Edward

Back again 'n' nothin' missin' barrin' arf a hand,
Where an Abdul bit me, chokin' in the Holy Land.
'Struth, they got some dirty fighters in the Moslem pack,
Bull-nosed slugs their sneakin' snipers spatters in yer back
Blows a gapin' sort iv pit in
What a helephant could sit in.
Bounced their bullets, if yeh please,
Like the 'oppers in a cheese,
Off me rubber pelt in droves,
Moppin' up the other coves.
So here's me once more at large in
Bay-street, Port, a bloomin' Sargin'.
“Cri, it jumbo.” “Have a beer.”
“Wot-o, Anzac; you're a dear.”

Back once more on Moley's corner, loafin' like a dook;
Back on Bourke, me livin' image, not a slinkin' spook;
Solid ez the day I started, medals on me chest,
Switchin' with me pert melacca, swankin' with the best

The boarder in the bar-room rose,
A pale gaunt man who lodged with Hann,
“I bear,” he said, “the worst of woes,
And suffer torments no one knows,
For do my best I never can
Have sleep like any other man.

“I have insomnia,” said he.
“At times it drives me mad outright.
Whate’er I do, where’er I be,
Its just the same, so sleep for me.
You won’t believe for three years quite
I haven’t slept two hours a night.”

Boss-cocky Billson softly swore,
And turning from his chestnut cob.
“What’s that?” he questioned from the door.
“You say that you don’t sleep no more
Than two hours? I pay thirty bob.
Now, mister, do you want a job?”

Once in a blue eternity they gave us dabs of rum
To close the seams 'n' keep the flume in liquor-tight condition;
But, soft 'n' sentimental, when the long, cold evenin's come,
I'd dream me nibs was dronking' to the height of his ambition,
With rights of suction over all the breweries there are,
Where barrels squat, like Brahma gods, in Mother Hardy's bar.

I had me fit of longin' on the night the Germans came,
All breathin' lioke a gas attack. The air was halcholic.
We smelt 'em in the darkness, 'n' our rage went up in flame.
It was envy, squealin' envy, put the ginger in the frolic.
We shot 'em full of spelter, then went over it to spite
The swines what drunk the liquor that was ours by common right.

“If this ain't stopped, 'n' quick,” sez we, “there won't be left a d...

It is thirty moons since I slung me hook
From the job at the hay and corn,
Took me solemn oath, 'n' I straight forsook
All the ways of life, dinkum ways 'n' crook,
'N' the things on which it was good to look
Since the day when a bloke was born.

I was give a gun, 'n' a bay'net bright,
'N' a 'ell of a swag iv work,
N' I dipped my lid to the big pub light,
To the ole push cobbers I give “Good-night!”
Slipped a kiss to 'er, 'n' I wings me flight
For a date with the demon Turk.

Ez we pricked our heel to the skitin' drum.
Square 'n' all, I was gone a mile.
With a perky air, 'n' a 'eart ez glum
Ez a long-dead cod, I was blind 'n' dumb,
Holdin' do the tear that was bound to come
At a word or a friendly smile.

Now I've seen it all, I may com...

‘I’m 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,
O’er 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...

Out of work and out of money,out of friends that means, you bet,
Out of firewood, togs and tucker, out of everything but debt,
And I loathe the barren pavements, and the crowds a fellow meets,
And the maddening repetition of the suffocating streets.

With their stinks my soul is tainted, and the tang is on my tongue
Of that sour and smoky suburb and the push we’re thrown among,
And I sicken at the corners polished free of paint and mirk
By the shoulders of the men who’re always hanging round for work.

Home,good Lord! a three-roomed hovel ’twixt a puddle and a drain,
In harmonious connection on the left with Liver Lane,
Where a crippled man is dying, and a horde of children fight,
And a woman in the horrors howls remorsefully at night.

It has stables close behind ...

What is meant by active service
'Ere where sin is leakin' loose,
'N' the oldest 'and's as nervis
As a dog-bedevilled goose,
Has bin writ be every poet
What can rhyme it worth a dam,
But the 'orror as we know it
Is jist jam, jam, Jam!
Oh, the 'ymn of 'ate we owe it,
Stodgy, splodgy, seepy, soaky, sanguinary jam!

