10 Best Famous Tramped Poems

Here is a collection of the top 10 all-time best famous Tramped poems. This is a select list of the best famous Tramped poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Tramped poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of tramped poems.

• All Famous Tramped Poems

 Even as we speak, there's a smoker's cough
from behind the whitethorn hedge: we stop dead in our tracks;
a distant tingle of water into a trough.

In the past half-hour—since a cattle truck
all but sent us shuffling off this mortal coil—
we've consoled ourselves with the dregs

of a bottle of Redbreast. Had Hawthorne been a Gael,
I insist, the scarlet A on Hester Prynne
would have stood for "Alcohol."

This must be the same truck whose taillights burn
so dimly, as if caked with dirt,
three or four hundred yards along the boreen

(a diminutive form of the Gaelic bóthar, "a road,"
from bó, "a cow," and thar
meaning, in this case, something like "athwart,"

"boreen" has entered English "through the air"
despite the protestations of the O.E.D.):
why, though, should one taillight flash and flare

then flicker-fade
to an afterimage of tourmaline
set in a dark part-jet, part-jasper or -jade?

That smoker's cough again: it triggers off from drumlin
to drumlin an emphysemantiphon
of cows. They hoist themselves onto their trampoline

and steady themselves and straight away divine
water in some far-flung spot
to which they then gravely incline. This is no Devon

cow-coterie, by the way, whey-faced, with Spode
hooves and horns: nor are they the metaphysicattle of Japan
that have merely to anticipate

scoring a bull's-eye and, lo, it happens;
these are earth-flesh, earth-blood, salt of the earth,
whose talismans are their own jawbones

buried under threshold and hearth.
For though they trace themselves to the kith and kine
that presided over the birth

of Christ (so carry their calves a full nine
months and boast liquorice
cachous on their tongues), they belong more to the line

that's tramped these cwms and corries
since Cuchulainn tramped Aoife.
Again the flash. Again the fade. However I might allegorize

some oscaraboscarabinary bevy
of cattle there's no getting round this cattle truck,
one light on the blink, laden with what? Microwaves? Hi-fis?

Oscaraboscarabinary: a twin, entwined, a tree, a Tuareg;
a double dung-beetle; a plain
and simple hi-firing party; an off-the-back-of-a-lorry drogue?

Enough of Colette and Céline, Céline and Paul Celan:
enough of whether Nabokov
taught at Wellesley or Wesleyan.

Now let us talk of slaughter and the slain,
the helicopter gunship, the mighty Kalashnikov:
let's rest for a while in a place where a cow has lain.

 I 
Once in the winter
Out on a lake
In the heart of the north-land,
Far from the Fort
And far from the hunters,
A Chippewa woman
With her sick baby,
Crouched in the last hours
Of a great storm.
Frozen and hungry,
She fished through the ice
With a line of the twisted
Bark of the cedar,
And a rabbit-bone hook
Polished and barbed;
Fished with the bare hook
All through the wild day,
Fished and caught nothing;
While the young chieftain
Tugged at her breasts,
Or slept in the lacings
Of the warm tikanagan.
All the lake-surface
Streamed with the hissing
Of millions of iceflakes
Hurled by the wind;
Behind her the round
Of a lonely island
Roared like a fire
With the voice of the storm
In the deeps of the cedars.
Valiant, unshaken,
She took of her own flesh,
Baited the fish-hook,
Drew in a gray-trout,
Drew in his fellows,
Heaped them beside her,
Dead in the snow.
Valiant, unshaken,
She faced the long distance,
Wolf-haunted and lonely,
Sure of her goal
And the life of her dear one:
Tramped for two days,
On the third in the morning,
Saw the strong bulk
Of the Fort by the river,
Saw the wood-smoke
Hand soft in the spruces,
Heard the keen yelp
Of the ravenous huskies
Fighting for whitefish:
Then she had rest.

