And count it ‘such a grievous thing’
That year and year should hurry by,
And no gay mister bring.
In labor’s ranks she takes her place,
With skilful hand and cultured mind;
Not always foremost in the race,
But never far behind.
And no less lightly fall her feet,
Because they tread the busy ways;
She is no whit less fair or sweet
Than maids of older days,
Who gowned in samite or brocade,
Looked charming in their dainty guise:
But dwelt like violets in the shade,
With shy, half-opened eyes.
Of life she takes a clearer view,
And through the press serenely moves
Unfettered, free, with judgement true,
Avoiding narrow grooves.
She reasons and she understands,
And sometimes ’tis her joy and crown
To lift with strong, yet tender hands,
The burdens men lay down.
Lilian Wooster Greaves (b.1869 d.1956)
The Farmer’s Daughter
Guess I’ll stick to washing dishes,
Sweeping, cooking, darning socks;
Having literary wishes
Gives a girl too many shocks.
I think thoughts just like those bookmen;
Dream sweet dreams from morn to night,
I see folks just like their spook-men
In the evening’s ghostly light.
I’d have loved a life of learning,
But whene’er I go about
With fires of genius burning,
Then the kitchen fire goes out
‘Look here, Sis, we’re two great ninnies’ —
Thus my brother yesterday —
‘Working hard when golden guineas
Here are fairly flung away.
‘Prize for lyric, prize for sonnet,
Prize for humorous verses, too —
Seize a paper, scribble on it —
Suit for me and dress for you.
‘Come, let’s try it — I say, Mary,
What’s a lyric, anyhow?’ —
So I got the dictionary,
And forgot to milk the cow.
— ‘Sonnets must be made to order;
Fourteen lines, and put just so,
Like in your embroidery border,
Or a picture-frame, you know.
‘Where’s the ‘Royal Road to Rhyming’?
Lyrics must be musical —
Ebbing, flowing, singing, chiming,
With a gentle rise and fall.’
So we scribbled till the dark it
Closed around, and day was gone;
Mother home again from market!
Dinner wasn’t even on!
Father swore a score of sonnets,
Several miles of lyric, too —
Guess I’ll earn my frocks and bonnets
Just as other daughters do.
W.C. Thomas (b.1869 d.1957)
The Terrace
I love the Terrace and its way,
Its moments tense with business rife —
The Forum of the city’s life,
Where Commerce holds its kingly sway.
As from the heart, so from it flows
The energies that move the State,
To mould it to a worthy Fate,
That enterprise alone bestows.
I love the Terrace best of all
When crowned with Summer’s vault of blue,
And shafts of gold are falling through
Its lilacs leafy, cool and tall —
When from them drifts a subtle scent
Recalling pleasures of the bush,
And one may quit the city’s rush
For all that recollection meant.
F.W. Ophel (b.1871 d.1912)
His Epitaph
He lies here. See the bush
All grey through grief for him;
Hoar scrub — like ashes cast —
Sprinkles the valley grim.
The saltbush is his shroud,
Wide skies his only pall,
And ‘in memoriam’,
A thousand stamp-heads fall.
Gold-lured to death — and yet
He would have had it so.
Say mass, sing requiem
With the grey bush — and go.
Quietly he has found
Here in the Golden West,
The long-sought-for at last,
An El Dorado blest.
The Phantoms of the Dark
I hear them pass at eventide,
I hear the dead pass by.
Ever the long processions ride,
While sorrow’d night winds sigh.
Bright burns the camp-fire at my feet
White stars burn overhead,
Beyond the flame, in shadows, meet
The roaming, restless dead.
Dead bushmen go, in ghostly guise,
Unseen within the night
Save by the herds with startled eyes,
Stampeding in affright.
All night — all night — waked or asleep
The fall of hoofs I hear;
Softly the phantom horses creep
Past my lone camp — and near.
The champing of a jingling bit
Faintly insistent sounds;
With loosened rein wan stockmen sit
And ride their endless rounds.
Oh, shadow made their fences are,
Grey wraiths the flocks they see;
And Death has neither bound or bar
Except eternity.
Lured by the will-o’-th’-wisp’s pale fire
(Mock lights of hut and home);
Onward by spectral post and wire
Damned souls for ever roam.
Shrill comes a cry across the dark,
And weird — I know it well —
It is the lost who call. And, hark!
The tinkling of a bell.
A heap of whitened bones there lies,
And stands the dead man’s steed;
Though never may the rider rise.
Faithful he waits his need.
And when the winds the storm-clouds bring
And loud the tempest roar.
I hear the drover galloping
To meet his love once more.
Night after night, in wind and rain,
He rides and leaves his flocks,
And night by night he falls again
Over the fatal rocks.
And crashing through by bush and bole
In dread, and dumb, and straight
Goes one, sere-stricken to the soul,
And leaves a murdered mate.