There's the “fearful roar iv battle,”
What gets underneath yer 'at,
Mooin' like a million cattle
Each as big as Ararat;
There's the red field green 'n' slippy
(And I'm cleaner where I am),
But the thing that's got me nippy
It is jam, jam, Jam!
Druv us sour it has, 'n' dippy,
Sticky, sicky, slimy, sloppy, stummick-strafin' jam!

Of the mud that's in the trenches
Writers make a solemn fuss;
For the vermin 'n' the s...

In days before the trouble Jo was rated as a slob.
He chose to sit in hourly expectation of a job.
He'd loop hisself upon a post, for seldom friends had he,
A gift of patient waitin' his distinctif quality.
He'd linger in a doorway, or he'd loiter on the grass,
Edgin' modestly aside to let the fleetin' moments pass.

Jo' begged a bob from mother, but more often got a clout,
And settled down with cigarettes to smoke the devil out.
The one consistent member of the Never Trouble Club,
He put a satin finish on the frontage of the pub.
His shoulder-blades were pokin' out from polishin' the pine;
But if a job ran at him Joey's footwork was divine.

Jo strayed in at the cobbler's door, but, scoffed at as a fool,
He found the conversation too exhaustin' as a rule;
Or,...

Out of luck, mate? Have a liquor. Hang it, where’s the use complaining?
Take your fancy, I’m in funds now, I can stand the racket, Dan.
Dump your bluey in the corner; camp here for the night, it’s raining;
Bet your life I’m glad to see you,glad to see a Daylesford man.
Swell? Correct, Dan. Spot the get up; and I own this blooming shanty,
Me the fellows christened ‘Jonah’ at Jim Crow and Blanket Flat,
’Cause my luck was so infernal,you remember me and Canty?
Rough times, those,the very memory keeps a chap from getting fat.

Where’d I strike it? That’s a yarn. The fire’s a comfort,sit up nearer.
Hoist your heels, man; take it easy till Kate’s ready with the stew.
Yes, I’ll tell my little story; ’tain’t a long one, but it’s queerer
Than those lies that Tullock pitched us on The Flat...

He came from tumbled country past the humps of Buffalo
Where the snow sits on the mountain 'n' the Summer aches below.
He'd a silly name like Archie. Squattin' sullen on the ship,
He knew nex' to holy nothin' through the gor-forsaken trip.

No thoughts he had of women, no refreshin' talk of beer;
If he'd battled, loved, or suffered vital facts did not appear;
But the parsons and the poets couldn't teach him to discourse
When it come to pokin' guyver at a pore, deluded horse.

If nags got sour 'n' kicked agin the rules of things at sea,
Artie argued matters with 'em, 'n' he'd kid 'em up a tree.
“Here's a pony got hystericks. Pipe the word for Privit Rowe,”
The Sargint yapped, 'n' all the ship came cluckin' to the show.

He'd chat him confidential, 'n' he'd pet 'n' p...

Men of all the lands Australian from the Gulf to Derwent River,
From the Heads of Sydney Harbour to the waters of the West,
There’s a spirit loudly calling where the saplings dip and quiver,
Where the city crowds are thronging, and the range uplifts its crest!
Do ye feel the holy fervour of a new-born exultation?
For the task the Lord has set us is a trust of noblest pride
We are named to march unblooded to the winning of a nation,
And to crown her with a glory that may evermore abide.
Have ye looked to great old nations, have ye wondered at their making,
Seen their fair and gracious cities, gemmed with palaces of light,
Felt the pulse of mighty engines beating ever, never slaking,
Like the sandalled feet of Progress moving onward in the night?
Can ye stand on some high headland ...

A mile-long panto dragon ploddin' 'opeless all the day,
Stuffed out with kits, 'n' spiked with rifles, steamin' in its sweat,
A-heavin' down the misty road, club-footed through the clay,
By waggons bogged 'n' buckin' guns, the wildest welter yet,
Like 'arf creation's tenants shiftin' early in the wet.

We're marchin' out, we dunno where, to meet we dunno who;
But here we lights eventual, 'n' sighs 'n' slips the kit,
'N', 'struth, the first to take us on is Mickie Mollynoo!
A copper of the Port he was, when 'istory was writ.
Sez I : “We're sent to face the foe, 'n', selp me, this is It.”

A shine John. Hop is Mollynoo. A mix-up with the push
Is all his joy. One evenin' when his baton's flyin' free
I takes a baby brick, 'n' drives it hard agin the cush,
'N' Privit Mi...

This war's a waste of slurry, and its atmosphere is mud,
All is bog from here to sunset. Wadin' through
We're the victims of a thicker sort of universal flood,
With discomforts that old Noah never knew.

