Brumby's Run

Related poetry:

1. The Man From Snowy River There was movement at the station, for the word has passed around That the colt from old Regret had got away, And had joined the wild bush horses-he was worth a thousand pound, So all the cracks had gathered to the fray. All the tried and noted riders from the stations near and far Had […]...
2. THE WITNESSES In Ocean’s wide domains, Half buried in the sands, Lie skeletons in chains, With shackled feet and hands. Beyond the fall of dews, Deeper than plummet lies, Float ships, with all their crews, No more to sink nor rise. There the black Slave-ship swims, Freighted with human forms, Whose fettered, fleshless limbs Are not the […]...
3. With the Cattle The drought is down on field and flock, The river-bed is dry; And we must shift the starving stock Before the cattle die. We muster up with weary hearts At breaking of the day, And turn our heads to foreign parts, To take the stock away. And it’s hunt ’em up and dog ’em, And […]...
4. Wide Lies Australia Wide lies Australia! The seas that surround her Flow for her unity – all states in one. Never has Custom nor Tyranny bound her – Never was conquest so peacefully won. Fair lies Australia! with all things within her Meet for a Nation, the greatest to be: Free to the White Man to woo and […]...
5. America I love thine inland seas, Thy groves of giant trees, Thy rolling plains; Thy rivers’ mighty sweep, Thy mystic canyons deep, Thy mountains wild and steep, All thy domains; Thy silver Eastern strands, Thy Golden Gate that stands Wide to the West; Thy flowery Southland fair, Thy sweet and crystal air, O land beyond compare, […]...
6. Song 2 Come to the banquet triumph in your songs! Strike up the chords and sing of Victory! The oppressed have risen to redress their wrongs; The Tyrants are o’erthrown; the Land is free! The Land is free! Aye, shout it forth once more; Is she not red with her oppressors’ gore? We are her champions shall […]...
7. The Mountain Squatter Here in my mountain home, On rugged hills and steep, I sit and watch you come, O Riverinia Sheep! You come from the fertile plains Where saltbush (sometimes) grows, And flats that (when it rains) Will blossom like the rose. But when the summer sun Gleams down like burnished brass, You have to leave your […]...
8. Compassion What puts me in a rage is The sight of cursed cages Where singers of the sky Perch hop instead of fly; Where lions to and fro Pace seven yards or so: I who love space of stars Have hate of bars. I wince to see dogs chained, Or horses bit restrained; Or men of […]...
9. The Stranger The Stranger within my gate, He may be true or kind, But he does not talk my talk I cannot feel his mind. I see the face and the eyes and the mouth, But not the soul behind. The men of my own stock, They may do ill or well, But they tell the lies […]...
10. The North Wind That wind is from the North, I know it well; No other breeze could have so wild a swell. Now deep and loud it thunders round my cell, The faintly dies, And softly sighs, And moans and murmurs mournfully. I know its language; thus is speaks to me ‘I have passed over thy own mountains […]...
11. The Silent Shepherds What’s the best life for a man? Never to have been born, sings the choros, and the next best Is to die young. I saw the Sybil at Cumae Hung in her cage over the public street What do you want, Sybil? I want to die. Apothanein Thelo. Apothanein Thelo. Apothanein Thelo. You have got […]...
12. The Mylora Elopement By the winding Wollondilly where the weeping willows weep, And the shepherd, with his billy, half awake and half asleep, Folds his fleecy flocks that linger homewards in the setting sun Lived my hero, Jim the Ringer, “cocky” on Mylora Run. Jimmy loved the super’s daughter, Miss Amelia Jane McGrath. Long and earnestly he sought […]...
13. Captivity The lion remembers the forest, The lion in chains; To the bird that is captive a vision Of woodland remains. One strains with his strength at the fetter, In impotent rage; One flutters in flights of a moment, And beats at the cage. If the lion were loosed from the fetter, To wander again; He […]...
