grubelice

G'day

Call me a pseud (I've been called worse)but would like to start an occasional Australian poem sort of posting. I am sure many of you out there have some faves. Here's one I came across last night which I thought was fine (not my fave but a good light one to kick off with)

It's by Harry (Breaker) Morrant

It was a mighty snug resort, that Sydney-side hotel:
A snug resort where fellows dined "not wisely, but too well";
The boarders all had gone to bed, and other men departed,
When Pat suggested to his pal 'twas nearly time they started.

They drifted to the closing bar, and asked the sleepy waiter
For two cigars,to light 'em home before the hour grew later;
Pat lit his; while his chum exclaimed, "Ole chappie, gimme light!
I don't know how you're feeling, but I'm very, very tight!"

... Tis very hard to get a light"-he lurched against the bar,
And most appealingly remarked "Which is the right cigar?
'Tis difficult to fix it; you guess, p'r'aps, what I mean;
I know you're only smoking one, but I can see fifteen!"

First published in the Bulletin 19 August 1899.


I'll raise a glass to that

Elaine

Florida_03

That shy mysterious poet Arthur Stace
Whose work was just one single mighty word
Walked in the utmost depths of time and space
And there his word was spoken and he heard
ETERNITY, ETERNITY, it banged him like a bell
Dulcet from heaven sounding, somber from hell.

sundarize

The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes,
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins.
Strong love of grey-blue distance,
Brown streams and soft, dim skies –
I know, but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror –
The wide brown land for me!

The stark white ring-barked forests,
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon,
Green tangle of the brushes
Where lithe lianas coil,
The orchids deck the tree-tops,
And ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When, sick at heart, around us
We see the cattle die –
But then the grey clouds gather
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.

Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the rainbow gold,
For flood and fire and famine
She pays us back threefold.
Over the thirst paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze……..

An opal-hearted country,
A willful, lavish land –
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand –
Though Earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.



Dorothea Mackellar