At The J.C.

None ever knew his name,
Honoured, or one of shame,
Highborn or lowly;
Only upon that tree
Two letters, J and C,
Carved by him, mark where he
Lay dying slowly.

Why came he to the West?
Had then the parent nest
Grown so distasteful?
What cause had he to shun
Life, ere twas well begun?
Was he that youngest son,
Of substance wasteful?

Were Fate and he at War?
Was it a pennance, or
Renunciation?
Is it a glad release?
Has he at length found peace,
Now Death hath bid him cease
Peregrination?

Hands white, without a blot,
Told us that he was not
One of the vulgar.
What can those cyphers be?
Two only, J and C.
Carved in his agony
Deep in the mulga.

Was there no womans face
Whose sunny smile might chase
Clouds from above him?
No bosom white as snow?
No lips to whisper low,
Why doth he seek to go?
Do I not love him.

Haunted by flashing charms,
White bosoms, rounded arms,
Lips of fair ladies,
Striving to break some link,
Was t that which made him sink,
Dragged by the curse of drink
Deeper than Hades?

Now, the wind across the grave,
Tuning a sultry stave,
Drearily whistles,
Stirring those branches where
Two silent cyphers stare,
Two letters of a prayer,
Gods Sons initials.

Barcroft Boake

Barcroft Henry Thomas Boake was an Australian poet, born in Sydney, New South Wales. He worked as a surveyor and drover in the Australian outback, which influenced his poetry. Boake was known for his bush ballads that depicted the harsh and rugged life in the Australian wilderness. Tragically, his life ended prematurely when he took his own life at the age of 26. Despite his short career, Boake left a lasting impact on Australian literature.

Barcroft Boake

A Vision Out West

Barcroft Boake, Simple Poetry

Our Visitor

Barcroft Boake, Simple Poetry

Jack Corrigan

Barcroft Boake, Simple Poetry

A Bushmans Love - A Fragment

Barcroft Boake, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

The Box-Tree's Love

Long time beside the squatter's gate
A great grey Box-Tree, early, late,
Or shine or rain, in silence there
Had stood and watched the seasons fare:
Had seen the wind upon the plain
Caress the amber ears of grain;
The river burst its banks and come
Far past its belt of mighty gum:
Had seen the scarlet months of drought
Scourging the land with fiery knout;
And seasons ill and seasons good
Had alternated as they would.
The years were born, had grown and gone,
While suns had set and suns had shone;
Fierce flames had swept; chill waters drenched;
That sturdy yeoman never blenched.

The Tree had watched the station grow,
The buildings rising row on row;
And from that point of vantage green,
Peering athwart its leafy screen,
The wondering sol...

Barcroft Boake

Jacks Last Muster

Diamantina River, Western Queensland


The first flush of grey light, the herald of daylight,
Is dimly outlining the musterers camp,
Where over the sleeping, the stealthily creeping
Breath of the morning lies chilly and damp,

As, blankets forsaking, twixt sleeping and waking,
The black-boys turn out to the managers call;
Whose order, of course, is, Be after the horses,
And take all sorts of care you unhobble them all.

Then, each with a bridle (provokingly idle)
They saunter away his commands to fulfil,
Where, cheerily chiming, the musical rhyming
From equine bell-ringers comes over the hill.

But now the dull dawning gives place to the morning,
The sun, springing up in a glorious flood
Of golden-shot fire, mounts higher and hi...

Barcroft Boake

Skeeta - An Old Servants Tale

Our Skeeta was married, our Skeeta! the tomboy and pet of the place,
No more as a maiden wed greet her, no more would her pert little face
Light up the chill gloom of the parlour; no more would her deft little hands
Serve drinks to the travel-stained caller on his way to more southerly lands;
No more would she chaff the rough drovers and send them away with a smile,
No more would she madden her lovers, demurely, with womanish guile
The prince from the great Never-Never, with light touch of lips and of hand
Had come, and enslaved her for ever a potentate bearded and tanned
From the land where the white mirage dances its dance of death over the plains,
With the glow of the sun in his glances, the lust of the West in his veins;

His talk of long drought-stricken stretches when the ton...

Barcroft Boake

Jimmy Wood

There came a lonely Briton to the town,
A solitary Briton with a mission,
Hed vowed a vow to put all shouting down,
To relegate it to a low position.

Transcendently Britannic in his dress,
His manners were polite, and slightly formal;
And, this I mention with extreme distress,
His put away for liquid was abnormal.

He viewed this shouting mania with disgust,
As being generosity perverted,
When any of the boys went on the bust
He strove his best that they might be converted.

He wouldnt take a liquor with a man,
Not if he was to be hanged, drawn, and quartered,
And yet, he drank, construe it as you can,
Unsweetened gin, most moderately watered.

And when the atmosphere was in a whirl,
And language metaphorical ran riot,
...

Barcroft Boake

A Wayside Queen

She was born in the season of fire,
When a mantle of murkiness lay
On the front of the crimson Destroyer:
And none knew the name of her sire
But the woman; and she, ashen grey,
In the fierce pangs of motherhood lay.

The skies were aflame at her coming
With a marvellous message of ill;
And fear-stricken pinions were drumming
The hot, heavy air, whence the humming
Of insects rose, sudden and shrill,
As they fled from that hell-begirt hill.

Then the smoke-serpent writhed in her tresses:
The flame kissed her hard on the lips:
She smiled at their ardent caresses
As the wanton who smiles, but represses
A lover's hot haste, and so slips
From the arm that would girdle her hips.

Such the time of her coming and fashion:
How long ere her ...

Barcroft Boake

A Dream of Fair Women

I read, before my eyelids dropt their shade,
The Legend of Good Women, long ago
Sung by the morning star of song, who made
His music heard below;

Dan Chaucer, the first warbler, whose sweet breath
Preluded those melodious bursts that fill
The spacious times of great Elizabeth
With sounds that echo still.

And, for a while, the knowledge of his art
Held me above the subject, as strong gales
Hold swollen clouds from raining, tho my heart,
Brimful of those wild tales,

Charged both mine eyes with tears. In every land
I saw, wherever light illumineth,
Beauty and anguish walking hand in hand
The downward slope to death.

Those far-renowned brides of ancient song
Peopled the hollow dark, like burning stars,
And I heard sounds of ins...

Alfred Lord Tennyson

At The J.C.

Suggested Poems

At The J.C.