Andrew Barton Paterson

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...

Far from the trouble and toil of town,
Where the reed beds sweep and shiver,
Look at a fragment of velvet brown,
Old Man Platypus drifting down,
Drifting along the river.

And he plays and dives in the river bends
In a style that is most elusive;
With few relations and fewer friends,
For Old Man Platypus descends
From a family most exclusive.

He shares his burrow beneath the bank
With his wife and his son and daughter
At the roots of the reeds and the grasses rank;
And the bubbles show where our hero sank
To its entrance under water.

Safe in their burrow below the falls
They live in a world of wonder,
Where no one visits and no one calls,
They sleep like little brown billiard balls
With their beaks tucked neatly under.

You never heard tell of the story?
Well, now, I can hardly believe!
Never heard of the honour and glory
Of Pardon, the son of Reprieve?
But maybe you're only a Johnnie
And don't know a horse from a hoe?
Well, well, don't get angry, my sonny,
But, really, a young un should know.

They bred him out back on the "Never",
His mother was Mameluke breed.
To the front, and then stay there, was ever
The root of the Mameluke creed.
He seemed to inherit their wiry
Strong frames, and their pluck to receive,
As hard as a flint and as fiery
Was Pardon, the son of Reprieve.

We ran him at many a meeting
At crossing and gully and town,
And nothing could give him a beating,
At least when our money was down.
For weight wouldn't stop him, nor distan...

Awake, of Muse, the echoes of a day
Long past, the ghosts of mem'ries manifold,
Youth's memories that once were green and gold
But now, alas, are grim and ashen grey.

The drowsy schoolboy wakened up from sleep,
First stays his system with substantial food,
Then off for school with tasks half understood,
Alas, alas, that cribs should be so cheap!

The journey down to town, 'twere long to tell
The storm and riot of the rabble rout;
The wild Walpurgis revel in and out
That made the ferry boat a floating hell.

What time the captive locusts fairly roared:
And bulldog ants, made stingless with a knife,
Climbed up the seats and scared the very life
From timid folk, who near jumped overboard.

The hours of lessons, hours with feet of clay
Ea...

The roving breezes come and go
On Kiley's Run,
The sleepy river murmurs low,
Adnd far away one dimly sees
Beyond the stretch of forest trees,
Beyond the foothills dusk and dun,
The ranges steeping in the sun
On Kiley's Run.

'Tis many years since first I came
On Kiley's Run,
More years than I would care to name
Since I, a stripling, used to ride
For miles and miles at Kiley's side,
The while in stirring tones he told
The stories of the days of old
On Kiley's Run.

I see the old bush homestead now
On Kiley's Run,
Just nestled down to beneath the brow
Of one small ridge above the sweep
Of river-flat, where willows weep
And jasmine flowers and roses bloom:
The air was laden with perfume
On Kiley's Run.

We li...

Oh, we started down from Roto when the sheds had all cut out.
We’d whips and whips of Rhino as we meant to push about,
So we humped our blues serenely and made for Sydney town,
With a three-spot cheque between us, as wanted knocking down.

                                            Chorus

    But we camped at Lazy Harry’s, on the road to Gundagai
    The road to Gundagai!    Not five miles from Gundagai!
    Yes, we camped at Lazy Harry’s, on the road to Gundagai.

Well, we struck the Murrumbidgee near the Yanko in a week,
And passed through old Narrandera and crossed the Burnet Creek.
And we never stopped at Wagga, for we’d Sydney in our eye.


But we camped at Lazy Harry’s, on the road to Gundagai.
    Chorus: But we camped, &c.

Oh, I’v...

Oh, the weary, weary journey on the trek, day after day,
With sun above and silent veldt below;
And our hearts keep turning homeward to the youngsters far away,
And the homestead where the climbing roses grow.
Shall we see the flats grow golden with the ripening of the grain?
Shall we hear the parrots calling on the bough?
Ah! the weary months of marching ere we hear them call again,
For we're going on a long job now.

In the drowsy days on escort, riding slowly half asleep,
With the endless line of waggons stretching back,
While the khaki soldiers travel like a mob of travelling sheep,
Plodding silent on the never-ending track,
While the constant snap and sniping of the foe you never see
Makes you wonder will your turn come, when and how?
As the Mauser ball hums p...

Out in the grey cheerless chill of the morning light,
Out on the track where the night shades still lurk,
ere the first gleam of the sungod's returning light
Round come the racehorses early at work.

Reefing and pulling and racing so readily,
Close sit the jockey-boys holding them hard,
"Steady the stallion there, canter him steadily,
Don't let him gallop so much as a yard."

Fiercely he fights while the others run wide of him,
Reefs at the bit that would hold him in thrall,
Plunges and bucks till the boy that's astride of him
Goes to the ground with a terrible fall.

"Stop him there! Block him there! Drive him in carefully,
Lead him about till he's quiet and cool.
Sound as a bell! though he's blown himself fearfully,
Now let us pick up this poor lit...

The opening of the railway line…
The Governor and all,
With flags and banners down the street,
A banquet and a ball,
Hark to them at the station now !
They're raising cheer on cheer,
The man who brought the railway through,
Our friend the engineer.

It came from the prison this morning,
Close-twisted, neat-lettered, and flat;
It lies the hall doorway adorning,
A very good style of a mat.

Prison-made! how the spirit is moven
As we think of its story of dread,
What wiles of the wicked are woven
And spun in its intricate thread!

The letters are new, neat and nobby,
Suggesting a masterly hand,
Was it Sikes, who half-murdered the bobby,
That put the neat D on the "and"?

Some banker found guilty of laches,
It's always called laches, you know,
Had Holt any hand in those Hs?
Did Bertrand illumine that O?