II

Years and years after,
When she was old and withered,
When her son was an old man
And his children filled with vigour,
They came in their northern tour on the verge of winter,
To an island in a lonely lake.
There one night they camped, and on the morrow
Gathered their kettles and birch-bark
Their rabbit-skin robes and their mink-traps,
Launched their canoes and slunk away through the islands,
Left her alone forever,
Without a word of farewell,
Because she was old and useless,
Like a paddle broken and warped,
Or a pole that was splintered.
Then, without a sigh,
Valiant, unshaken,
She smoothed her dark locks under her kerchief,
Composed her shawl in state,
Then folded her hands ridged with sinews and corded with veins,
Folded them across her breasts spent with the nourishment of children,
Gazed at the sky past the tops of the cedars,
Saw two spangled nights arise out of the twilight,
Saw two days go by filled with the tranquil sunshine,
Saw, without pain, or dread, or even a moment of longing:
Then on the third great night there came thronging and thronging
Millions of snowflakes out of a windless cloud;
They covered her close with a beautiful crystal shroud,
Covered her deep and silent.
But in the frost of the dawn,
Up from the life below,
Rose a column of breath
Through a tiny cleft in the snow,
Fragile, delicately drawn,
Wavering with its own weakness,
In the wilderness a sign of the spirit,
Persisting still in the sight of the sun
Till day was done.
Then all light was gathered up by the hand of God and hid in His breast,
Then there was born a silence deeper than silence,
Then she had rest.

 Take it away, and swallow it yourself. 
Ha! Look you, there’s a rat. 
Last night there were a dozen on that shelf, 
And two of them were living in my hat. 
Look! Now he goes, but he’ll come back—
Ha? But he will, I say … 
Il reviendra-z-à Pâques, 
Ou à la Trinité …
Be very sure that he’ll return again; 
For said the Lord: Imprimis, we have rats,
And having rats, we have rain.— 
So on the seventh day 
He rested, and made Pain. 
—Man, if you love the Lord, and if the Lord 
Love liars, I will have you at your word
And swallow it. Voilà. Bah! 

Where do I say it is 
That I have lain so long? 
Where do I count myself among the dead, 
As once above the living and the strong?
And what is this that comes and goes, 
Fades and swells and overflows, 
Like music underneath and overhead? 
What is it in me now that rings and roars 
Like fever-laden wine?
What ruinous tavern-shine 
Is this that lights me far from worlds and wars 
And women that were mine? 
Where do I say it is 
That Time has made my bed?
What lowering outland hostelry is this 
For one the stars have disinherited? 

An island, I have said: 
A peak, where fiery dreams and far desires 
Are rained on, like old fires:
A vermin region by the stars abhorred, 
Where falls the flaming word 
By which I consecrate with unsuccess 
An acreage of God’s forgetfulness, 
Left here above the foam and long ago
Made right for my duress; 
Where soon the sea, 
My foaming and long-clamoring enemy, 
Will have within the cryptic, old embrace 
Of her triumphant arms—a memory.
Why then, the place? 
What forage of the sky or of the shore 
Will make it any more, 
To me, than my award of what was left 
Of number, time, and space?

And what is on me now that I should heed 
The durance or the silence or the scorn? 
I was the gardener who had the seed 
Which holds within its heart the food and fire 
That gives to man a glimpse of his desire;
And I have tilled, indeed, 
Much land, where men may say that I have planted 
Unsparingly my corn— 
For a world harvest-haunted 
And for a world unborn.

Meanwhile, am I to view, as at a play, 
Through smoke the funeral flames of yesterday 
And think them far away? 
Am I to doubt and yet be given to know 
That where my demon guides me, there I go?
An island? Be it so. 
For islands, after all is said and done, 
Tell but a wilder game that was begun, 
When Fate, the mistress of iniquities, 
The mad Queen-spinner of all discrepancies,
Beguiled the dyers of the dawn that day, 
And even in such a curst and sodden way 
Made my three colors one. 
—So be it, and the way be as of old: 
So be the weary truth again retold
Of great kings overthrown 
Because they would be kings, and lastly kings alone. 
Fling to each dog his bone. 

Flags that are vanished, flags that are soiled and furled, 
Say what will be the word when I am gone:
What learned little acrid archive men 
Will burrow to find me out and burrow again,— 
But all for naught, unless 
To find there was another Island.… Yes, 
There are too many islands in this world,
There are too many rats, and there is too much rain. 
So three things are made plain 
Between the sea and sky: 
Three separate parts of one thing, which is Pain … 
Bah, what a way to die!—
To leave my Queen still spinning there on high, 
Still wondering, I dare say, 
To see me in this way … 
Madame à sa tour monte 
Si haut qu’elle peut monter—
Like one of our Commissioners… ai! ai!
Prometheus and the women have to cry, 
But no, not I … 
Faugh, what a way to die! 

