The Overland Mail

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1. The Billy-Goat Overland Come all ye lads of the droving days, ye gentlemen unafraid, I’ll tell you all of the greatest trip that ever a drover made, For we rolled our swags, and we packed our bags, and taking our lives in hand, We started away with a thousand goats, on the billy-goat overland. There wasn’t a fence […]...
2. Uplands In May WONDER as of old things Fresh and fair come back Hangs over pasture and road. Lush in the lowland grasses rise And upland beckons to upland. The great strong hills are humble....
3. It was a Grave, yet bore no Stone It was a Grave, yet bore no Stone Enclosed ’twas not of Rail A Consciousness its Acre, and It held a Human Soul. Entombed by whom, for what offence If Home or Foreign born Had I the curiosity ‘Twere not appeased of men Till Resurrection, I must guess Denied the small desire A Rose upon […]...
4. Mail Call The letters always just evade the hand One skates like a stone into a beam, falls like a bird. Surely the past from which the letters rise Is waiting in the future, past the graves? The soldiers are all haunted by their lives. Their claims upon their kind are paid in paper That established a […]...
5. No Foe Shall Gather Our Harvest Sons of the mountains of Scotland, Welshmen of coomb and defile, Breed of the moors of England, Children of Erin’s green isle, We stand four square to the tempest, Whatever the battering hail- No foe shall gather our harvest, Or sit on our stockyard rail. Our women shall walk in honour, Our children shall know […]...
6. The Pilgrims An uphill path, sun-gleams between the showers, Where every beam that broke the leaden sky Lit other hills with fairer ways than ours; Some clustered graves where half our memories lie; And one grim Shadow creeping ever nigh: And this was Life. Wherein we did another’s burden seek, The tired feet we helped upon the […]...
7. The Path RUNNING along a bank, a parapet That saves from the precipitous wood below The level road, there is a path. It serves Children for looking down the long smooth steep, Between the legs of beech and yew, to where A fallen tree checks the sight: while men and women Content themselves with the road and […]...
8. Mandalay By the old Moulmein Pagoda, lookin’ eastward to the sea, There’s a Burma girl a-settin’, and I know she thinks o’ me; For the wind is in the palm-trees, and the temple-bells they say: “Come you back, you British soldier; come you back to Mandalay!” Come you back to Mandalay, Where the old Flotilla lay: […]...
9. The Road and the End I SHALL foot it Down the roadway in the dusk, Where shapes of hunger wander And the fugitives of pain go by. I shall foot it In the silence of the morning, See the night slur into dawn, Hear the slow great winds arise Where tall trees flank the way And shoulder toward the sky. […]...
10. It sifts from Leaden Sieves It sifts from Leaden Sieves It powders all the Wood. It fills with Alabaster Wool The Wrinkles of the Road It makes an Even Face Of Mountain, and of Plain Unbroken Forehead from the East Unto the East again It reaches to the Fence It wraps it Rail by Rail Till it is lost in […]...
11. The Man Rock A man is a rock in a garden of chairs and waits For a longtime to be over. It is easier for a rock in a garden than a man Inside his mother. He decided to be a rock when He got outside. A rock asks only what is a rock. A rock waits to […]...
12. The Maid's Thought Why listen, even the water is sobbing for something. The west wind is dead, the waves Forget to hate the cliff, in the upland canyons Whole hillsides burst aglow With golden broom. Dear how it rained last month, And every pool was rimmed With sulphury pollen dust of the wakening pines. Now tall and slender […]...
13. A Song of the Road O I will walk with you, my lad, whichever way you fare, You’ll have me, too, the side o’ you, with heart as light as air; No care for where the road you take’s a-leadin’ anywhere, It can but be a joyful ja’nt whilst you journey there. The road you take’s the path o’ love, […]...
14. Looking Down in a Spring-rain Round a turn of the Qin Fortress winds the Wei River, And Yellow Mountain foot-hills enclose the Court of China; Past the South Gate willows comes the Car of Many Bells On the upper Palace-Garden Road-a solid length of blossom; A Forbidden City roof holds two phoenixes in cloud; The foliage of spring shelters multitudes […]...
15. Ascent To The Sierras Beyond the great valley an odd instinctive rising Begins to possess the ground, the flatness gathers to little humps and Barrows, low aimless ridges, A sudden violence of rock crowns them. The crowded orchards end, they Have come to a stone knife; The farms are finished; the sudden foot of the slerra. Hill over hill, […]...
16. A Requisition to the Queen Smiths Buildings No. 19 Patons Lane, Dundee. Sept the 6th. 1877. Most August! Empress of India, and of great Britain the Queen, I most humbly beg your pardon, hoping you will not think it mean That a poor poet that lives in Dundee, Would be so presumptous to write unto Thee Most lovely Empress of […]...
17. Route Marchin&#039 We’re marchin’ on relief over Injia’s sunny plains, A little front o’ Christmas-time an’ just be’ind the Rains; Ho! get away you bullock-man, you’ve ‘eard the bugle blowed, There’s a regiment a-comin’ down the Grand Trunk Road; With its best foot first And the road a-sliding past, An’ every bloomin’ campin’-ground exactly like the last; […]...
18. Journey Into The Interior In the long journey out of the self, There are many detours, washed-out interrupted raw places Where the shale slides dangerously And the back wheels hang almost over the edge At the sudden veering, the moment of turning. Better to hug close, wary of rubble and falling stones. The arroyo cracking the road, the wind-bitten […]...
19. Jack London and O. Henry BOTH were jailbirds; no speechmakers at all; speaking best with one foot on a brass rail; a beer glass in the left hand and the right hand employed for gestures. And both were lights snuffed out… no warning… no lingering: Who knew the hearts of these boozefighters?...