That T has a look of the gallows,
That A's a triangle, I guess;
Was it one of the Mount Rennie fellows
Who twisted the strands of the S?

Was it made by some "high...

The boys had come back from the races
All silent and down on their luck;
They'd backed 'em, straight out and for places,
But never a winner they's struck.
They lost their good money on Slogan,
And fell most uncommonly flat
When Partner, the pride of the Bogan,
Was beaten by Aristocrat.

And one said, "I move that instanter
We sell out our horses and quit;
The brutes ought to win in a canter,
Such trials they do when they're fit.
The last one they ran was a snorter,
A gallop to gladden one's heart,
Two-twelve for a mile and a quarter,
And finished as straight as a dart.

"And then when I think that they're ready
To win me a nice little swag,
They are licked like the veriest neddy,
They're licked from the fall of the flag.
The mare ...

They mustered us up with a royal din,
In wearisome weeks of drought.
Ere ever half of the crops were in,
Or the half of the sheds cut out.

'Twas down with the saddle and spurs and whip
The swagman dropped his swag.
And we hurried us off to the outbound ship
To fight for the English flag.

The English flag, it is ours in sooth
We stand by it wrong or right.
But deep in our hearts is the honest truth
We fought for the sake of a fight.

And the English flag may flutter and wave
Where the World-wide Oceans toss,
But the flag the Australian dies to save
Is the flag of the Southern Cross.

If ever they want us to stand the brunt
Of a hard-faught, grim campaign,
We will carry our own flag up to the front
When we go to the wars agai...

They held a polo meeting at a little country town,
And all the local sportsmen came to win themselves renown.
There came two strangers with a horse, and I am much afraid
They both belonged to what is called "the take-you-down brigade".

They said their horse could jump like fun, and asked an amateur
To ride him in the steeplechase, and told him they were sure
The last time round he'd sail away with such a swallow's flight
The rest would never see him go, he's finish out of sight.

So out he went; and, when folk saw the amateur was up,
Some local genius called the race "the Dude-in-Danger Cup".
The horse was known as "Who's Afraid", by "Panic" from "The Fright",
But still his owners told the jock he's finish out of sight.

And so he did; for Who's Afraid, without th...

Little bush maiden, wondering-eyed,
Playing alone in the creek-bed dry,
In the small green flat on every side
Walled in by the Moonbi ranges high;
Tell me the tale of your lonely life
'Mid the great grey forests that know no change.
"I never have left my home," she said,
"I have never been over the Moonbi Range.

"Father and mother are long since dead,
And I live with granny in yon wee place."
"Where are your father and mother?" I said.
She puzzled awhile with thoughtful face,
Then a light came into the shy brown face,
And she smiled, for she thought the question strange
On a thing so certain, "When people die
They go to the country over the range."

"And what is this country like, my lass?"
"There are blossoming trees and pretty flowers
An...

Och! my name’s Pat Malone, and I’m from Tipperary.
    Sure, I don’t know it now I’m so bothered, Ohone!
And the gals that I danced with, light-hearted and airy,
    It’s scarcely they’d notice poor Paddy Malone.
’Tis twelve months or more since our ship she cast anchor
    In happy Australia, the Emigrant’s home,
And from that day to this there’s been nothing but canker,
    And grafe and vexation for Paddy Malone.
        Oh, Paddy Malone! Oh, Paddy, Ohone!
        Bad luck to the agent that coaxed ye to roam.

Wid a man called a squatter I soon got a place, sure,
    He’d a beard like a goat, and such whiskers, Ohone!
And he said—as he peeped through the hair on his faitures—
    That he liked the appearance of Paddy Malone.
Wid him I agreed to go up to his stat...

I’ve had all sorts of luck, sometimes bad, sometimes better,
    But now I have somebody’s luck and my own,
For I stooped in the street and I picked up a letter,
    Which some one had written to send away home.

The old adage says, “What you find, you may keep it,”
    And as most of these old sayings are very true,
I straight broke the seal, and then having read it,
    The contents of this letter I tell unto you.

                                The Letter

Dear Dermot, I hope when this letter gets to you
    ’Twill find you in health, as now it leaves me;
But I hope you’re more happy than I am in Australia—
    If not, it’s small comfort that you have, achree!

Hard fortune’s been mine since crossing the line,
    Though that same I ne’er saw, fo...

They came of bold and roving stock that would not fixed abide;
They were the sons of field and flock since e'er they learnt to ride,
We may not hope to see such men in these degenerate years
As those explorers of the bush, the brave old pioneers.

'Twas they who rode the trackless bush in heat and storm and drought;
'Twas they who heard the master-word that called them farther out;
'Twas they who followed up the trail the mountain cattle made,
And pressed across the mighty range where now their bones are laid.

But now the times are dull and slow, the brave old days are dead
When hardy bushmen started out, and forced their way ahead
By tangled scrub and forests grim towards the unknown west,
And spied at last the promised land from off the range's crest.

O ye that...

Air: "Widow McGrath"


To Policeman G. the Inspector said:
"When you pass the 'shops' you must turn your head;
If you took a wager, that would be a sin;
So you'll earn no stripes if you run them in."
Mush-a-ring-tiy-ah,
Fol-de-diddle-doh!

To the House Committee, the Inspector said:
"'Tis a terrible thing how the gamblers spread,
For they bet on the steeple, and they bet on the Cup,
And the magistrates won't lock them up."
Mush-a-ring-tiy-ah,
Fol-de-diddle-doh!

But Policeman G., as he walks his beat,
Where ghe gamblers are, up and down the street,
Says he: "What's the use to be talkin' rot,
If they'd make me a sergeant, I could cop the lot!"
With my ring-tiy-ah,
Fol-de-diddle-doh!

"But, begad if you start to suppress t...