But who are these that come and go
Before me, shaking laurel as they pass? 
Laurel, to make me know 
For certain what they mean: 
That now my Fate, my Queen, 
Having found that she, by way of right reward,
Will after madness go remembering, 
And laurel be as grass,— 
Remembers the one thing 
That she has left to bring. 
The floor about me now is like a sward
Grown royally. Now it is like a sea 
That heaves with laurel heavily, 
Surrendering an outworn enmity 
For what has come to be. 

But not for you, returning with your curled
And haggish lips. And why are you alone? 
Why do you stay when all the rest are gone? 
Why do you bring those treacherous eyes that reek 
With venom and hate the while you seek 
To make me understand?—
Laurel from every land, 
Laurel, but not the world?

Fury, or perjured Fate, or whatsoever, 
Tell me the bloodshot word that is your name 
And I will pledge remembrance of the same
That shall be crossed out never; 
Whereby posterity 
May know, being told, that you have come to me, 
You and your tongueless train without a sound, 
With covetous hands and eyes and laurel all around,
Foreshowing your endeavor 
To mirror me the demon of my days, 
To make me doubt him, loathe him, face to face. 
Bowed with unwilling glory from the quest 
That was ordained and manifest,
You shake it off and wish me joy of it? 
Laurel from every place,
Laurel, but not the rest?
Such are the words in you that I divine, 
Such are the words of men.
So be it, and what then? 
Poor, tottering counterfeit, 
Are you a thing to tell me what is mine? 

Grant we the demon sees 
An inch beyond the line,
What comes of mine and thine? 
A thousand here and there may shriek and freeze, 
Or they may starve in fine. 
The Old Physician has a crimson cure 
For such as these,
And ages after ages will endure 
The minims of it that are victories. 
The wreath may go from brow to brow, 
The state may flourish, flame, and cease; 
But through the fury and the flood somehow
The demons are acquainted and at ease, 
And somewhat hard to please. 
Mine, I believe, is laughing at me now 
In his primordial way, 
Quite as he laughed of old at Hannibal,
Or rather at Alexander, let us say. 
Therefore, be what you may, 
Time has no further need 
Of you, or of your breed. 
My demon, irretrievably astray,
Has ruined the last chorus of a play 
That will, so he avers, be played again some day; 
And you, poor glowering ghost, 
Have staggered under laurel here to boast 
Above me, dying, while you lean
In triumph awkward and unclean, 
About some words of his that you have read? 
Thing, do I not know them all? 
He tells me how the storied leaves that fall 
Are tramped on, being dead?
They are sometimes: with a storm foul enough 
They are seized alive and they are blown far off 
To mould on islands.—What else have you read? 
He tells me that great kings look very small 
When they are put to bed;
And this being said, 
He tells me that the battles I have won 
Are not my own, 
But his—howbeit fame will yet atone 
For all defect, and sheave the mystery:
The follies and the slaughters I have done 
Are mine alone, 
And so far History. 
So be the tale again retold 
And leaf by clinging leaf unrolled
Where I have written in the dawn, 
With ink that fades anon, 
Like Cæsar’s, and the way be as of old. 

Ho, is it you? I thought you were a ghost. 
Is it time for you to poison me again?
Well, here’s our friend the rain,— 
Mironton, mironton, mirontaine...
Man, I could murder you almost, 
You with your pills and toast. 
Take it away and eat it, and shoot rats.
Ha! there he comes. Your rat will never fail, 
My punctual assassin, to prevail— 
While he has power to crawl, 
Or teeth to gnaw withal— 
Where kings are caged. Why has a king no cats?
You say that I’ll achieve it if I try? 
Swallow it?—No, not I … 
God, what a way to die!

 When I was brash and gallant-gay
Just fifty years ago,
I hit the ties and beat my way
From Maine to Mexico;
For though to Glasgow gutter bred
A hobo heart had I,
And followed where adventure led,
Beneath a brazen sky.

And as I tramped the railway track
I owned a single shirt;
Like canny Scot I bought it black
So's not to show the dirt;
A handkerchief held all my gear,
My razor and my comb;
I was a freckless lad, I fear,
With all the world for home.

Yet oh I thought the life was grand
And loved my liberty!
Romance was my bed-fellow and
The stars my company.
And I would think, each diamond dawn,
"How I have forged my fate!
Where are the Gorbals and the Tron,
And where the Gallowgate?"