20. Joy-Bells Ring your sweet bells; but let them be farewells To the green-vista’d gladness of the past That changed us into soldiers; swing your bells To a joyful chime; but let it be the last. What means this metal in windy belfries hung When guns are all our need? Dissolve these bells Whose tones are tuned […]...
21. The Rolling English Road Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode, The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road. A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire, And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire; A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread The […]...
22. Brookland Road I was very well pleased with what I knowed, I reckoned myself no fool Till I met with a maid on the Brookland Road, That turned me back to school. Low down-low down! Where the liddle green lanterns shine O maids, I’ve done with ‘ee all but one, And she can never’ be mine! ‘Twas […]...
23. A Wounded Deer leaps highest A Wounded Deer leaps highest I’ve heard the Hunter tell ‘Tis but the Ecstasy of death And then the Brake is still! The Smitten Rock that gushes! The trampled Steel that springs! A Cheek is always redder Just where the Hectic stings! Mirth is the Mail of Anguish In which it Cautious Arm, Lest anybody […]...
24. Aftermath When the summer fields are mown, When the birds are fledged and flown, And the dry leaves strew the path; With the falling of the snow, With the cawing of the crow, Once again the fields we mow And gather in the aftermath. Not the sweet, new grass with flowers Is this harvesting of ours; […]...
25. The Gipsy Trail The white moth to the closing bine, The bee to the opened clover, And the gipsy blood to the gipsy blood Ever the wide world over. Ever the wide world over, lass, Ever the trail held true, Over the world and under the world, And back at the last to you. Out of the dark […]...
26. Life I leave the office, take the stairs, In time to mail a letter Before 3 in the afternoon the last dispatch. The red, white and blue air mail Falls past the slot for foreign mail And hits bottom with a sound That tells me my letter is alone. They will have to bring in a […]...
27. The Nympholept There was a boy not above childish fears With steps that faltered now and straining ears, Timid, irresolute, yet dauntless still, Who one bright dawn, when each remotest hill Stood sharp and clear in Heaven’s unclouded blue And all Earth shimmered with fresh-beaded dew, Risen in the first beams of the gladdening sun, Walked up […]...
28. The Travelling Post Office The roving breezes come and go, the reed-beds sweep and sway, The sleepy river murmers low, and loiters on its way, It is the land of lots o’time along the Castlereagh. . . .. . . . . The old man’s son had left the farm, he found it full and slow, He drifted to […]...
29. The Miracles I sent a message to my dear A thousand leagues and more to Her The dumb sea-levels thrilled to hear, And Lost Atlantis bore to Her. Behind my message hard I came, And nigh had found a grave for me; But that I launched of steel and flame Did war against the wave for me. […]...
30. Bredon Hill In summertime on Bredon The bells they sound so clear; Round both the shires they ring them In steeples far and near, A happy noise to hear. Here of a Sunday morning My love and I would lie, And see the coloured counties, And hear the larks so high About us in the sky. The […]...
31. The Chimney Sweeper (Innocence) When my mother died I was very young, And my father sold me while yet my tongue, Could scarcely cry weep weep weep weep, So your chimneys I sweep & in soot I sleep. Theres little Tom Dacre, who cried when his head That curled like a lambs back was shav’d, so I said. Hush […]...
32. The Seekers FRIENDS and loves we have none, nor wealth nor blessed abode, But the hope of the City of God at the other end of the road. Not for us are content, and quiet, and peace of mind, For we go seeking a city that we shall never find. There is no solace on earth for […]...
33. To One Departed Seraph! thy memory is to me Like some enchanted far-off isle In some tumultuous sea – Some ocean vexed as it may be With storms; but where, meanwhile, Serenest skies continually Just o’er that one bright island smile. For ‘mid the earnest cares and woes That crowd around my earthly path, (Sad path, alas, where […]...
34. The Wedding O marriage-bells, your clamor tells Two weddings in one breath. SHE marries whom her love compels: And I wed Goodman Death! My brain is blank, my tears are red; Listen, O God: “I will,” he said: And I would that I were dead. Come groomsman Grief and bridesmaid Pain Come and stand with a ghastly […]...
35. Before the Squall The wind is rising on the sea, The windy white foam-dancers leap; And the sea moans uneasily, And turns to sleep, and cannot sleep. Ridge after rocky ridge uplifts, Wild hands, and hammers at the land, Scatters in liquid dust, and drifts To death among the dusty sand. On the horizon’s nearing line, Where the […]...
36. Returned To Say When I face north a lost Cree On some new shore puts a moccasin down, Rock in the light and noon for seeing, He in a hurry and I beside him It will be a long trip; he will be a new chief; We have drunk new water from an unnamed stream; Under little dark […]...
37. Wherein Obscurely On the road with billowing poplars, In a country flat and desolate To the far-off gray horizon, wherein obscurely, A man and a woman went on foot, Each carrying a small suitcase. They were tired and had taken off Their shoes and were walking on Their toes, staring straight ahead. Every time a car passed […]...
38. Saltbush Bill Now is the law of the Overland that all in the West obey A man must cover with travelling sheep a six-mile stage a day; But this is the law which the drovers make, right easily understood, They travel their stage where the grass is bad, but they camp where the grass is good; They […]...
39. The Send-Off Down the close, darkening lanes they sang their way To the siding-shed, And lined the train with faces grimly gay. Their breasts were stuck all white with wreath and spray As men’s are, dead. Dull porters watched them, and a casual tramp Stood staring hard, Sorry to miss them from the upland camp. Then, unmoved, […]...
40. Roadways ONE road leads to London, One road leads to Wales, My road leads me seawards To the white dipping sails. One road leads to the river, And it goes singing slow; My road leads to shipping, Where the bronzed sailors go. Leads me, lures me, calls me To salt green tossing sea; A road without […]...