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Famous Wattle Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Wattle poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous wattle poems. These examples illustrate what a famous wattle poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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by Burns, Robert
...hee for a brattle;
But sax Scotch mile, thou try’t their mettle,
 An’ gar’t them whaizle:
Nae whip nor spur, but just a wattle
 O’ saugh or hazel.


Thou was a noble fittie-lan’,
As e’er in tug or tow was drawn!
Aft thee an’ I, in aught hours’ gaun,
 In guid March-weather,
Hae turn’d sax rood beside our han’,
 For days thegither.


Thou never braing’t, an’ fetch’t, an’ fliskit;
But thy auld tail thou wad hae whiskit,
An’ spread abreed thy weel-fill’d brisket,
 Wi’ pit...Read more of this...



by Gordon, Adam Lindsay
...ke weird columns Egyptian
With curious device--quaint inscription,
And heiroglyph strange. 
In the Spring, when the wattle gold trembles
'Twixt shadow and shine,
When each dew-laden air draught resembles
A long draught of wine;
When the skyline's blue burnished resistance
Makes deeper the dreamiest distance,
Some song in all hearts hath existence,--
Such songs have been mine....Read more of this...

by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...f gloom, 
And a bushman never struck me as a subject for "the tomb". 

If it ain't all "golden sunshine" where the "wattle branches wave", 
Well, it ain't all damp and dismal, and it ain't all "lonely grave". 
And, of course, there's no denying that the bushman's life is rough, 
But a man can easy stand it if he's built of sterling stuff; 
Though it's seldom that the drover gets a bed of eiderdown, 
Yet the man who's born a bushman, he gets mighty sick of town, 
For h...Read more of this...

by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...!" 

Jack Macpherson seized a bucket, 
Every head he saw he struck it -- 
Struck in earnest, too; 
And a man from Lower Wattle, 
Whom a shearer tried to throttle, 
Hit out freely with a bottle 
There in Dandaloo. 

Skin and hair were flying thickly, 
When a light was fetched, and quickly 
Brought a fact to view -- 
On the scene of the diversion 
Every single, solid person 
Come along to help Macpherson -- 
All were Dandaloo! 

When the list of slain was tabled -- 
Some we...Read more of this...

by Plath, Sylvia
...lap like a hat,
Dead white.
Then that red plush.

Little pilgrim,
The Indian's axed your scalp.
Your turkey wattle
Carpet rolls

Straight from the heart.
I step on it,
Clutching my bottle
Of pink fizz. A celebration, this is.
Out of a gap
A million soldiers run,
Redcoats, every one.

Whose side are they one?
O my
Homunculus, I am ill.
I have taken a pill to kill

The thin
Papery feeling.
Saboteur,
Kamikaze man ----

The stain on your
Gauze ...Read more of this...



by Kipling, Rudyard
...nds,
And the Law that ye make shall be law after the rule of your lands.
This for the waxen Heath, and that for the Wattle-bloom,
This for the Maple-leaf, and that for the southern Broom.
The Law that ye make shall be law and I do not press my will,
Because ye are Sons of The Blood and call me Mother still.
Now must ye speak to your kinsmen and they must speak to you,
After the use of the English, in straight-flung words and few.
Go to your work and be strong,...Read more of this...

by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...
But it's harder still, is keeping out of gaol! 
You can ride the old horse over to my grave across the dip 
Where the wattle bloom is waving overhead. 
Sure he'll jump them fences easy -- you must never raise the whip 
Or he'll rush 'em! -- now, goodbye!" and he had fled! 

So they buried Andy Regan, and they buried him to rights, 
In the graveyard at the back of Kiley's Hill; 
There were five-and-twenty mourners who had five-and-twenty fights 
Till the very boldest fig...Read more of this...

by Lawson, Henry
...rants feel the sting 
O' those that they would throttle; 
They needn't say the fault is ours 
If blood should stain the wattle!...Read more of this...

by Oguibe, Olu
...where men toil
The plaintive voices of children
The plod of prisoners feet
The curses of the peasant woman
Are the wattle of my song

My pictures are the colour of dust
And I sing only of rust
I have swum in the flood
And I know better
For I am bound to this land
By blood. ...Read more of this...

by Kipling, Rudyard
...sper, " Old man, come back! "
That must be why the big things pass
 And the little things remain,
Like the smell of the wattle by Lichtenberg,
 Riding in, in the rain.


 There was some silly fire on the flank
 And the small wet drizzling down--
 There were the sold-out shops and the bank
 And the wet, wide-open town;
 And we were doing escort-duty
 To somebody's baggage-train,
 And I smelt wattle by Lichtenberg--
 Riding in, in the rain.