Oh daft was I to wander wild,
And seek the Trouble Trail,
As weakly as a wayward child,
And darkly doomed to fail . . .
Aye, bindle-stiff I hit the track
Just fifty years ago . . .
Yet now . . . I drive my Cadillac
From Maine to Mexico.

 I was Willie Metcalf.
They used to call me "Doctor Meyers"
Because, they said, I looked like him.
And he was my father, according to Jack McGuire.
I lived in the livery stable,
Sleeping on the floor
Side by side with Roger Baughman's bulldog,
Or sometimes in a stall.
I could crawl between the legs of the wildest horses
Without getting kicked -- we knew each other.
On spring days I tramped through the country
To get the feeling, which I sometimes lost,
That I was not a separate thing from the earth.
I used to lose myself, as if in sleep,
By lying with eyes half-open in the woods.
Sometimes I taIked with animals -- even toads and snakes --
Anything that had an eye to look into.
Once I saw a stone in the sunshine
Trying to turn into jelly.
In April days in this cemetery
The dead people gathered all about me,
And grew still, like a congregation in silent prayer.
I never knew whether I was a part of the earth
With flowers growing in me, or whether I walked --
Now I know.

 Down along the Snakebite River, where the overlanders camp, 
Where the serpents are in millions, all of the most deadly stamp; 
Where the station-cook in terror, nearly every time he bakes, 
Mixes up among the doughboys half-a-dozen poison-snakes: 
Where the wily free-selector walks in armour-plated pants, 
And defies the stings of scorpions, and the bites of bull-dog ants: 
Where the adder and the viper tear each other by the throat,— 
There it was that William Johnson sought his snake-bite antidote. 
Johnson was a free-selector, and his brain went rather *****, 
For the constant sight of serpents filled him with a deadly fear; 
So he tramped his free-selection, morning, afternoon, and night, 
Seeking for some great specific that would cure the serpent’s bite. 
Till King Billy, of the Mooki, chieftain of the flour-bag head, 
Told him, “Spos’n snake bite pfeller, pfeller mostly drop down dead; 
Spos’n snake bite old goanna, then you watch a while you see, 
Old goanna cure himself with eating little pfeller tree.” 
“That’s the cure,” said William Johnson, “point me out this plant sublime,” 
But King Billy, feeling lazy, said he’d go another time. 
Thus it came to pass that Johnson, having got the tale by rote, 
Followed every stray goanna, seeking for the antidote. 


. . . . . 
Loafing once beside the river, while he thought his heart would break, 
There he saw a big goanna fighting with a tiger-snake, 
In and out they rolled and wriggled, bit each other, heart and soul, 
Till the valiant old goanna swallowed his opponent whole. 
Breathless, Johnson sat and watched him, saw him struggle up the bank, 
Saw him nibbling at the branches of some bushes, green and rank; 
Saw him, happy and contented, lick his lips, as off he crept, 
While the bulging in his stomach showed where his opponent slept. 
Then a cheer of exultation burst aloud from Johnson’s throat; 
“Luck at last,” said he, “I’ve struck it! ’tis the famous antidote. 

“Here it is, the Grand Elixir, greatest blessing ever known,— 
Twenty thousand men in India die each year of snakes alone. 
Think of all the foreign nations, *****, chow, and blackamoor, 
Saved from sudden expiration, by my wondrous snakebite cure. 
It will bring me fame and fortune! In the happy days to be, 
Men of every clime and nation will be round to gaze on me— 
Scientific men in thousands, men of mark and men of note, 
Rushing down the Mooki River, after Johnson’s antidote. 
It will cure delirium tremens, when the patient’s eyeballs stare 
At imaginary spiders, snakes which really are not there. 
When he thinks he sees them wriggle, when he thinks he sees them bloat, 
It will cure him just to think of Johnson’s Snakebite Antidote.” 

Then he rushed to the museum, found a scientific man— 
“Trot me out a deadly serpent, just the deadliest you can; 
I intend to let him bite me, all the risk I will endure, 
Just to prove the sterling value of my wondrous snakebite cure. 
Even though an adder bit me, back to life again I’d float; 
Snakes are out of date, I tell you, since I’ve found the antidote.” 
Said the scientific person, “If you really want to die, 
Go ahead—but, if you’re doubtful, let your sheep-dog have a try. 
Get a pair of dogs and try it, let the snake give both a nip; 
Give your dog the snakebite mixture, let the other fellow rip; 
If he dies and yours survives him, then it proves the thing is good. 
Will you fetch your dog and try it?” Johnson rather thought he would. 
So he went and fetched his canine, hauled him forward by the throat. 
“Stump, old man,” says he, “we’ll show them we’ve the genwine antidote.” 