14. Song of the Wheat We have sung the song of the droving days, Of the march of the travelling sheep; By silent stages and lonely ways Thin, white battalions creep. But the man who now by the land would thrive Must his spurs to a plough-share beat. Is there ever a man in the world alive To sing the […]...
15. Song We know where deepest lies the snow, And where the frost-winds keenest blow, O’er every mountain’s brow, We long have known and learnt to bear The wandering outlaw’s toil and care, But where we late were hunted, there Our foes are hunted now. We have their princely homes, and they To our wild haunts are […]...
16. The First Surveyor ‘The man who brought the railway through our friend the engineer.’ They cheer his pluck and enterprise and engineering skill! ‘Twas my old husband found the pass behind that big red hill. Before the engineer was born we’d settled with our stock Behind that great big mountain chain, a line of range and rock A […]...
17. The Wildy Ones The sheep are in the silver wood, The cows are in the broom; The goats are in the wild mountain And won’t be home by noon. My mother sang that olden tune Most every night, And to her newest she would croon By candle light; While cuddling in the velvet gloom I’d dream of cows […]...
18. Lucky One sweet pound of filet mignon Sizzles on the roadside. Let’s say a hundred yards below The buzzard. The buzzard Sees no cars or other buzzards Between the mountain range due north And the horizon to the south And across the desert west and east No other creature’s nose leads him to this feast. The […]...
19. Bivouac on a Mountain Side I SEE before me now, a traveling army halting; Below, a fertile valley spread, with barns, and the orchards of summer; Behind, the terraced sides of a mountain, abrupt in places, rising high; Broken, with rocks, with clinging cedars, with tall shapes, dingily seen; The numerous camp-fires scatter’d near and far, some away up on […]...
20. Peleg Poague Horses and men are just alike. There was my stallion, Billy Lee, Black as a cat and trim as a deer, With an eye of fire, keen to start, And he could hit the fastest speed Of any racer around Spoon River. But just as you’d think he couldn’t lose, With his lead of fifty […]...
21. The Nuts of Knowledge A CABIN on the mountain side hid in a grassy nook Where door and windows open wide that friendly stars may look. The rabbit shy can patter in, the winds may enter free, Who throng around the mountain throne in living ecstasy. And when the sun sets dimmed in eve and purple fills the air, […]...
22. A Sad State Of Freedom You waste the attention of your eyes, The glittering labour of your hands, And knead the dough enough for dozens of loaves Of which you’ll taste not a morsel; You are free to slave for others You are free to make the rich richer. The moment you’re born They plant around you Mills that grind […]...
23. At Galway Races There where the course is, Delight makes all of the one mind, The riders upon the galloping horses, The crowd that closes in behind: We, too, had good attendance once, Hearers and hearteners of the work; Aye, horsemen for companions, Before the merchant and the clerk Breathed on the world with timid breath. Sing on: […]...
24. Bonny Dundee To the Lords of Convention ’twas Claver’se who spoke. ‘Ere the King’s crown shall fall there are crowns to be broke; So let each Cavalier who loves honour and me, Come follow the bonnet of Bonny Dundee. Come fill up my cup, come fill up my can, Come saddle your horses, and call up your […]...
25. The Stars Go Over The Lonely Ocean Unhappy about some far off things That are not my affair, wandering Along the coast and up the lean ridges, I saw in the evening The stars go over the lonely ocean, And a black-maned wild boar Plowing with his snout on Mal Paso Mountain. The old monster snuffled, “Here are sweet roots, Fat grubs, […]...
26. September 22 It’s the day of the ram And the head of the year Rosh Ha’Shanah at Services I sat next to Mel Torme who outshone All comers with his bar Mitzvah heroics while on My left is Barnett Newman Big talker whose favorite Subjects include the horses And the stock market he Knows the odds the […]...
27. Ah! Yet Consider it Again! “Old things need not be therefore true,” O brother men, nor yet the new; Ah! still awhile the old thought retain, And yet consider it again! The souls of now two thousand years Have laid up here their toils and tears, And all the earnings of their pain, Ah, yet consider it again! We! what […]...
