Where the Dead Men Lie

Out on the wastes of the Never Never
Thats where the dead men lie!
There where the heat-waves dance forever
Thats where the dead men lie!
Thats where the Earths loved sons are keeping
Endless tryst: not the west wind sweeping
Feverish pinions can wake their sleeping
Out where the dead men lie!

Where brown Summer and Death have mated
Thats where the dead men lie!
Loving with fiery lust unsated
Thats where the dead men lie!
Out where the grinning skulls bleach whitely
Under the saltbush sparkling brightly;
Out where the wild dogs chorus nightly
Thats where the dead men lie!

Deep in the yellow, flowing river
Thats where the dead men lie!
Under the banks where the shadows quiver
Thats where the dead men he!
Where the platypus twists and doubles,
Leaving a train of tiny bubbles.
Rid at last of their earthly troubles
Thats where the dead men lie!

East and backward pale faces turning
Thats how the dead men lie!
Gaunt arms stretched with a voiceless yearning
Thats how the dead men lie!
Oft in the fragrant hush of nooning
Hearing again their mothers crooning,
Wrapt for aye in a dreamful swooning
Thats how the dead men lie!

Only the hand of Night can free them
Thats when the dead men fly!
Only the frightened cattle see them
See the dead men go by!
Cloven hoofs beating out one measure,
Bidding the stockmen know no leisure
Thats when the dead men take their pleasure!
Thats when the dead men fly!

Ask, too, the never-sleeping drover:
He sees the dead pass by;
Hearing them call to their friends the plover,
Hearing the dead men cry;
Seeing their faces stealing, stealing,
Hearing their laughter, pealing, pealing,
Watching their grey forms wheeling, wheeling
Round where the cattle lie!

Strangled by thirst and fierce privation
Thats how the dead men die!
Out on Moneygrubs farthest station
Thats how the dead men die!
Hard-faced greybeards, youngsters caflow;
Some mounds cared for, some left fallow;
Some deep down, yet others shallow.
Some having but the sky.

Moneygrub, as he sips his claret,
Looks with complacent eye
Down at his watch-chain, eighteen carat
There, in his club, hard by:
Recks not that every link is stamped with
Names of the men whose limbs are cramped with
Too long lying in grave-mould, cramped with
Death where the dead men lie.

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

Jimmy Wood

Barcroft Boake, Simple Poetry

Desiree

Barcroft Boake, Simple Poetry

An Easter Rhyme

Barcroft Boake, Simple Poetry

The Diggers Song

Barcroft Boake, Simple Poetry

English

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From The Far West

Tis a song of the Never Never land
Set to the tune of a scorching gale
On the sandhills red,
When the grasses dead
Loudly rustle, and bow the head
To the breath of its dusty hail:

Where the cattle trample a dusty pad
Across the never-ending plain,
And come and go
With muttering low
In the time when the rivers cease to flow,
And the Drought King holds his reign;

When the fiercest piker who ever turned
With lowered head in defiance proud,
Grown gaunt and weak,
Release doth seek
In vain from the depths of the slimy creek
His sepulchre and his shroud;

His requiem sung by an insect host,
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The Song Of The Dead

Hear now the Song of the Dead, in the North by the torn berg-edges,
They that look still to the Pole, asleep by their hide-stripped sledges.
Song of the Dead in the South, in the sun by their skeleton horses,
Where the warrigal whimpers and bays through the dust of the sere river-courses.

Song of the Dead in the East, in the heat-rotted jungle-hollows,
Where the dog-ape barks in the kloof, in the brake of the buffalo-wallows.

Song of the Dead in the West in the Barrens, the pass that betrayed them,
Where the wolverine tumbles their packs from the camp and the grave-rnound they made them;
Hear now the Song of the Dead!

I

We were dreamers, dreaming greatly, in the man-stifled town;
We yearned beyond the sky-line where the strange roads go down.
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The Custer Wail.

Dead! Where the bold and brave
Blend in one bloody grave;
Dead! With no coward clay
Weltering in gore that day.
Dead! Dead! Ah! - Dead to me.

Dead! With his boys in blue,
Baptized in bloody dew.
Dead! Where his enemy
Fled from his fearless eye.
Dead! Dead! Ah! - Dead to me.

Dead! Like a meteor,
Flashed o'er the field of war.
Dead! With immortal pride,
Glorious and glorified.
Dead! Dead! Ah! - Dead to me.

Dead! Where the captives sing
Saved by his rifle's ring.
Dead! Where the painted brave
Bled by his gory glaive.
Dead! Dead! Ah! - Dead to me.

Dead! Where the feathered game
Fell at his deadly aim.
Dead! Where the buffalo
Found him a gallant foe.
Dead! Dead! Ah! - Dead to me.

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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
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Marshall's Mate

You almost heard the surface bake, and saw the gum-leaves turn,
You could have watched the grass scorch brown had there been grass to burn.
In such a drought the strongest heart might well grow faint and weak,
'Twould frighten Satan to his home, not far from Dingo Creek.

The tanks went dry on Ninety Mile, as tanks go dry out back,
The Half-Way Spring had failed at last when Marshall missed the track;
Beneath a dead tree on the plain we saw a pack-horse reel,
Too blind to see there was no shade, and too done-up to feel.
And charcoaled on the canvas bag (`twas written pretty clear)
We read the message Marshall wrote. It said: `I'm taken queer,
I'm somewhere off of Deadman's Track, half-blind and nearly dead;
Find Crowbar, get him sobered up, and follow back,' it said.

`...

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Skeeta - An Old Servants Tale

Our Skeeta was married, our Skeeta! the tomboy and pet of the place,
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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...

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