Both the dogs were duly loaded with the poison-gland’s contents; 
Johnson gave his dog the mixture, then sat down to wait events. 
“Mark,” he said, “in twenty minutes Stump’ll be a-rushing round, 
While the other wretched creature lies a corpse upon the ground.” 
But, alas for William Johnson! ere they’d watched a half-hour’s spell 
Stumpy was as dead as mutton, t’other dog was live and well. 
And the scientific person hurried off with utmost speed, 
Tested Johnson’s drug and found it was a deadly poison-weed; 
Half a tumbler killed an emu, half a spoonful killed a goat, 
All the snakes on earth were harmless to that awful antidote. 


. . . . . 
Down along the Mooki River, on the overlanders’ camp, 
Where the serpents are in millions, all of the most deadly stamp, 
Wanders, daily, William Johnson, down among those poisonous hordes, 
Shooting every stray goanna, calls them “black and yaller frauds”. 
And King Billy, of the Mooki, cadging for the cast-off coat, 
Somehow seems to dodge the subject of the snake-bite antidote.

 To Italy a random tour
I took to crown my education,
Returning relatively poor
In purse yet rich in conversation.
Old Rome put up a jolly show,
But I am not a classic purist,
Preferring to Mike Angelo
The slim stems of a lady tourist.

Venice, they say, was built on piles;
I used to muse, how did they do it?
I tramped the narrow streets for miles,
Religiously I gondoled through it.
But though to shrines I bowed my head,
My stomach's an aesthetic sinner,
For in St. Mark's I yawned and said:
"I hope we'll have lasagne for dinner."

Florence, I'll say, was mighty swell,
With heaps of statues stark and lusty;
I liked the Pitti Palace well,
The Offusi I found to fusty.
But though I "did" the best of it,
My taste, I fear, is low and nasty,
For in its bars I'd rather sit
Imbibing cups of sparkling Asti.

And so we go, a tourist host,
And pass art treasures little heeding,
While memories that haunt us most
Are those of rich and copious feeding.
In sooth I see no need to roam,
Since all I want this side of Hades,
I'll comfortably find at home -
Just eating, drinking and the Ladies.

 Of all the opry-houses then obtaining in the West
The one which Milton Tootle owned was, by all odds, the best;
Milt, being rich, was much too proud to run the thing alone,
So he hired an "acting manager," a gruff old man named Krone--
A stern, commanding man with piercing eyes and flowing beard,
And his voice assumed a thunderous tone when Jack and I appeared;
He said that Julius Caesar had been billed a week or so,
And would have to have some armies by the time he reached St. Jo!

O happy days, when Tragedy still winged an upward flight,
When actors wore tin helmets and cambric robes at night!
O happy days, when sounded in the public's rapturous ears
The creak of pasteboard armor and the clash of wooden spears!
O happy times for Jack and me and that one other supe
That then and there did constitute the noblest Roman's troop!
With togas, battle axes, shields, we made a dazzling show,
When we were Roman soldiers with Brutus in St. Jo!

We wheeled and filed and double-quicked wherever Brutus led,
The folks applauding what we did as much as what he said;
'T was work, indeed; yet Jack and I were willing to allow
'T was easier following Brutus than following father's plough;
And at each burst of cheering, our valor would increase--
We tramped a thousand miles that night, at fifty cents apiece!
For love of Art--not lust for gold--consumed us years ago,
When we were Roman soldiers with Brutus in St. Jo!

To-day, while walking in the Square, Jack Langrish says to me:
"My friend, the drama nowadays ain't what it used to be!
These farces and these comedies--how feebly they compare
With that mantle of the tragic art which Forrest used to wear!
My soul is warped with bitterness to think that you and I--
Co-heirs to immortality in seasons long gone by--
Now draw a paltry stipend from a Boston comic show,
We, who were Roman soldiers with Brutus in St. Jo!"

And so we talked and so we mused upon the whims of Fate
That had degraded Tragedy from its old, supreme estate;
And duly, at the Morton bar, we stigmatized the age
As sinfully subversive of the interests of the Stage!
For Jack and I were actors in the halcyon, palmy days
Long, long before the Hoyt school of farce became the craze;
Yet, as I now recall it, it was twenty years ago
That we were Roman soldiers with Brutus in St. Jo!