28. A Mountain Station I bought a run a while ago, On country rough and ridgy, Where wallaroos and wombats grow The Upper Murrumbidgee. The grass is rather scant, it’s true, But this a fair exchange is, The sheep can see a lovely view By climbing up the ranges. And She-oak Flat’s the station’s name, I’m not surprised at […]...
29. Sphincter I hope my good old asshole holds out 60 years it’s been mostly OK Tho in Bolivia a fissure operation survived the altiplano hospital A little blood, no polyps, occasionally A small hemorrhoid Active, eager, receptive to phallus coke bottle, candle, carrot banana & fingers – Now AIDS makes it shy, but still eager to […]...
30. Beyond the Snow Belt Over the local stations, one by one, Announcers list disasters like dark poems That always happen in the skull of winter. But once again the storm has passed us by: Lovely and moderate, the snow lies down While shouting children hurry back to play, And scarved and smiling citizens once more Sweep down their easy […]...
31. White Horses Where run your colts at pasture? Where hide your mares to breed? ‘Mid bergs about the Ice-cap Or wove Sargasso weed; By chartless reef and channel, Or crafty coastwise bars, But most the ocean-meadows All purple to the stars! Who holds the rein upon you? The latest gale let free. What meat is in your […]...
32. The Retreat this time has finished me. I feel like the German troops Whipped by snow and the communists Walking bent With newspapers stuffed into Worn boots. My plight is just as terrible. Maybe more so. Victory was so close Victory was there. As she stood before my mirror Younger and more beautiful than Any woman I […]...
33. Mistrust YOU look at me with wan, bright eyes When in the deeper world I stray: You fear some hidden ambush lies In wait to call me, “Come away.” What if I see behind the veil Your starry self beseeching me, Or at its stern command grow pale, “Let her be free, let her be free”?...
34. Speak Of The North! A Lonely Moor Speak of the North! A lonely moor Silent and dark and tractless swells, The waves of some wild streamlet pour Hurriedly through its ferny dells. Profoundly still the twilight air, Lifeless the landscape; so we deem Till like a phantom gliding near A stag bends down to drink the stream. And far away a mountain […]...
35. Faun Here down this very way, Here only yesterday King Faun went leaping. He sang, with careless shout Hurling his name about; He sang, with oaken stock His steps from rock to rock In safety keeping, “Here Faun is free, Here Faun is free!” Today against yon pine, Forlorn yet still divine, King Faun leant weeping. […]...
36. The Ballad Of The Drover Across the stony ridges, Across the rolling plain, Young Harry Dale, the drover, Comes riding home again. And well his stock-horse bears him, And light of heart is he, And stoutly his old pack-horse Is trotting by his knee. Up Queensland way with cattle He travelled regions vast; And many months have vanished Since home-folk […]...
37. Is My Team Ploughing “Is my team ploughing, That I was used to drive And hear the harness jingle When I was man alive?” Ay, the horses trample, The harness jingles now; No change though you lie under The land you used to plough. “Is football playing Along the river shore, With lads to chase the leather, Now I […]...
38. On the Road to Nowhere On the road to nowhere What wild oats did you sow When you left your father’s house With your cheeks aglow? Eyes so strained and eager To see what you might see? Were you thief or were you fool Or most nobly free? Were the tramp-days knightly, True sowing of wild seed? Did you dare […]...
39. Death XXVII Then Almitra spoke, saying, “We would ask now of Death.” And he said: You would know the secret of death. But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life? The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day cannot unveil the mystery of light. If you would indeed […]...
40. The Reveille Trumpets of the Lancer Corps Sound a loud reveille; Sound it over Sydney shore, Send the message far and wide Down the Richmond River side. Boot and Saddle, mount and ride, Sound a loud reveille. Whither go ye, Lancers gay, With your bold reveille? O’er the ocean far away From your sunny southern home, Over […]...