Edward Dyson

We were challenged by The Dingoes , they're the pride of Squatter's Gap, To a friendly game of football on the flat by Devil's Trap. And we went along on horses, sworn to triumph in the game,

There's a fresh track down the paddock Through the lightwoods to the creek, And I notice Billy Craddock

'No, you can't count me in, boys; I'm off it, I'm jack of them practical jokes; They give neither pleasure nor profit,

There's a wind up that licks like a flame, And the sun is a porthole of hell. Now evanish prim notions of shame,

Up a dark and fetid alley, where the offal and the slime Of a brave and blusterous city met its misery and crime, In a hovel reeking pestilence, and noisome as the grave,

The first one with conviction penned: 'This conflict in seven weeks will end.' Another, later in the war,

I heard this day, as I may no more, The world's heart throb at my workshop door. The sun was keen, and the day was still;

Australia, my native land, A stirring whisper in your ear, 'Tis time for you to understand

From her home beyond the river in the parting of the hills, Where the wattles fleecy blossom surged and scattered in the breeze, And the tender creepers twined about the chimneys and the sills,

He was working on a station in the Western when I knew him, And he came from Conongamo, up the old surveyors' track, And the fellows all admitted that no man in Vic. could 'do him,'

A quaint old gabled cottage sleeps between the raving hills. To right and left are livid strife, but on the deep, wide sills The purple pot-flowers swell and glow, and o'er the walls and eaves

Down to it is Plugger Bill, Lyin' crumpled, white 'n' still. Me 'n' him

Marching somewhat out of order when the band is cock-a-hoop, There's a lilting kind of magic in the swagger of the troop, Swinging all aboard the steamer with her nose toward the sea.

All was up with Richard Tanner 'Wait-a-Bit' we called him. Dead? Yes. The braceman dropped a spanner,

Dear Ned, I now take up my pen to write you these few lines, And hopin' how they find you fit. Gorbli', it seems an age Since Jumbo ducked the Port, 'n' drilled 'n' polished to the nines,

As bullets come to us they're thin, They're angular, or smooth and fat, Some spiral are, and gimlet in,

When the horse has been unharnessed and we've flushed the old machine, And the water o'er the sluice is running evenly and clean; When there's thirty load before us, and the sun is high and bright,

In politics there's room for jest; With frequent gibes are speeches met, And measures which are of the best

Skirting the swamp and the tangled scrub, Tramping and turning amidst the trees, Carrying nothing but blankets and grub,

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,

The boarder in the bar-room rose, A pale gaunt man who lodged with Hann, 'I bear,' he said, 'the worst of woes,

Once in a blue eternity they gave us dabs of rum To close the seams 'n' keep the flume in liquor-tight condition; But, soft 'n' sentimental, when the long, cold evenin's come,

'I'm off on the wallaby!' cries Old Ben, And his pipe is lit, and his swag is rolled; 'There is nothing here for us old-time men,

It is thirty moons since I slung me hook From the job at the hay and corn, Took me solemn oath, 'n' I straight forsook

Out of work and out of money,out of friends that means, you bet, Out of firewood, togs and tucker, out of everything but debt, And I loathe the barren pavements, and the crowds a fellow meets,

What is meant by active service 'Ere where sin is leakin' loose, 'N' the oldest 'and's as nervis

In days before the trouble Jo was rated as a slob. He chose to sit in hourly expectation of a job. He'd loop hisself upon a post, for seldom friends had he,

Out of luck, mate? Have a liquor. Hang it, where's the use complaining? Take your fancy, I'm in funds now, I can stand the racket, Dan. Dump your bluey in the corner; camp here for the night, it's raining;

He came from tumbled country past the humps of Buffalo Where the snow sits on the mountain 'n' the Summer aches below. He'd a silly name like Archie. Squattin' sullen on the ship,

Men of all the lands Australian from the Gulf to Derwent River, From the Heads of Sydney Harbour to the waters of the West, There's a spirit loudly calling where the saplings dip and quiver,

A mile-long panto dragon ploddin' 'opeless all the day, Stuffed out with kits, 'n' spiked with rifles, steamin' in its sweat, A-heavin' down the misty road, club-footed through the clay,

This war's a waste of slurry, and its atmosphere is mud, All is bog from here to sunset. Wadin' through We're the victims of a thicker sort of universal flood,

