Written by
Robert Burns |
O ROUGH, rude, ready-witted Rankine,
The wale o’ cocks for fun an’ drinkin!
There’s mony godly folks are thinkin,
Your dreams and tricks
Will send you, Korah-like, a-sinkin
Straught to auld Nick’s.
Ye hae saw mony cracks an’ cants,
And in your wicked, drucken rants,
Ye mak a devil o’ the saunts,
An’ fill them fou;
And then their failings, flaws, an’ wants,
Are a’ seen thro’.
Hypocrisy, in mercy spare it!
That holy robe, O dinna tear it!
Spare’t for their sakes, wha aften wear it—
The lads in black;
But your curst wit, when it comes near it,
Rives’t aff their back.
Think, wicked Sinner, wha ye’re skaithing:
It’s just the Blue-gown badge an’ claithing
O’ saunts; tak that, ye lea’e them naething
To ken them by
Frae ony unregenerate heathen,
Like you or I.
I’ve sent you here some rhyming ware,
A’ that I bargain’d for, an’ mair;
Sae, when ye hae an hour to spare,
I will expect,
Yon sang ye’ll sen’t, wi’ cannie care,
And no neglect.
Tho’ faith, sma’ heart hae I to sing!
My muse dow scarcely spread her wing;
I’ve play’d mysel a bonie spring,
An’ danc’d my fill!
I’d better gaen an’ sair’t the king,
At Bunker’s Hill.
’Twas ae night lately, in my fun,
I gaed a rovin’ wi’ the gun,
An’ brought a paitrick to the grun’—
A bonie hen;
And, as the twilight was begun,
Thought nane wad ken.
The poor, wee thing was little hurt;
I straikit it a wee for sport,
Ne’er thinkin they wad fash me for’t;
But, Deil-ma-care!
Somebody tells the poacher-court
The hale affair.
Some auld, us’d hands had taen a note,
That sic a hen had got a shot;
I was suspected for the plot;
I scorn’d to lie;
So gat the whissle o’ my groat,
An’ pay’t the fee.
But by my gun, o’ guns the wale,
An’ by my pouther an’ my hail,
An’ by my hen, an’ by her tail,
I vow an’ swear!
The game shall pay, o’er muir an’ dale,
For this, niest year.
As soon’s the clockin-time is by,
An’ the wee pouts begun to cry,
Lord, I’se hae sporting by an’ by
For my gowd guinea,
Tho’ I should herd the buckskin kye
For’t in Virginia.
Trowth, they had muckle for to blame!
’Twas neither broken wing nor limb,
But twa-three draps about the wame,
Scarce thro’ the feathers;
An’ baith a yellow George to claim,
An’ thole their blethers!
It pits me aye as mad’s a hare;
So I can rhyme nor write nae mair;
But pennyworths again is fair,
When time’s expedient:
Meanwhile I am, respected Sir,
Your most obedient.
|
Written by
Andrew Barton Paterson |
The sheep were shorn and the wool went down
At the time of our local racing;
And I'd earned a spell -- I was burnt and brown --
So I rolled my swag for a trip to town
And a look at the steeplechasing.
Twas rough and ready--an uncleared course
As rough as the blacks had found it;
With barbed-wire fences, topped with gorse,
And a water-jump that would drown a horse,
And the steeple three times round it.
There was never a fence the tracks to guard, --
Some straggling posts defined 'em:
And the day was hot, and the drinking hard,
Till none of the stewards could see a yard
Before nor yet behind 'em!
But the bell was rung and the nags were out,
Excepting an old outsider
Whose trainer started an awful rout,
For his boy had gone on a drinking bout
And left him without a rider.
"Is there not a man in the crowd," he cried,
"In the whole of the crowd so clever,
Is there not one man that will take a ride
On the old white horse from the Northern side
That was bred on the Mooki River?"
Twas an old white horse that they called The Cow,
And a cow would look well beside him;
But I was pluckier then than now
(And I wanted excitement anyhow),
So at last I agreed to ride him.
And the trainer said,"Well, he's dreadful slow,
And he hasn't a chance whatever;
But I'm stony broke, so it's time to show
A trick or two that the trainers know
Who train by the Mooki River.
"The first time round at the further side,
With the trees and the scrub about you,
Just pull behind them and run out wide
And then dodge into the scrub and hide,
And let them go round without you.
"At the third time round, for the final spin
With the pace and the dust to blind 'em,
They'll never notice if you chip in
For the last half-mile -- you'll be sure to win,
And they'll think you raced behind 'em.
"At the water-jump you may have to swim --
He hasn't a hope to clear it,
Unless he skims like the swallows skim
At full speed over -- but not for him!
He'll never go next or near it.
"But don't you worry -- just plunge across,
For he swims like a well-trained setter.
Then hide away in the scrub and gorse
The rest will be far ahead, of course --
The further ahead the better.
