The Moralist
Three other soldier blokes 'n' me packed
'ome from foreign lands;
Bit into each the God of Battles' everlastin'
brands.
They limped in time, 'n' coughed in tune, 'n'
one was short an ear,
'N' one was short a tier of ribs 'n' all was
short of beer.
I speaks up like a temp'rance gent,
But ever since the sky was bent
The thirst of man 'as never yet bin squenched
with argument.
Bill's skull was welded all across, Jim 'ad an
eye in soak,
Sam 'obbled on a patent leg, 'n' every man
was broke;
They sang a song of “Mother” with their faces
titled up.
Says Bill-o: “'Ere's yer 'eroes, sling the
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poem by Edward George Dyson
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Mud
This war's a waste of slurry, and its at-
mosphere is mud,
All is bog from here to sunset. Wadin'
through
We're the victims of a thicker sort of universal
flood,
With discomforts that old Noah never knew.
We have dubbed our trench The Cecil.
There's a brass-plate and a dome,
And a quagmire where the doormat used
to be,
If you're calling, second Tuesday is our reg'-
lar day at home,
So delighted if you'll toddle in to tea!
There is mud along the corridors enough to
bog a cow;
In the air there hangs a musty kind of
woof;
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poem by Edward George Dyson
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The Drovers In Reply
We are wondering why those fellows who are writing cheerful ditties
Of the rosy times out droving, and the dust and death of cities,
Do not leave the dreary office, ask a drover for a billet,
And enjoy ‘the views,’ ‘the campfires,’ and ‘the freedom’ while they fill it.
If it’s fun to travel cattle or to picnic with merinoes,
Well the drover doesn’t see it—few poetic raptures he knows.
As for sleeping on the plains beneath ‘the pale moon’ always seen there,
That is most appreciated by the man who’s never been there.
And the ‘balmy air,’ the horses, and the ‘wondrous constellations,’
The ’possum-rugs, and billies, and the tough and musty rations,
It’s strange they only please the swell in urban streets residing,
Where the trams are always handy if he has a taste for riding.
We have travelled far with cattle for the very best of reasons—
For a living—we’ve gone droving in all latitudes and seasons,
But have never had a mate content with pleasures of this kidney,
And who wouldn’t change his blisses for a flutter down in Sydney.
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Weeping Willie
Whey our trooper hit wide water every
heart was yearin' back
To the little 'ouse at Coogee or a hut at Bar-
renjack.
She was 'ookin' up to spike the stars, or rootin'
in the wave,
An' me liver turned a hand spring with each
buck the beggar gave.
Then we pulls a sick 'n' silly smile 'n' tips a
saucy lid,
Crackin' hardy. Willie didn't. Willie
snivelled like a kid.
At Gallip' the steamer dumped us, 'n' we got
right down to work,
Whoopin' up the hill splendacious, playin'
tiggie with the Turk.
When the stinkin' Abdul hit us we curled
down upon a stone,
'N' we yelled for greater glory, crackin' 'ardy
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poem by Edward George Dyson
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Hello, Soldier!
Back again 'n' nothin' missin' barrin'
arf a hand,
Where an Abdul bit me, chokin' in the Holy
Land.
'Struth, they got some dirty fighters in the
Moslem pack,
Bull-nosed slugs their sneakin' snipers spat
ters in yer back
Blows a gapin' sort iv pit in
What a helephant could sit in.
Bounced their bullets, if yeh please,
Like the 'oppers in a cheese,
Off me rubber pelt in droves,
Moppin' up the other coves.
So here's me once more at large in
Bay-street, Port, a bloomin' Sargin'.
“Cri, it jumbo.” “Have a beer.”
“Wot-o, Anzac; you're a dear.”
Back once more on Moley's corner, loafin' like
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The Tin-Pot Mill
QUITE a proud and happy man is Finn the Packer
Since he built his crazy mill upon the rise,
And he stands there in the gully, chewing ‘backer,’
With a sleepy sort of comfort in his eyes,
Gazin’ up to where the antiquated jigger
Is a-wheezing and a-hopping on the hill,
For up here my lord the Gov’nor isn’t bigger
Than the owner of the Federation Mill.
She goes biff, puff, bang, bump, cutter-clatter, smash,
And she rattles on for half a shift, and lets up with a crash;
And then silence reigns a little while, and all the land is still
While they’re tinkering awkward patches on the tin-pot mill.
It’s a five-head plant, and mostly built of lumber,
’Twas erected by a man that didn’t know,
And we’ve never had a decent spell of slumber
Since that battery of Finn’s was got to go;
For she raises just the most infernal clatter,
And we guessed the Day of Judgment had come down
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The Crusaders
What price yer humble, Dicko Smith,
in gaudy putties girt,
With sand-blight in his optics, and much
leaner than he started,
Round the 'Oly Land cavorting in three-
quarters of a shirt,
And imposin' on the natives ez one Dick
the Lion 'Earted?
We are drivin' out the infidel, we're hittin'
up the Turk,
Same ez Richard slung his right across the
Saracen invader
In old days of which I'm readin'. Now
we're gettin' in our work,
'N' what price me nibs, I ask yeh, ez a
qualified Crusader!
'Ere I am, a thirsty Templar in the fields of
Palestine,
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Bullets
As bullets come to us they're thin,
They're angular, or smooth and fat,
Some spiral are, and gimlet in,
And some are sharp, and others flat.
The slim one pink you clean and neat,
The flat ones bat a solid blow
Much as a camel throws his feet,
And leave you beastly incomplete.
If lucky you don't know it through.
The flitting bullets flow and flock;
They twitter as they pass;
They're picking at the solid rock,
They're rooting in the grass.
A tiny ballet swiftly throws
Its gossamer of rust,
Brown fairies on their little toes
A-dancing in the dust.
You cower down when first they come
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The Trucker
IF YOU want a game to tame you and to take your measure in,
Try a week or two of trucking in a mine
Where the rails are never level for a half-a-minute’s spin,
And the curves are short and sharp along the line.
Try the feverish bottom level, down five hundred feet of shaft,
Where the atmosphere is like a second suit,
When the wash is full of water, and you’ve got to run the graft,
For there’s forty ton of gravel in the shoot.
‘Want a job o’ truckin’, dost tha?’ says the boss, old Geordie Rist,
Shift’s a trucker short, ma lad, but aw don’ know—
Can’st tha do th’ work, though, think’st tha? Art a pretty decent fist?
Eh, well, damme! thoo can try it; go below.’
So the cage is manned, the knocker clangs and clatters on the brace,
The engine draws a deep, defiant breath
To inflate her lungs of iron; and in silence, face to face,
We drop into the darkness deep as death.
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poem by Edward George Dyson
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The Tale Of Steven
’TIS the tale of Simon Steven, braceman at the Odd-and-Even,
At The Nations, in the gully. They were sinking in the rock.
Sim was small and wiry rather, and a husband and a father,
But he’s gone and left his family as a consequence of shock.
Shock was Sim’s disease, we reckoned, for it took him in a second,
And no doctor born could dognose what the symptoms were, I think,
But we’re missin’ Sim completely—he could play the whistle sweetly,
And was always very sociable and brotherly in drink.
That was how poor Steven drifted into trouble—being gifted,
He was hungry for an audience, and it led him up to Coy’s;
But his wife made no deductions for the artist, and the ructions
What she raised around that public were just fireworks for the boys.
When she caught him on the liquor, being stronger like and quicker,
She would hammer him in company, which, I take it, wasn’t right;
Yet he bore it like a martyr while his wife played up the tartar,
And she gave her straight opinion of each mother’s son in sight.
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poem by Edward George Dyson
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