The Immortal Strain
“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.
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poem by Edward George Dyson
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In The Benevolent
‘I’M OFF on the wallaby!’ cries Old Ben,
And his pipe is lit, and his swag is rolled;
‘There is nothing here for us old-time men,
But up north, I hear, they are on the gold.’
And he shuffles off with a feeble stride,
With his ragged swag and his billy black.
He is making tracks for the other side,
O’er the river deep, or the Great Divide;
But at night, dead beat, he travels back.
Then at morn next day he is off again,
With an eager light in his aged eyes,
Tramping away on his journey vain
For the land of promise beyond the rise.
Over the range there is work to do,
There is roaring life at the shanty bars.
He will tramp the plains whilst the skies are blue,
And will wander the great wide bushland through,
And be soothed to sleep by the blinking stars.
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poem by Edward George Dyson
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Ah Ling, The Leper
UP a dark and fetid alley, where the offal and the slime
Of a brave and blusterous city met its misery and crime,
In a hovel reeking pestilence, and noisome as the grave,
Dwelt Ah Ling, the Chinese joiner, and the sweater’s willing slave.
Squatting down amongst the shavings, with his chisel and his plane,
Through the long, hot days of striving, dead to pleasure and to pain,
Like a creature barely human, very yellow, gaunt, and grim,
Ah Ling laboured on, for pleasure spread no lures that tempted him.
And the curious people, watching through the rotten wall at night,
Saw his death’s face weirdly outlined in the candle’s feeble light;
Saw him still intent upon his work, ill-omened and unclean,
Planing, sawing, nailing, hewing—just a skin and bone machine.
Neither kith nor kin the joiner had; perchance he nerved his hand
With the treasured hope of seeing once again his native land
As a Chinaman of fortune, and of finishing his life
At his ease in China Proper, with a painted Chinese wife.
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poem by Edward George Dyson
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The Single-Handed Team
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,
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poem by Edward George Dyson
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Cleaning Up
When the horse has been unharnessed and we've flushed the old machine,
And the water o'er the sluice is running evenly and clean;
When there's thirty load before us, and the sun is high and bright,
And we've worked from early morning and shall have to work till night,
Not a man of us is weary, though the graft is pretty rough,
If we see the proper colour showing freely through the stuff.
With a dandy head of water and a youngster at the rear
To hand along the billy, boys, and keep the tail race clear,
We lift the wash and flash the fork and make the gravel fly.
The shovelling is heavy and we're soaked from heel to thigh;
But it makes a fellow tireless and his thews and sinews tough
If the colour's showing freely as he gaily shifts the stuff.
When Geordie Best is pumping to a rollicking refrain,
And Sandy wipes his streaming brow and shakes the fork again,
The pebbles dance and rattle and the water seems to laugh -
Good luck is half the battle and good will's the other half;
And no day's too long and trying and no toil is hard enough,
When we see the colour showing in each shovelful of stuff.
Can the mining speculator with a pile of golden serip,
Or the plunger who has laid his all upon a winning tip,
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poem by Edward George Dyson
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When Brother Peetree Prayed
’TWAS a sleepy little chapel by a wattled hill erected,
Where the storms were always muffled, and an atmosphere of peace
Hung about beneath the gum-trees, and the garden was respected
By the goats from Billybunga and the washer-woman’s geese.
In the week-days it was sacred to my young imagination
From its walls there oozed a sentiment of reverence profound;
And on Sabbath morns the murmuring of the childish congregation
Seemed to spread a benediction in the bush land far around.
But when Brother Peetree prayed all the parrots flew dismayed,
And the hill shook to its centre, and the trees and fences swayed;
And we youngsters heard the rumble of the Day of Judgment there,
When the pious superintendent wrestled manfully in prayer.
They were horny-handed Methodists, and men of scanty knowledge,
Who controlled that ‘little corner of the vine-yard’ by the pound;
Their theology was not the kind that’s warranted at college,
But their faith was most abundant, and their gospel always sound.
Brother Peetree was a miner at the Band of Hope. His leisure
He employed in ‘sticking porkers’ for his neighbours, and his skill
Was a theme of admiration; but his soul’s sublimest pleasure
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poem by Edward George Dyson
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The Living Picture
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.
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poem by Edward George Dyson
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The Old Camp-Oven
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 me in the early winter nights,
And the hissing hailstones clip me all the way across the flat,
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poem by Edward George Dyson
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In Town
OUT of work and out of money—out of friends that means, you bet—
Out of firewood, togs and tucker, out of everything but debt—
And I loathe the barren pavements, and the crowds a fellow meets,
And the maddening repetition of the suffocating streets.
With their stinks my soul is tainted, and the tang is on my tongue
Of that sour and smoky suburb and the push we’re thrown among,
And I sicken at the corners polished free of paint and mirk
By the shoulders of the men who’re always hanging round for work.
Home—good Lord! a three-roomed hovel ’twixt a puddle and a drain,
In harmonious connection on the left with Liver Lane,
Where a crippled man is dying, and a horde of children fight,
And a woman in the horrors howls remorsefully at night.
It has stables close behind it, and an ash-heap for a lawn,
And is furnished with the tickets of the things we have in pawn;
And all day the place is haunted by a melancholy crowd
Who beg everything or borrow, and to steal are not too proud.
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poem by Edward George Dyson
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Peace, Blessed Peace
Here in the flamin' thick of thick of things,
With Death across the way, 'n' traps
What little Fritz the German flings
Explodin' in yer lunch pe'aps,
It ain't all glory for a bloke',
It ain't all corfee 'ot and stoo,
Nor wavin' banners in the smoke,
Or practisin' the bay'net stroke—
We has our little troubles, too!
Here's Trigger Ribb bin seein' red
'N' raisin' Cain because he had,
Back in the caverns iv his 'ead,
A 'oller tooth run ravin' mad.
Pore Trigger up 'n' down the trench
Was jiggin' like a blithered loan,
'N' every time she give a wrench
You orter seen the beggar blench,
You orter 'eard him play a toon.
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poem by Edward George Dyson
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