A poem

[herakles]

I was most moved to read again McCrae's poem In Flanders Fields that Terry so kindly placed in another thread here.

To me, a poem can express emotion far better than any other form. So I am sharing with you one of my very big favourites.

The Last Parade
by Banjo Patterson

With never a sound of trumpet,
With never a flag displayed,
The last of the old campaigners
Lined up for the last parade.

Weary they were and battered,
Shoeless, and knocked about;
From under their ragged forelocks
Their hungry eyes looked out.

And they watched as the old commander
Read out, to the cheering men,
The Nation's thanks and the orders
To carry them home again.

And the last of the old campaigners,
Sinewy, lean, and spare --
He spoke for his hungry comrades:
`Have we not done our share?

`Starving and tired and thirsty
We limped on the blazing plain;
And after a long night's picket
You saddled us up again.

`We froze on the wind-swept kopjes
When the frost lay snowy-white.
Never a halt in the daytime,
Never a rest at night!

`We knew when the rifles rattled
From the hillside bare and brown,
And over our weary shoulders
We felt warm blood run down,

`As we turned for the stretching gallop,
Crushed to the earth with weight;
But we carried our riders through it --
Carried them p'raps too late.

`Steel! We were steel to stand it --
We that have lasted through,
We that are old campaigners
Pitiful, poor, and few.

`Over the sea you brought us,
Over the leagues of foam:
Now we have served you fairly
Will you not take us home?

`Home to the Hunter River,
To the flats where the lucerne grows;
Home where the Murrumbidgee
Runs white with the melted snows.

`This is a small thing surely!
Will not you give command
That the last of the old campaigners
Go back to their native land?'

They looked at the grim commander,
But never a sign he made.
`Dismiss!' and the old campaigners
Moved off from their last parade.
------------------------------------

The author, who is Australia's most beloved poet, also wrote the words to Waltzing Matilda. This one is written just after the Boer war but it's appeal goes much further than that.

Australia has never allowed animals to return to their native land after use in war because of our quarantine regulations. :(

If pressed, I'll tell you the story of Horrie the Wog dog.

Please feel free to place here one of your favourite poems to share with us.

[astraltrader]

Thank you very much for that Richard. A truly amazing poem that I will admit to not having seen before.

Isn`t Banjo Patterson the man from Snowy River or something?

[herakles]

Thank you very much for that Richard. A truly amazing poem that I will admit to not having seen before.

Isn`t Banjo Patterson the man from Snowy River or something?

He's not the man himself but he did claim to know him. And he did write that poem.

There's considerable academic debate as to who is the better - Patterson or Henry Lawson.

There was movement at the station, for the word had passed around
That the colt from Old Regret had got away,
And had joined the wild bush horses -- he was worth a thousand pound,
So all the cracks had gathered to the fray.
All the tried and noted riders from the stations near and far
Had mustered at the homestead overnight,
For the bushmen love hard riding where the wild bush horses are,
And the stock-horse snuffs the battle with delight.

etc.

[vivian]

Love that poem Richard "The Last Parade". I don't have a book of Banjo Patterson but I have a beautifully illustated Henry Lawson. You've prompted me to take it down from the shelf. I don't have a poem to share at the moment however the imagery in "Snowy River" prompted me to bring out a postcard I have of a favourite Australian painting. I love the action and movement in it.

regards
Viv

Title: A break away! 1891 Oil on canvas
Tom Roberts, Australia 1856 - 1931
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

[herakles]

Ahh! Tom Roberts! This is one of my favourites. I've added a couple more. One we irreverently call "Ramming The Shears"! The opening of the first Parliament is a huge canvas. He perfectly and accurately painted everyone there.

For Lawson, I suggest you start with "The Drover's Wife", "The Bush Undertaker", "The Loaded Dog" and "The Union Buries Its Dead".

[vivian]

Ah, glad you like the Tom Roberts too. Thanks Richard for those extra pictures and the Lawson suggestions.

all the best
Viv

[astraltrader]

Thanks Richard and Viv - great info and thread.

[herakles]

Thanks Richard and Viv - great info and thread.

Thanks Terry. Now how about trotting out one of your poems?

[battlestar]

G'Day All

After the thread 'As bad as it gets' this thread was a delight!

One of the many things I now love about my education was my exposure to both the poems of Banjo and Lawson, and the artists of the Hedielburg(?Spelling) school of Australian Art.

I love a sunburnt country...:D

[herakles]

I have a passion for the Heidelberg school. Especially Roberts, Withers and Streeton. Australia's Impressionist artists in a unique setting, the Australian bush.

[vivian]

Ah, lovely that. I've been into the bookshelves again and here are two more, Arthur Streeton and Frederick McCubbin, scanned from a book I have from the Art Gallery of South Australia.

I know we've veered off temporarily from poetry but I'm so glad we did. :)

best regards
Viv

[herakles]

Ah, lovely that. I've been into the bookshelves again and here are two more, Arthur Streeton and Frederick McCubbin, scanned from a book I have from the Art Gallery of South Australia.

I know we've veered off temporarily from poetry but I'm so glad we did. :)

best regards
Viv

Love them! Do you have a copy of Arthur Streeton's Still Glides the Stream & Shall Forever Glide?