 It was all Australia to me...Read more of this...

by Lawson, Henry
...ts are hidden 
And where the wild duck breeds; 
And grassy slopes rise gently 
To ridges long and low, 
Where groves of wattle flourish 
And native bluebells grow. 

Beneath the granite ridges 
The eye may just discern 
Where Rocky Creek emerges 
From deep green banks of fern; 
And standing tall between them, 
The grassy she-oaks cool 
The hard, blue-tinted waters 
Before they reach the pool. 

Ten miles down Reedy River 
One Sunday afternoon, 
I rode with Mary Campbe...Read more of this...

by Lawson, Henry
...u and you won’t get over that." 
O said Grenfell to my spirit, " Though you write of breezy peaks, 
Golden Gullies, wattle sidings, and the pools in she-oak creeks, 
Of the place your kin were born in and the childhood that you knew, 
And your father’s distant Norway (though it has some claim on you), 
Though you sing of dear old Mudgee and the home on Pipeclay Flat, 
You were born on Grenfell goldfield – and you can’t get over that ."...Read more of this...

by Mansfield, Katherine
...you.
This rain--is tears upon your face;
I tell you--tell you true
I came from that forgotten place
Where once the wattle grew,--

All the wild sweetness of the flower
Tangled against the wall.
It was that magic, silent hour....
The branches grew so tall
They twined themselves into a bower.
The sun shown... and the fall

Of yellow blossom on the grass!
You feel that golden rain?
Both of you could not hold, alas,
(both of you tried, in ...Read more of this...

by Abercrombie, Lascelles
...he windows of jargoon, and heavenly lofts 
Of marble, all the stuff he takes to be wealth, 
Reckons like savage mud and wattle against 
The matter of my building.' -- And the king, 
Gloating upon the white sheen of that palace, 
And weeping like a girl ashamed, inquired 
'What is that stone?' And the voice answered him, 
'Soul.' 'But in my palaces too,' said he, 
'There should be soul built: I have driven nations, 
What with quarrying, what with craning, down 
To deat...Read more of this...

by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...n making a sacrifice, offer the seediest; 
Which accounts for a theory known to my hearers 
Who live in the wild by the wattle beguiled, 
That a "stag" makes quite good enough mutton for shearers. 
Be that as it may, as each year passed away, 
a scapegoat was led to the desert and freighted 
With sin (the poor brute must have been overweighted) 
And left there -- to die as his fancy dictated. 

The day it has come, with trumpet and drum. 
With pomp and solemnity f...Read more of this...

by Gordon, Adam Lindsay
...ugh the sleepy sunlight swim, 
And on the very sun's face weave their pall. 
Let me slumber in the hollow where the wattle blossoms wave, 
With never stone or rail to fence my bed; 
Should the sturdy station children pull the bush-flowers on my grave, 
I may chance to hear them romping overhead. 

I don't suppose I shall though, for I feel like sleeping sound, 
That sleep, they say, is doubtful. True; but yet 
At least it makes no difference to the dead man underg...Read more of this...

by Yeats, William Butler
...twelve-houred day,
I must gaze on the beard of Finn, and move where the old men and young
In the Fenians' dwellings of wattle lean on the chessboards and play,
Ah, sweet to me now were even bald Conan's slanderous tongue!

'Like me were some galley forsaken far off in Meridian isle,
Remembering its long-oared companions, sails turning to threadbare rags;
No more to crawl on the seas with long oars mile after mile,
But to be amid shooting of flies and flowering of rushes and ...Read more of this...

by Service, Robert William
...when the night-winds whisper and camp-fires flicker out,
 He is sleeping like a child beneath the stars.

When the wattle-blooms are drooping in the sombre she-oak glade,
 And the breathless land is lying in a swoon,
He leaves his work a moment, leaning lightly on his spade,
 And he hears the bell-bird chime the Austral noon.
The parrakeets are silent in the gum-tree by the creek;
 The ferny grove is sunshine-steeped and still;
But the dew will gem the myrtle in the ...Read more of this...

by Paterson, Andrew Barton
...br> 
Fight on, fight on, till Victory 
Shall send you home again. 

And with Australia's flag shall fly 
A spray of wattle-bough 
To symbolise our unity -- 
We're all Australians now....Read more of this...

by Gordon, Adam Lindsay
...OH, gaily sings the bird! and the wattle-boughs are stirred 
And rustled by the scented breath of Spring; 
Oh, the dreary wistful longing! Oh, the faces that are thronging! 
Oh, the voices that are vaguely whispering! 

Oh, tell me, father mine, ere the good ship crossed the brine, 
On the gangway one mute handgrip we exchanged, 
Do you, past the grave, employ, for your stubborn reckless boy...Read more of this...

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