I have a trim typewriter now, They tell me none is better; It makes a pleasing, rhythmic row,

'Hello! that's the whistle, be moving. Wake up! don't lie muttering there. What language! your style is improving,

Happy he in whom the honest love of fair endeavour lingers, Who has strength to do his labour, and has pride to do it well, Carve he gems of purest water with an artist's cunning fingers,

I slung me khaki suit to-day. Civilian now front heel to chin I 'op round on a single shin;

Here in the flamin' thick of thick of things, With Death across the way, 'n' traps What little Fritz the German flings

Simson settled in the timber when his arm was strong and true, And his form was straight and limber; and he wrought the long day through In a struggle, single-handed, and the trees fell slowly back,

Ben Unger's wife was dark and small, With little, round, black eyes; Ben Unger started at her call,

Hauled I was from out the tip Fritz made with his demonstration, All broke up, a fractured hip

When Flo resolved to go to town from brothers three a yell went up, Predicting ruin and distress. Bill in his horror dropped a cup. 'Gorstruth!' he said, 'in Sydney there what is a simple girl to do?

My hut is built of stringy-bark, the window's calico, The furniture a gin-case, one bush-table, and a bunk; Thick as wheat on my selection does the towering timber grow,

I'm lyin' in a narrow bed, 'N' starin' at a wall. Where all is white my plastered head

I'm stewing in a brick-built town; My coat is quite a stylish cut, And, morn and even, up and down,

He was almost blind, and wasted With the wear of many years; He had laboured, and had tasted

"Who'll bid?    Who'll bid?" the question rang Where throned Death was calling. I seemed to sense his charnel tang,

The Viennese authorities have melted down the great bell in St. Stephen's to supply metal for guns or muntions. Every poor village has made a similar gift. - Lokal Anzeiger. The great bell booms across the town, Reverberant and slow,

The great men framed the fierce decrees Embroiling State with State; They bit their thumbs across the seas

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,

Past a dull, grey plain where a world-old grief seems to brood o'er the silent land, When the orb'd moon turns her tense, white face on the ominous waste of sand, And the wind that steals by the dreamer feels like the touch of a phantom hand,

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,

We've a tale to tell you of a spavined emit, A bird with a smile like a crack in a hat, Who was owned by M'Cue, of the township of Whroo,

I'm wonderin' why those fellers who go buildin' chipper ditties, 'Bout the rosy times out drovin', an' the dust an' death of cities, Don't sling the bloomin' office, strike some drover for a billet,

A straight old fossicker was Lanky Mann, Who clung to that in spite of friends' advising: A grim and grizzled worshipper of 'pan,'

Just beyond All Alone, going back, Is the humpy of Hatter Magee. We had travelled all day on the track,

I took to khaki at a word, And fashioned dreams of wonder. I rode the great sea like a bird,

I said: 'I leave my bit of land, In khaki they've entwined me, I go abroad to lend a hand.'

'A soldier braving disease and death on the battlefield has a seven times better chance of life than a new-born baby.' - Secretary of War, U.S.A. The Hapless Army from the dark That lies beyond creation,

We were living in a flat; it was number eighty-three. At eighty-four the Barleys lived, a fearsome man was he. He had a wife and numerous kids. We heard then rip and cuss,

We were storemen, clerks and packers on an ammunition dump Twice the size of Cootamundra, and the goods we had to hump They were bombs as big as water-butts, and cartridges in tons,

'Late Midshipman John Travers (Chester), aged 16 years. He was mortally wounded early in the action, yet he remained alone in a most exposed post awaiting orders, with his gun's crew dead all round him.' We told old stories one by one, Brave tales of men who toyed with death,

A letter came from Dick to-day; A greeting glad he sends to me. He tells of one more bloody fray,

He rode along one splendid noon, When all the hills were lit with Spring, And through the bushland throbbed a croon

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,

We don't keep a grand piano in our hut beside the creek, And I'm pretty certain Hannah couldn't bang it, anyhow, But we've got one box of music, and I'd rather hear its squeak

He's an old grey horse, with his head bowed sadly, And with dim old eyes and a queer roll aft, With the off-fore sprung and the hind screwed badly

Don told me that he loved me dear Where down the range Whioola pours; And when I laughed and would not hear

