The Plains

A land, as far as the eye can see, where the waving grasses grow
Or the plains are blackened and burnt and bare, where the false mirages go
Like shifting symbols of hope deferred, land where you never know.

Land of the plenty or land of want, where the grey Companions dance,
Feast or famine, or hope or fear, and in all things land of chance,
Where Nature pampers or Nature slays, in her ruthless, red, romance.

And we catch a sound of a fairy's song, as the wind goes whipping by,
Or a scent like incense drifts along from the herbage ripe and dry
Or the dust storms dance on their ballroom floor, where the bones of the cattle lie.

Andrew Barton Paterson

Andrew Barton Paterson, also known as Banjo Paterson, was an Australian bush poet, journalist, and author. Renowned for his poignant and humorous depictions of rural Australia, he wrote iconic works like "Waltzing Matilda" and "The Man from Snowy River." His storytelling, deeply rooted in Australian culture, has cemented his legacy as one of the nation's most beloved literary figures.

Andrew Barton Paterson

Sydney Cup, 1899 - An Outside Trip

Andrew Barton Paterson, Simple Poetry

The Silent Shearer

Andrew Barton Paterson, Simple Poetry

Our Own Flag

Andrew Barton Paterson, Simple Poetry

A Mountain Station

Andrew Barton Paterson, Simple Poetry

English

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Australian Scenery

The Mountains
A land of sombre, silent hills, where mountain cattle go
By twisted tracks, on sidelings deep, where giant gum trees grow
And the wind replies, in the river oaks, to the song of the stream below.

A land where the hills keep watch and ward, silent and wide awake
As those who sit by a dead campfire, and wait for the dawn to break,
Or those who watched by the Holy Cross for the dead Redeemer's sake.

A land where silence lies so deep that sound itself is dead
And a gaunt grey bird, like a homeless soul, drifts, noiseless, overhead
And the world's great story is left untold, and the message is left unsaid.

The Plains
A land as far as the eye can see, where the waving grasses grow
Or the plains are blackened and burnt and bare, where the false mirages go...

Andrew Barton Paterson

By The Grey Gulf-Water

Far to the Northward there lies a land,
A wonderful land that the winds blow over,
And none may fathom or understand
The charm it holds for the restless rover;
A great grey chaos, a land half made,
Where endless space is and no life stirreth;
There the soul of a man will recoil afraid
From the sphinx-like visage that Nature weareth.
But old Dame Nature, though scornful, craves
Her dole of death and her share of slaughter;
Many indeed are the nameless graves
Where her victims sleep by the Grey Gulf-water.

Slowly and slowly those grey streams glide,
Drifting along with a languid motion,
Lapping the reed-beds on either side,
Wending their way to the North Ocean.
Grey are the plains where the emus pass
Silent and slow, with their dead demeanour;
Ov...

Andrew Barton Paterson

The Plains

    How one loves them
These wide horizons; whether Desert or Sea, -
    Vague and vast and infinite; faintly clear -
Surely, hid in the far away, unknown "There,"
    Lie the things so longed for and found not, found not, Here.

Only where some passionate, level land
    Stretches itself in reaches of golden sand,
Only where the sea line is joined to the sky-line, clear,
    Beyond the curve of ripple or white foamed crest, -
    Shall the weary eyes
    Distressed by the broken skies, -
    Broken by Minaret, mountain, or towering tree, -
    Shall the weary eyes be assuaged, - be assuaged, - and rest.

Adela Florence Cory Nicolson

The Great Grey Plain

Out West, where the stars are brightest,
Where the scorching north wind blows,
And the bones of the dead gleam whitest,
And the sun on a desert glows,
Yet within the selfish kingdom
Where man starves man for gain,
Where white men tramp for existence,
Wide lies the Great Grey Plain.

No break in its awful horizon,
No blur in the dazzling haze,
Save where by the bordering timber
The fierce, white heat-waves blaze,
And out where the tank-heap rises
Or looms when the sunlights wane,
Till it seems like a distant mountain
Low down on the Great Grey Plain.

No sign of a stream or fountain,
No spring on its dry, hot breast,
No shade from the blazing noontide
Where a weary man might rest.
Whole years go by when the glowing
Sky never c...

Henry Lawson

The Old Australian Ways

The London lights are far abeam
Behind a bank of cloud,
Along the shore the gaslights gleam,
The gale is piping loud;
And down the Channel, groping blind,
We drive her through the haze
Towards the land we left behind,
The good old land of `never mind',
And old Australian ways.

The narrow ways of English folk
Are not for such as we;
They bear the long-accustomed yoke
Of staid conservancy:
But all our roads are new and strange,
And through our blood there runs
The vagabonding love of change
That drove us westward of the range
And westward of the suns.

The city folk go to and fro
Behind a prison's bars,
They never feel the breezes blow
And never see the stars;
They never hear in blossomed trees
The music low and swee...

Andrew Barton Paterson

The Wind's Message

There came a whisper down the Bland between the dawn and dark,
Above the tossing of the pines, above the river's flow;
It stirred the boughs of giant gums and stalwart ironbark;
It drifted where the wild ducks played amid the swamps below;
It brought a breath of mountain air from off the hills of pine,
A scent of eucalyptus trees in honey-laden bloom;
And drifting, drifting far away along the southern line
It caught from leaf and grass and fern a subtle strange perfume.

It reached the toiling city folk, but few there were that heard,
The rattle of their busy life had choked the whisper down;
And some but caught a fresh-blown breeze with scent of pine that stirred
A thought of blue hills far away beyond the smoky town;
And others heard the whisper pass, but could not underst...

Andrew Barton Paterson