
At home in peace I'm bound to stay.
'N' so they've took me duds away.
It 'urt like strippin' off me skin!
I put it on three years ago,
The ole brown rig. There wasn't then
A prouder chicken in the pen.
Jist twenty turned, me nibs you'd know
For how I give me chest a throw,
A man among the best of men.
Me little no the touch I give,
Me chin's ez solid ez a rock,
'N' level with the Town 'All clock,
A five-inch grin across me chiv.
“Lor' love us, this is how to live,”
Sez I, 'n' felt I owned the Block.
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poem by Edward George Dyson
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Australia
Australia, my native land,
A stirring whisper in your ear—
'Tis time for you to understand
Your rating now is A1, dear.
You've done some rousing things of late.
That lift you from the simple state
In which you chose to vegetate.
The persons so superior,
Whose patronage no more endures,
Now have to fire a salvo for
The glory that is fairly yours.
At length you need no sort of crutch,
You stand alone, you're voted “much”—
Get busy and behave as such.
No man from Oskosh, or from Hull,
Or any other chosen place
Can rise with a distended skull,
And cast aspersions in your face.
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poem by Edward George Dyson
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The Germ
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.
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poem by Edward George Dyson
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Repaired
Hauled I was from out the tip
Fritz made with his demonstration,
All broke up, a fractured hip
In me Darby Kell a rip
Settn' up a cool sensation
Like excessive ventilation
One 'and cluttered up a treat-
On me oath you wouldn't know it
From a 'andsome plate of meat.
They had sorter pied me feet,
And a bullet of the foe hit
Where no decent bloke could show it.
'Arf a year they've botched me now;
Ev'ry scientific schemer
In the cor' has faked me prow,
Soled 'n' heeled a bloke somehow-
Gawd, the last one was a screamer.
Wirin' up me flamin' femur!
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poem by Edward George Dyson
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Of the True Endeavour
HAPPY he in whom the honest love of fair endeavour lingers,
Who has strength to do his labour, and has pride to do it well,
Carve he gems of purest water with an artist’s cunning fingers,
Hew the granite, forge the beam, or make a simple tale to tell
His to feel a glow ecstatic of the mighty exhultation
That arose when out of chaos all the wheeling planets stood.
Since when God beheld the wonder, saw the stir of His creation
In the busy scheme of heaven, and He said that it was good,
Never man has made with willing hands some thing of true intention—
Cut in bone a strange, rude picture to inspire the naked hordes,
Or contrived a subtle engine with laborious invention—
But has entered straight and freely to the joy that was the Lord’s
Those so blessed have with them solace, balm to still the ache of sorrow,
One companion who will cleave when friends and kindred turn away;
But a jealous mistress is she, and be sure again to-morrow
She will draw you back repentant if ye wander far to-day.
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poem by Edward George Dyson
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As The Troops Went Through
I heard this day, as I may no more,
The world's heart throb at my workshop door.
The sun was keen, and the day was still;
The township drowsed in, a haze of heat.
A stir far off on the sleepy hill,
The measured beat of their buoyant feet,
And the lilt and thrum
Of a little drum,
The song they sang in a cadence low,
The piping note of a piccolo.
The township woke, and the doors flew wide;
The women trotted their boys beside.
Across the bridge on a single heel
The soldiers came in a golden glow,
With throb of song and the chink of steel,
The gallant crow of the piccolo.
Good and brown they were,
And their arms swung bare.
Their fine young faces revived in me
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poem by Edward George Dyson
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Worked-Out Mine
On summer nights when moonbeams flow
And glisten o’er the high, white tips,
And winds make lamentation low,
As through the ribs of shattered ships,
And steal about the broken brace
Where pendant timbers swing and moan,
And flitting bats give aimless chase,
Who dares to seek the mine alone?
The shrinking bush with sable rims
A skeleton forlorn and bowed,
With pipe-clay white about its limbs
And at its feet a tattered shroud;
And ghostly figures lurk and groan,
Shrill whispers sound from ghostly lips,
And ghostly footsteps start the stone
That clatters sharply down the tips.
The engine-house is dark and still,
The life that raged within has fled;
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poem by Edward George Dyson
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A New Girl Up At White’s
THERE’S a fresh track down the paddock
Through the lightwoods to the creek,
And I notice Billy Craddock
And Maloney do not speak,
And The Snag is slyly bitter
When he’s criticising Bill,
And there’s quite a foreign glitter
On the fellows at the mill.
Sid M‘Mahon’s turned out a dandy
With a masher coat and tie,
And the engine-driver, Sandy,
Curls his whiskers on the sly:
All the boys wear paper collars
And their tombstone shirts of nights,
So it’s ten to one in dollars
There’s a new girl up at White’s.
She’s a charmer from the river,
But she steeps the lads in gloom,
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poem by Edward George Dyson
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Night Shift
‘HELLO! that’s the whistle, be moving.
Wake up! don’t lie muttering there.
What language! your style is improving—
It’s pleasant to hear you at prayer.
Turn out, man, and spare us the blessing.
Crib’s cut, and the tea’s on the brew.
You’ll have to look slippy in dressing
For that was the half-hour that blew.’
‘Half-past! and the night’s simply awful,
The hut fairly shakes in the storm.
Hang night-shifts! They shouldn’t be lawful;
I’ve only had time to get warm.
I notice the hut’s rarely bright, and
The bunk’s always cold as a stone,
Except when I go on at night, and
The half-after whistles have blown.
‘Bob built up that fire just to spite me,
The conscienceless son of a swab!
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poem by Edward George Dyson
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The Shanty
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,
And two navvies are fighting like fiends on the ground,
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poem by Edward George Dyson
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