"You must rush the jumps in the last half-round
For fear that he might refuse 'em;
He'll try to baulk with you, I'11 be bound;
Take whip and spurs to the mean old hound,
And don't be afraid to use 'em.
"At the final round, when the field are slow
And you are quite fresh to meet 'em,
Sit down, and hustle him all you know
With the whip and spurs, and he'll have to go --
Remember, you've got to beat 'em!"
*
The flag went down, and we seemed to fly,
And we made the timbers shiver
Of the first big fence, as the stand dashed by,
And I caught the ring of the trainer's cry;
"Go on, for the Mooki River!"
I jammed him in with a well-packed crush,
And recklessly -- out for slaughter --
Like a living wave over fence and brush
We swept and swung with a flying rush,
Till we came to the dreaded water.
Ha, ha! I laugh at it now to think
Of the way I contrived to work it
Shut in amongst them, before you'd wink,
He found himself on the water's brink,
With never a chance to shirk it!
The thought of the horror he felt beguiles
The heart of this grizzled rover!
He gave a snort you could hear for miles,
And a spring would have cleared the Channel Isles,
And carried me safely over!
Then we neared the scrub, and I pulled him back
In the shade where the gum-leaves quiver:
And I waited there in the shadows black
While the rest of the horses, round the track,
Went on like a rushing river!
At the second round, as the field swept by,
I saw that the pace was telling;
But on they thundered, and by-and-by
As they passed the stand I could hear the cry
Of the folk in the distance, yelling!
Then the last time round! And the hoofbeats rang!
And I said, "Well, it's now or never!"
And out on the heels of the throng I sprang,
And the spurs bit deep and the whipcord sang
As I rode. For the Mooki River!
We raced for home in a cloud of dust
And the curses rose in chorus.
'Twas flog, and hustle, and jump you must!
And The Cow ran well -- but to my disgust
There was one got home before us.
Twas a big black horse, that I had not seen
In the part of the race I'd ridden;
And his coat was cool and his rider clean --
And I thought that perhaps I had not been
The only one that had hidden.
And the trainer came with a visage blue
With rage, when the race concluded:
Said he, "I thought you'd have pulled us through,
But the man on the black horse planted too,
And nearer to home than you did!"
Alas to think that those times so gay
Have vanished and passed for ever!
You don't believe in the yarn, you say?
Why, man, 'twas a matter of every day
When we raced on the Mooki River!
|
Written by
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 sweet
Of wild birds making melodies,
Nor catch the little laughing breeze
That whispers in the wheat.
Our fathers came of roving stock
That could not fixed abide:
And we have followed field and flock
Since e'er we learnt to ride;
By miner's camp and shearing shed,
In land of heat and drought,
We followed where our fortunes led,
With fortune always on ahead
And always further out.
The wind is in the barley-grass,
The wattles are in bloom;
The breezes greet us as they pass
With honey-sweet perfume;
The parakeets go screaming by
With flash of golden wing,
And from the swamp the wild-ducks cry
Their long-drawn note of revelry,
Rejoicing at the Spring.
So throw the weary pen aside
And let the papers rest,
For we must saddle up and ride
Towards the blue hill's breast;
And we must travel far and fast
Across their rugged maze,
To find the Spring of Youth at last,
And call back from the buried past
The old Australian ways.
When Clancy took the drover's track
In years of long ago,
He drifted to the outer back
Beyond the Overflow;
By rolling plain and rocky shelf,
With stockwhip in his hand,
He reached at last, oh lucky elf,
The Town of Come-and-help-yourself
In Rough-and-ready Land.
And if it be that you would know
The tracks he used to ride,
Then you must saddle up and go
Beyond the Queensland side --
Beyond the reach of rule or law,
To ride the long day through,
In Nature's homestead -- filled with awe
You then might see what Clancy saw
And know what Clancy knew.
|
Written by
Rg Gregory |
stylised tulips – this is what the card says
and they have that nineteen-twenties’ feel
of those bright young things a decade before us
who had a way of walking with their legs
bent back and their pelvis forward as if
inviting a kind of sexual depravity
with the no touch signs fervently displayed
stylised tulips – could be snakes though lurking
in the undergrowth good for a wriggle or two
tulips however keep their heads held high
disdainfully pretending the whole world
is beneath them - and what colours my dear
(or lack of colour or subtle colours
whichever the fashion aptly hissed by men)
stylised tulips – hardly the sobriquet
to be pinned on us of a different plumage
(children advancing to and not away from war)
we were the rough-and-ready class (the twerps)
the ignorance is innocence brigade
style was a cheap thing out of woolworths
(we had never heard of the pelvis anyway)
and all our lives our feet on the ground
however much we have let our noses roam
into the shenanigans our part of the world
has happily let itself be wrapped in
at heart we have never been able to accept
the lah-di-dahs of pretending what we’re not
appalled by all the effort it would take to be
stylised tulips
|