We can get back on topic if you post a poem here!! :)

[vivian]

Richard, I don't have that one in my book, that was all I have of Streeton, but I've found this copy online for now. And I'll look for a poem tomorrow.:)

regards
Viv

[battlestar]

G'Day All

I've loved this poem since I first heard it in school. I know of many Australian sailors, soldiers, and airmen that have a copy of this poem with them on deployment or on extended duty overseas.:)

I dedicate this post to the many Aussies that never made it home, that remain in countries far away from the stars of the Southern Cross.

Lest We Forget.

My Country
by Dorothea McKellar
(1885–1968)

The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes,
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins.
Strong love of grey-blue distance,
Brown streams and soft, dim skies -
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror –
The wide brown land for me!

The stark white ring-barked forests,
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon,
Green tangle of the brushes
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops,
And ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When, sick at heart, around us
We see the cattle die –
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady soaking rain.

Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the rainbow gold,
For flood and fire and famine
She pays us back threefold.
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.

An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land –
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand –
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.

[Wombat]

I only have one book of poems. "Men who March Away" By L. M. Parsons.
It has been with me now for about 30 years, so by now I should know it by heart. But every time I start it, I have to put it down.

This is not from the book:

SUBMARINER.

Like some ancient and invincible sea monster
We slide beneath the foaming spray.
The enemy Cruiser, taut upon the horizon
Secures her bearing our way.

The radar pings in our ears;
All hands alert at their station
Excitement fuelled the impending fight -
We’re here to serve our nation!

Running silent, running deep
We move in stealth, we make no sound;
The wash of engines is heard overhead
As the Cruiser sails around:

They breathe fresh air and watch blue skies,
While in a watery tomb we sweat,
With shiny black bodies covered in oil
And clothes that are wringing wet.

The heat’s oppressive
And our lungs begin to ache
While the walls appear to be closing in
With every breath we take.

Pitching and listing, our monster heaves,
Buckled by explosives all around;
Depth charges sink from up above,
Deafening us with their sound.

“Damage stations, what’s our status?”
“Repair crews standing by”.
“Bulk heads are secure, Sir”,
“Seals are holding dry”.

Engines full ahead,
It’s now our turn to fight!
We raise the periscope and take a look -
We’re hidden by the night.

The Cruiser lights are not so close:
She doesn’t see us coming.
We load torpedoes three and four -
Can you hear the engines humming?

A ripple of the water,
A streak of silver light...
Explosions, voices crying out,
Then nothing, but the stilness of the night.


This was for the chaps interested in the subs. I thought they could relate to it.
Wombat,
(James).

[vivian]

This Australian poem is one of my lifelong favourites. There's so much atmosphere in it. It's remembrance of another sort and it gets me every time.

South of my Days

by Judith Wright

South of my days' circle, part of my blood's country,
rises that tableland, high delicate outline
of bony slopes wincing under the winter,
low trees, blue-leaved and olive, outcropping granite-
clean, lean, hungry country. The creek's leaf-silenced,
willow choked, the slope a tangle of medlar and crabapple
branching over and under, blotched with a green lichen;
and the old cottage lurches in for shelter.

O cold the black-frost night. the walls draw in to the warmth
and the old roof cracks its joints; the slung kettle
hisses a leak on the fire. Hardly to be believed that summer
will turn up again some day in a wave of rambler-roses,
thrust it's hot face in here to tell another yarn-
a story old Dan can spin into a blanket against the winter.
seventy years of stories he clutches round his bones,
seventy years are hived in him like old honey.

During that year, Charleville to the Hunter,
nineteen-one it was, and the drought beginning;
sixty head left at the McIntyre, the mud round them
hardened like iron; and the yellow boy died
in the sulky ahead with the gear, but the horse went on,
stopped at Sandy Camp and waited in the evening.
It was the flies we seen first, swarming like bees.
Came to the Hunter, three hundred head of a thousand-
cruel to keep them alive - and the river was dust.

Or mustering up in the Bogongs in the autumn
when the blizzards came early. Brought them down;
down, what aren't there yet. Or driving for Cobb's on the run
up from Tamworth-Thunderbolt at the top of Hungry Hill,
and I give him a wink. I wouldn't wait long, Fred,
not if I was you. The troopers are just behind,
coming for that job at the Hillgrove. He went like a luny,
him on his big black horse.

Oh, they slide and they vanish
as he shuffles the years like a pack of conjuror's cards.
True or not, it's all the same; and the frost on the roof
cracks like a whip, and the back-log break into ash.
Wake, old man. this is winter, and the yarns are over.
No-one is listening
South of my days' circle.
I know it dark against the stars, the high lean country
full of old stories that still go walking in my sleep.




best regards
Vivian

[herakles]

Two great poems! Thanks for placing them here.

I am a great fan of Kipling. Yes, I know this is non U today. I was hugely impressed reading the articles he wrote as a young journalist in India in the 1880's.

Most people know that he lost his son at the battle of Loos, a young man desperate to do his bit for his country. The war changed Kipling and his later writings are all bitter. Here's one of them. It's not very long.

Common Form
Rudyard Kipling

If any question why we died,
Tell them, because our fathers lied.

[vivian]

For Herakles, the last Impressionist painting in my book and another of my favourites from the Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide.

1) Charles Conder - A Holiday at Mentone

2) H.J. Johnstone - Evening Shadows, Backwater of the Murray,S.A.


regards
Vivian

[herakles]

Thank you Vivian. I hadn't seen the Mentone view before. Mentone is now a suburb of Melbourne but then it was a remote place.