We have dubbed our trench The Cecil. There's a brass-plate and a dome,
And a quagmire where the doormat used to be,
If you're calling, second Tuesday is our reg'lar day at home,
So delighted if you'll toddle in to tea!

There is mud along the corridors enough to bog a cow;
In the air there hangs a musty kind of woof;
There's a frog-pond in the parlour, and the kitchen is a slough.
She has neither doors nor windows, nor a roof.

When they post our bald somnambulist as missing from his flat
We take soundings for the digger with a prop.
By the day the board ...

I have a trim typewriter now,
They tell me none is better;
It makes a pleasing, rhythmic row,
And neat is every letter.
I tick out stories by machine,
Dig pars, and gags, and verses keen,
And lathe them off in manner slick.
It is so easy, and it’s quick.

And yet it falls short, I’m afraid,
Of giving satisfaction,
This making literature by aid
Of scientific traction;
For often, I can’t fail to see,
The dashed thing runs away with me.
It bolts, and do whate’er I may
I cannot hold the runaway.

It is not fitted with a brake,
And endless are my verses,
Nor any yarn I start to make
Appropriately terse is.
‘Tis plain that this machine-made screed
Is fit but for machines to read;
So “Wanted” (as an iron censor)
“A good, s...

‘Hello! that’s the whistle, be moving.
Wake up! don’t lie muttering there.
What language! your style is improving,
It’s pleasant to hear you at prayer.
Turn out, man, and spare us the blessing.
Crib’s cut, and the tea’s on the brew.
You’ll have to look slippy in dressing
For that was the half-hour that blew.’

‘Half-past! and the night’s simply awful,
The hut fairly shakes in the storm.
Hang night-shifts! They shouldn’t be lawful;
I’ve only had time to get warm.
I notice the hut’s rarely bright, and
The bunk’s always cold as a stone,
Except when I go on at night, and
The half-after whistles have blown.

‘Bob built up that fire just to spite me,
The conscienceless son of a swab!
By Jove! it would fairly delight me
To let Hogan be hanged...

Happy he in whom the honest love of fair endeavour lingers,
Who has strength to do his labour, and has pride to do it well,
Carve he gems of purest water with an artist’s cunning fingers,
Hew the granite, forge the beam, or make a simple tale to tell

His to feel a glow ecstatic of the mighty exhultation
That arose when out of chaos all the wheeling planets stood.
Since when God beheld the wonder, saw the stir of His creation
In the busy scheme of heaven, and He said that it was good,

Never man has made with willing hands some thing of true intention,
Cut in bone a strange, rude picture to inspire the naked hordes,
Or contrived a subtle engine with laborious invention,
But has entered straight and freely to the joy that was the Lord’s

Those so blessed have with t...

I slung me khaki suit to-day.
Civilian now front heel to chin
I 'op round on a single shin;
At home in peace I'm bound to stay.
'N' so they've took me duds away.
It 'urt like strippin' off me skin!

I put it on three years ago,
The ole brown rig. There wasn't then
A prouder chicken in the pen.
Jist twenty turned, me nibs you'd know
For how I give me chest a throw,
A man among the best of men.

Me little no the touch I give,
Me chin's ez solid ez a rock,
'N' level with the Town 'All clock,
A five-inch grin across me chiv.
“Lor' love us, this is how to live,”
Sez I, 'n' felt I owned the Block.

Glad eyes was ever on the lurk,
'N' little 'earts was thumpin' warm
For nippers trainin' with the swarm
To swat ole Kaiser Bill, o...

Here in the flamin' thick of thick of things,
With Death across the way, 'n' traps
What little Fritz the German flings
Explodin' in yer lunch pe'aps,
It ain't all glory for a bloke',
It ain't all corfee 'ot and stoo,
Nor wavin' banners in the smoke,
Or practisin' the bay'net stroke,
We has our little troubles, too!

Here's Trigger Ribb bin seein' red
'N' raisin' Cain because he had,
Back in the caverns iv his 'ead,
A 'oller tooth run ravin' mad.
Pore Trigger up 'n' down the trench
Was jiggin' like a blithered loan,
'N' every time she give a wrench
You orter seen the beggar blench,
You orter 'eard him play a toon.

The sullen shells was pawin' blind,
A-feelin' for us grim as sin,
While now 'n' then we'd likely find
A dizzy bom...