We were by birth descended from a race of farmer kings
Who had done eternal battle with grasshoppers and things;
But the Kansas farms grew tedious--we pined for that delight
We read of in the Clipper in the barber's shop by night!
We would be actors--Jack and I--and so we stole away
From our native spot, Wathena, one dull September day,
And started for Missouri--ah, little did we know
We were going to train as soldiers with Brutus in St. Jo!

Our army numbered three in all--Marc Antony's was four;
Our army hankered after fame, but Marc's was after gore!
And when we reached Philippi, at the outset we were met
With an inartistic gusto I can never quite forget.
For Antony's overwhelming force of thumpers seemed to be
Resolved to do "them Kansas jays"--and that meant Jack and me!
My lips were sealed but that it seems quite proper you should know
That Rome was nowhere in it at Philippi in St. Jo!

I've known the slow-consuming grief and ostentatious pain
Accruing from McKean Buchanan's melancholy Dane;
Away out West I've witnessed Bandmann's peerless hardihood,
With Arthur Cambridge have I wrought where walking was not good;
In every phase of horror have I bravely borne my part,
And even on my uppers have I proudly stood for Art!
And, after all my suffering, it were not hard to show
That I got my allopathic dose with Brutus at St. Jo!

That army fell upon me in a most bewildering rage
And scattered me and mine upon that histrionic stage;
My toga rent, my helmet gone and smashed to smithereens,
They picked me up and hove me through whole centuries of scenes!
I sailed through Christian eras and mediæval gloom
And fell from Arden forest into Juliet's painted tomb!
Oh, yes, I travelled far and fast that night, and I can show
The scars of honest wounds I got with Brutus in St. Jo!

Ah me, old Davenport is gone, of fickle fame forgot,
And Barrett sleeps forever in a much neglected spot;
Fred Warde, the papers tell me, in far woolly western lands
Still flaunts the banner of high Tragic Art at one-night stands;
And Jack and I, in Charley Hoyt's Bostonian dramas wreak
Our vengeance on creation at some eensty dolls per week.
By which you see that public taste has fallen mighty low
Since we fought as Roman soldiers with Brutus in St. Jo!

 The old year went, and the new returned, in the withering weeks of drought, 
The cheque was spent that the shearer earned, 
and the sheds were all cut out; 
The publican's words were short and few, 
and the publican's looks were black -- 
And the time had come, as the shearer knew, to carry his swag Out Back. 

For time means tucker, and tramp you must, 
where the scrubs and plains are wide, 
With seldom a track that a man can trust, or a mountain peak to guide; 
All day long in the dust and heat -- when summer is on the track -- 
With stinted stomachs and blistered feet, 
they carry their swags Out Back. 

He tramped away from the shanty there, when the days were long and hot, 
With never a soul to know or care if he died on the track or not. 
The poor of the city have friends in woe, no matter how much they lack, 
But only God and the swagmen know how a poor man fares Out Back. 

He begged his way on the parched Paroo and the Warrego tracks once more, 
And lived like a dog, as the swagmen do, till the Western stations shore; 
But men were many, and sheds were full, for work in the town was slack -- 
The traveller never got hands in wool, 
though he tramped for a year Out Back. 

In stifling noons when his back was wrung 
by its load, and the air seemed dead, 
And the water warmed in the bag that hung to his aching arm like lead, 
Or in times of flood, when plains were seas, 
and the scrubs were cold and black, 
He ploughed in mud to his trembling knees, and paid for his sins Out Back. 

He blamed himself in the year `Too Late' -- 
in the heaviest hours of life -- 
'Twas little he dreamed that a shearing-mate had care of his home and wife; 
There are times when wrongs from your kindred come, 
and treacherous tongues attack -- 
When a man is better away from home, and dead to the world, Out Back. 

And dirty and careless and old he wore, as his lamp of hope grew dim; 
He tramped for years till the swag he bore seemed part of himself to him. 
As a bullock drags in the sandy ruts, he followed the dreary track, 
With never a thought but to reach the huts when the sun went down Out Back. 

It chanced one day, when the north wind blew 
in his face like a furnace-breath, 
He left the track for a tank he knew -- 'twas a short-cut to his death; 
For the bed of the tank was hard and dry, and crossed with many a crack, 
And, oh! it's a terrible thing to die of thirst in the scrub Out Back. 

