The Splitter

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
Blow for blow as the sunbeams glance
From the axe when it sweeps in circles true,
Then the splitter at heart is gay;
He exults in the work hes set to do,
And he feels like a boy at play.

Swinging free with a stroke thats straight and strong
To the heart of the messmate sent,
He is cheered by the magpies morning song
With the ring of the metal blent,
But the birds in their terror scatter high
When she falls with a rush and bound,
And the quivering saplings split and fly,
And the ranges all roar around.

Who is lord when the axeman mounts his spar,
And the breeze on his brown breast blows,
When the scent of the new wood floats afar,
And the gum from its red wounds flows?
With the bush at his back he laughs at care,
With a pipe and a right good mate,
There is drink in the billy, grub to spare,
And a bunk in the ten-by-eight.

When the suns in the west, from nooks aloft
Where the stringy is straight and tall,
Come the strains of a chorus quaint and soft,
Or the clink of the wedge and maul;
From the gully a murmur of broken talk
Or the song that the crosscut sings;
For the bush is a-dream, and high the hawk
Hangs at rest on his cradling wings.

But at night, by the tent, when tea is done
And when euchres begun to flag,
In the bush he may hear a distant gun
Or the neigh of a lonely nag,
Then the splitter has thoughts no longer gay,
And sorrows he cannot drown,
For he dreams of a girl whos far away,
Or the joys of a spree in town.

Edward

Edward Dyson was a versatile Australian writer and poet known for his prose and poetry that vividly depicted the lives and experiences of miners and working-class people in Australia. Born on March 4, 1865, in Ballarat, Victoria, Dyson worked in various manual labor roles in the mining industry before turning to writing. His works often drew from his firsthand experiences and offered a unique perspective on the struggles and triumphs of everyday Australians. Dyson passed away on August 22, 1931.

Edward

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English

Suggested Poems

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

The Mountain Splitter

He works in the glen where the waratah grows,
And the gums and the ashes are tall,
Neath cliffs that re-echo the sound of his blows
When the wedges leap in from the mawl.

He comes of a hardy old immigrant race,
And he feels not the rain nor the drouth.
His sinews are tougher than wire; and his face
Has been tanned by the sun of the south.

Now doomed to be shorn of its glory at last
Is the stately old tree he attacks;
Its moments of life he is numbering fast
With the keen steady strokes of his axe.

Loud cracks at the butt; and the strong wood is burst;
And the splitter steps backward, and turns
His eyes to the boughs that move slowly at first
Ere they rush to their grave in the ferns.

He strips off the bark with slight effort of strengt...

Henry Lawson

Jim the Splitter

The bard who is singing of Wollombi Jim
Is hardly just now in the requisite trim
To sit on his Pegasus fairly;
Besides, he is bluntly informed by the Muse
That Jim is a subject no singer should choose;
For Jim is poetical rarely.

But being full up of the myths that are Greek
Of the classic, and noble, and nude, and antique,
Which means not a rag but the pelt on;
This poet intends to give Daphne the slip,
For the sake of a hero in moleskin and kip,
With a jumper and snake-buckle belt on.

No party is Jim of the Pericles type
He is modern right up from the toe to the pipe;
And being no reader or roamer,
He hasnt Euripides much in the head;
And let it be carefully, tenderly said,
He never has analysed Homer.

He can roar out a song of t...

Henry Kendall

Since Nellie Came To Live Along The Creek

My hut is built of stringy-bark, the windows calico,
The furniture a gin-case, one bush-table, and a bunk;
Thick as wheat on my selection does the towering timber grow,
And the stately blue-gums taproots to the bedrock all are sunk;
Then the ferns spring up like nettles,
And the ti-tree comes and settles
On my clearing if I spell-oh for a week;
But I work for love of labour
Since Ive got a handy neighbour,
And Miss Nellies come to live along the creek.

Time was when Death sat by me, and he stalked me through the trees;
Then my arm was weak as water, and my heart a weary thing;
I was sullen as a wombat on such still, wan days as these,
And my wedges all were rusty, and my axe had lost its ring.
Then a fear like sickness bound me,
And I cursed the trees aro...

Edward

Song of the Shingle-Splitters

In dark wild woods, where the lone owl broods
And the dingoes nightly yell
Where the curlews cry goes floating by,
We splitters of shingles dwell.
And all day through, from the time of the dew
To the hour when the mopoke calls,
Our mallets ring where the woodbirds sing
Sweet hymns by the waterfalls.
And all night long we are lulled by the song
Of gales in the grand old trees;
And in the brakes we can hear the lakes
And the moan of the distant seas.
For afar from heat and dust of street,
And hall and turret and dome,
In forest deep, where the torrents leap,
Is the shingle-splitters home.

The dweller in town may lie upon down,
And own his palace and park:
We envy him not his prosperous lot,
Though we slumber on sheets of bark.
Our foo...

Henry Kendall

Battle Passes

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
Prinked creeper steals caressing hands, the poplar drips its leaves.
Within the garden hot and sweet
Fair form and woven color meet,
While down the clear, cool stones, 'tween banks with branch and blossom gay,
A little, bridged, blind rivulet goes touching out its way.

Peace lingers hidden from the knife, the tearing blinding shell,
Where falls the spattered sunlight on a lichen-covered well.
No voice is here, no fall of feet, no smoke lifts cool and grey,
But on the granite stoop a cat blinks vaguely at the day.
From hill to hill across the vale
Storms man's terrific iron gale;<...

Edward

In The Benevolent

Im 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,
But up north, I hear, they are on the gold.
And he shuffles off with a feeble stride,
With his ragged swag and his billy black.
He is making tracks for the other side,
Oer the river deep, or the Great Divide;
But at night, dead beat, he travels back.

Then at morn next day he is off again,
With an eager light in his aged eyes,
Tramping away on his journey vain
For the land of promise beyond the rise.
Over the range there is work to do,
There is roaring life at the shanty bars.
He will tramp the plains whilst the skies are blue,
And will wander the great wide bushland through,
And be soothed to sleep by the blinking stars...

Edward