When the white sun scorches the fair, green land in the rage of his fierce desires, Or looms blood red on the Western hills, through the smoke of their waning fires; When the winds at war strew the mountain side with limbs of the mangled trees,

There's a sudden, fierce clang of the knocker, then the sound of a voice in the shaft, Shrieking words that drum hard on the centres, and the braceman goes suddenly daft: 'Set the whistle a-blowing like blazes! Billy, run, give old Mackie a call,

There are tracks through the scrub, there's a track down the hill, And a track round the bend from M'Courteney's mill, Where they slyly emerge from the bush and converge,

We're more than partners, Ned 'n' me, Two sections permanently righted. Yiv seen us on the mooch, maybe,

In the morn when the keen blade bites the tree, And the chips on the dead leaves dance, And the bush echoes back right merrily

'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,

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,'

He was a jobbing hand from the printers' flat. His name was Raymond Cato, but he acquired 'Toucher' as a complimentary title when we knew him better. He was tall, sallow, languid and distressingly impecunious. I put it that way because Mr Cato's impecuniosity was more a trait of character than the result of misfortune. He was the sort of young man who would have been impecunious had he been born to ten thousand a year. He was slovenly in his dress, and his trousers were always worn to strings at the heels, and this fringe collected various foreign bodies, which dragged after him as be walked, Raymond being too languid or too indifferent to shake them off. You got to know when Toucher was coming by the clatter of vagrant articles attached to his trousers fringe. He once towed a disused fish-tin after him through a whole hot afternoon. That will give you an idea of the sort of person Raymond Cato was. But this depraved young man, while apparently sleeping against a case, could paw type with miraculous speed and precision, and he handled the most intricate jobs with absolute certainty when under the influence of two buckets of very bad beer. Mr Cato had only been ten days in the factory when be came to the packer's board and leaned there. There were two peach-nuts, a metal rule, and the rind off a tin of red ink dangling at his fetlock. He passed his hand wearily over his brow, brushing back his long, black hair, and rested his eyes on the packer. Raymond's eyes were large and dark, and suffused with an overwhelming sadness. The Toucher owed his success largely to those appealing eyes. 'S'pose we do a break, Mills.' he said, joylessly.

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,

I see grim War, a bestial thing, with swinish tusks to tear; Upon his back the vampires cling,

Brown passed away, and Mrs Brown, In weeds all smothered, went through town By Brown's neat grave to take her stand,

On summer nights when moonbeams flow And glisten o'er the high, white tips, And winds make lamentation low,

The young lieutenant's face was grey. As came the day. The watchers saw it lifting white

There was a moment when of you A splendid hope I had to tell, Believing "Here is one man who

We specked as boys o'er worked-out ground By littered fiat and muddy stream, We watched the whim horse trudging round,

Would you be the King, the strong man, first in council and in toil, To the men who war with nature for possession of the soil? Take an axe upon your shoulder, take a billy and a rug,

I saw the Christ down from His cross, A tragic man lean-limbed and tall, But weighed with suffering and loss.

'Twas old Flynn, the identity, told us That the creek always ran pretty high, But that fossicking veteran sold us,

Whey our trooper hit wide water every heart was yearin' back To the little 'ouse at Coogee or a hut at Barrenjack. She was 'ookin' up to spike the stars, or rootin' in the wave,

I've sung of Honor's golden hair And Hero's auburn tresses, Of Bella's back abundance, where

'Twas a sleepy little chapel by a wattled hill erected, Where the storms were always muffled, and an atmosphere of peace Hung about beneath the gum-trees, and the garden was respected

'That's the boiler at The Bell, mates! Tumble out, Ned, neck and crop, Never mind your hat and coat, man, we'll be wanted on the job. Barney's driving, Harvey's stoking, God help all the hands on top!

Devine came back the other day. We'd planned a great home-comin'. No long trombone we had to play,

I see thee still in doublet wide, And hose well kept, a world too slack, So long and lean thou wert allied,

'Harry! what, that yourself, back to old Vic., man, Down from the Never Land? Now, what's your game? Ugly as ever. Not dropped the old trick, man?

The Spring is gone. I have not seen Its fairies tripping on the Block, Arcadians in grey and green,

Our Mr. Jiggs was certainly an estimable youth, A pillar of propriety, a champion of truth; He had a good position in a warehouse in the town;