Burnt a lot of fancy verses, and I'm glad that I am back.

Further out may be the pleasant scenes of which our poets boast,
But I think the country's rather more inviting round the coast.

Anyway, I'll stay at present at a boarding-house in town,
Drinking beer and lemon-squashes, taking baths and cooling down.

`Sunny plains'! Great Scott! -- those burning
wastes of barren soil and sand

With their everlasting fences stretching out across the land!
Desolation where the crow is! Desert where the eagle flies,

Paddocks where the luny bullock starts and stares with reddened eyes;
Where, in clouds of dust enveloped, roasted bullock-drivers creep

Slowly past the sun-dried shepherd dragged behind his crawling sheep.
Stunted peak of granite gleaming, glaring like a molten mass

Turned from some infernalfurnace on a plain devoid of grass.
Miles and miles of thirsty gutters -- strings of muddy water-holes

In the place of `shining rivers' -- `walled by cliffs and forest boles.'
Barren ridges, gullies, ridges! where the ever-madd'ning flies --

Fiercer than the plagues of Egypt -- swarm about your blighted eyes!
Bush! where there is no horizon! where the buried bushman sees

Nothing -- Nothing! but the sameness of the ragged, stunted trees!
Lonely hut where drought's eternal, suffocating atmosphere

Where the God-forgotten hatter dreams of city life and beer.
Treacherous tracks that trap the stranger,

endless roads that gleam and glare,
Dark and evil-looking gullies, hiding secrets here and there!

Dull dumb flats and stony rises, where the toiling bullocks bake,
And the sinister `gohanna', and the lizard, and the snake.

Land of day and night -- no morning freshness, and no afternoon,
When the great white sun in rising bringeth summer heat in June.

Dismal country for the exile, when the shades begin to fall
From the sad heart-breaking sunset, to the new-chum worst of all.

Dreary land in rainy weather, with the endless clouds that drift
O'er the bushman like a blanket that the Lord will never lift --

Dismal land when it is raining -- growl of floods, and, oh! the woosh
Of the rain and wind together on the dark bed of the bush --

Ghastly fires in lonely humpies where the granite rocks are piled
In the rain-swept wildernesses that are wildest of the wild.

Land where gaunt and haggard women live alone and work like men,
Till their husbands, gone a-droving, will return to them again:

Homes of men! if home had ever such a God-forgotten place,
Where the wild selector's children fly before a stranger's face.

Home of tragedy applauded by the dingoes' dismal yell,
Heaven of the shanty-keeper -- fitting fiend for such a hell --

And the wallaroos and wombats, and, of course, the curlew's call --
And the lone sundowner tramping ever onward through it all!

I am back from up the country, up the country where I went
Seeking for the Southern poets' land whereon to pitch my tent;

I have shattered many idols out along the dusty track,
Burnt a lot of fancy verses -- and I'm glad that I am back.

I believe the Southern poets' dream will not be realised
Till the plains are irrigated and the land is humanised.

I intend to stay at present, as I said before, in town
Drinking beer and lemon-squashes, taking baths and cooling down.

Knocked Up
I'm lyin' on the barren ground that's baked and cracked with drought,

And dunno if my legs or back or heart is most wore out;
I've got no spirits left to rise and smooth me achin' brow --

I'm too knocked up to light a fire and bile the billy now.
Oh it's trampin', trampin', tra-a-mpin', in flies an' dust an' heat,

Or it's trampin' trampin' tra-a-a-mpin'
through mud and slush 'n sleet;

It's tramp an' tramp for tucker -- one everlastin' strife,
An' wearin' out yer boots an' heart in the wastin' of yer life.

They whine o' lost an' wasted lives in idleness and crime --
I've wasted mine for twenty years, and grafted all the time

And never drunk the stuff I earned, nor gambled when I shore --
But somehow when yer on the track yer life seems wasted more.

A long dry stretch of thirty miles I've tramped this broilin' day,
All for the off-chance of a job a hundred miles away;

There's twenty hungry beggars wild for any job this year,
An' fifty might be at the shed while I am lyin' here.

The sinews in my legs seem drawn, red-hot -- 'n that's the truth;
I seem to weigh a ton, and ache like one tremendous tooth;

I'm stung between my shoulder-blades -- my blessed back seems broke;
I'm too knocked out to eat a bite -- I'm too knocked up to smoke.

The blessed rain is comin' too -- there's oceans in the sky,
An' I suppose I must get up and rig the blessed fly;

The heat is bad, the water's bad, the flies a crimson curse,
The grub is bad, mosquitoes damned -- but rheumatism's worse.

I wonder why poor blokes like me will stick so fast ter breath,
Though Shakespeare says it is the fear of somethin' after death;

But though Eternity be cursed with God's almighty curse --
What ever that same somethin' is I swear it can't be worse.

For it's trampin', trampin', tra-a-mpin' thro' hell across the plain,
And it's trampin' trampin' tra-a-mpin' thro' slush 'n mud 'n rain --

A livin' worse than any dog -- without a home 'n wife,
A-wearin' out yer heart 'n soul in the wastin' of yer life.

The Blue Mountains
Above the ashes straight and tall,

Through ferns with moisture dripping,
I climb beneath the sandstone wall,

My feet on mosses slipping.
Like ramparts round the valley's edge

The tinted cliffs are standing,
With many a broken wall and ledge,

And many a rocky landing.
And round about their rugged feet

Deep ferny dells are hidden
In shadowed depths, whence dust and heat

Are banished and forbidden.
The stream that, crooning to itself,

Comes down a tireless rover,
Flows calmly to the rocky shelf,

And there leaps bravely over.
Now pouring down, now lost in spray

When mountain breezes sally,
The water strikes the rock midway,

And leaps into the valley.
Now in the west the colours change,

The blue with crimson blending;
Behind the far Dividing Range,

The sun is fast descending.
And mellowed day comes o'er the place,

And softens ragged edges;
The rising moon's great placid face

Looks gravely o'er the ledges.
The City Bushman

It was pleasant up the country, City Bushman, where you went,
For you sought the greener patches and you travelled like a gent;

And you curse the trams and buses and the turmoil and the push,
Though you know the squalid city needn't keep you from the bush;

But we lately heard you singing of the `plains where shade is not',
And you mentioned it was dusty -- `all was dry and all was hot'.

True, the bush `hath moods and changes' -- and the bushman hath 'em, too,
For he's not a poet's dummy -- he's a man, the same as you;