A drover came, but the fringe of law was eastward many a mile; 
He never reported the thing he saw, for it was not worth his while. 
The tanks are full and the grass is high in the mulga off the track, 
Where the bleaching bones of a white man lie 
by his mouldering swag Out Back. 

For time means tucker, and tramp they must, 
where the plains and scrubs are wide, 
With seldom a track that a man can trust, or a mountain peak to guide; 
All day long in the flies and heat the men of the outside track 
With stinted stomachs and blistered feet 
must carry their swags Out Back.

 A chant to which it is intended a group of children shall dance and improvise pantomime led by their dancing-teacher.


I

A master deep-eyed
Ere his manhood was ripe,
He sang like a thrush,
He could play any pipe.
So dull in the school
That he scarcely could spell,
He read but a bit,
And he figured not well.
A bare-footed fool,
Shod only with grace;
Long hair streaming down
Round a wind-hardened face;
He smiled like a girl,
Or like clear winter skies,
A virginal light
Making stars of his eyes.
In swiftness and poise,
A proud child of the deer,
A white fawn he was,
Yet a fwn without fear.
No youth thought him vain,
Or made mock of his hair,
Or laughed when his ways
Were most curiously fair.
A mastiff at fight,
He could strike to the earth
The envious one
Who would challenge his worth.
However we bowed
To the schoolmaster mild,
Our spirits went out
To the fawn-looted child.
His beckoning led
Our troop to the brush.
We found nothing there
But a wind and a hush.
He sat by a stone
And he looked on the ground,
As if in the weeds
There was something profound.
His pipe seemed to neigh,
Then to bleat like a sheep,
Then sound like a stream
Or a waterfall deep.
It whispered strange tales,
Human words it spoke not.
Told fair things to come,
And our marvellous lot
If now with fawn-steps
Unshod we advanced
To the midst of the grove
And in reverence danced.
We obeyed as he piped
Soft grass to young feet,
Was a medicine mighty,
A remedy meet.
Our thin blood awoke,
It grew dizzy and wild,
Though scarcely a word
Moved the lips of a child.
Our dance gave allegiance,
It set us apart,
We tripped a strange measure,
Uplifted of heart.


II

We thought to be proud
Of our fawn everywhere.
We could hardly see how
Simple books were a care.
No rule of the school
This strange student could tame.
He was banished one day,
While we quivered with shame. 
He piped back our love
On a moon-silvered night,
Enticed us once more
To the place of delight.
A greeting he sang
And it made our blood beat,
It tramped upon custom
And mocked at defeat.
He builded a fire
And we tripped in a ring,
The embers our books
And the fawn our good king.
And now we approached
All the mysteries rare
That shadowed his eyelids
And blew through his hair.
That spell now was peace
The deep strength of the trees,
The children of nature
We clambered her knees.
Our breath and our moods
Were in tune with her own,
Tremendous her presence,
Eternal her throne.
The ostracized child
Our white foreheads kissed,
Our bodies and souls
Became lighter than mist.
Sweet dresses like snow
Our small lady-loves wore,
Like moonlight the thoughts
That our bosoms upbore.
Like a lily the touch
Of each cold little hand.
The loves of the stars 
We could now understand.
O quivering air!
O the crystalline night!
O pauses of awe
And the faces swan-white!
O ferns in the dusk!
O forest-shrined hour!
O earth that sent upward
The thrill and the power,
To lift us like leaves,
A delirious whirl,
The masterful boy
And the delicate girl!
What child that strange night-time
Can ever forget?
His fealty due
And his infinite debt
To the folly divine,
To the exquisite rule
Of the perilous master,
The fawn-looted fool?


III

Now soldiers we seem,
And night brings a new thing,
A terrible ire,
As of thunder awing.
A warrior power,
That old chivalry stirred,
When knights took up arms,
As the maidens gave word.
THE END OF OUR WAR,
WILL BE GLORY UNTOLD.
WHEN THE TOWN LIKE A GREAT
BUDDING ROSE SHALL UNFOLD!
Near, nearer that war,
And that ecstasy comes,
We hear the trees beating
Invisible drums.
The fields of the night
Are starlit above,
Our girls are white torches
Of conquest and love.
No nerve without will,
And no breast without breath,
We whirl with the planets
That never know death!