At morn my sweating horses stand
Trembling in wild-eyed fright,
For they have seen the phantom band
That pass’d into the night.
Ever by my lone camp they go,
Nor heed the stars or moon.
I hear them always, and I know
That I shall join them soon.
For surely I shall ride away
To turn some midnight rush,
And, greeting Death, remain for aye —
A spirit of the bush.
‘The Boulder Bard’ (‘Willy-Willy’) (n.d.)
Ode to West Australia
Land of Forrests, fleas and flies,
Blighted hopes and blighted eyes,
Art thou hell in earth’s disguise,
Westralia?
Art thou some volcanic blast
By volcanoes spurned, outcast?
Art unfinished — made the last
Westralia?
Wert thou once the chosen land
Where Adam broke God’s one command?
That He in wrath changed thee to sand,
Westralia!
Land of politicians silly,
Home of wind and willy-willy,
Land of blanket, tent and billy,
Westralia.
Home of brokers, bummers, clerks,
Nest of sharpers, mining sharks,
Dried up lakes and desert parks,
Westralia!
Land of humpies, brothels, inns,
Old bag huts and empty tins,
Land of blackest, grievous sins
Westralia.
Published 9 April 1899.
‘The Exile’ (n.d.)
Caste
The oilrag is the Labor toff, he holds the miner dirt,
The trucker wouldn’t dare to touch a miner’s dirty shirt;
Then if the mullocker presumes, the trucker gets annoyed,
And all possess a lofty scorn for Boulder unemployed.
Supposing, lads, we sling this pride and try another plan,
And institute a better code, the Brotherhood of Man.
Published 1 January 1905.
Mingkarlajirri (d. late 1920s)
The Marble Bar Pool Spirit is Releasing a Flood1
The Marble Bar pool is releasing the wind for us,
the Water Snake2 is poised to let the water go.
All the gullies are overflowing,
backing up, bank to bank
because of me — a stranger
— he doesn’t want to recognise me.3
1 In almost all of the songs in this collection, Alexander Brown knew the composers personally, and in many cases he remembers when they were composed, and the situations that prompted them. However, this one is older again. It is not known when this song was composed, but the composer (who would have been a ‘mother’s brother’ for Sandy) died before 1920.
2 Water Snake: Literally, ‘waterhole local-inhabitant’.
3 The implication is that the composer of this song is the cause of all this water, because he is a stranger. If he were a local, the spirit water snake would not have caused the excessive flooding.
Wurlanyalu Nganyjarranga Jurta Murru Marri
Wurlanyalu nganyjarranga jurta murru marri,
jayin ngarnka wirti kanyin yinta ngurraralu.
Karlka-karlka ngapurlarnu ngarningkajarra.
Pampanurra nganunga — kura pirnanyuru
Dorham Doolette (b.1872 d.1925)
The Ballade of Cottesloe Beach
Dear, for an hour with joy bedight,
I thank you in this little lay;
Though well I know some luckier wight,
With you now makes his fond essay;
You were a summer girl as gay
And glad as any Perth could show,
Who shared a bushman’s holiday
By the sea-beach at Cottesloe.
Your sweetness fills the void of night
And down the vistas of the day,
Your beauty comes for my delight,
And the cool stars your eyes portray.
Yes! though from here a weary way,
It is to where the west winds blow
And wanton with the driven spray
By the sea-beach of Cottesloe.
Do you recall the silver-white
Moon-pathway out across the bay,
The flash of Rottnest’s gleaming light,
The sandhills in their dark array,
The sea’s sweet savour, the affray
Of hurrying clouds tossed to and fro,
Changing from ivory to grey,
By the sea-beach of Cottesloe?
Your eyes held dreams that poets write,
Your lips the fragrance of the May,
I sought for fancies recondite
To clothe the love-words I would say,
To tell you, ‘how the Fates betray’,
How loveliest blooms must lose their glow,
How winter follows summer’s sway
By the sea-beach of Cottesloe.
‘The kiss foregone nought can requite,
The rose ungathered must decay,
Too soon youth’s flower must fade from sight,
And Death but chuckles at delay —
So sweetheart, give! while give you may,
None of Love’s guerdons I’ll forego,
In all his pleasances we’ll stray
By the sea-beach at Cottesloe.’
You heard — your eyes, so dark, so bright,
Shone with a still diviner ray,
And soft as falling dews alight,
Your lips, on mine, surrendering lay;
Ah me! your sweet hair’s disarray!
Your warm arms, whiter than the snow!
I knew not were you girl or fay,
By the sea-beach of Cottesloe!
L’Envoi
Dear! though you took me for a jay
It did not cause me any woe,
That rolled-gold watch you filched away,
By the sea-beach at Cottesloe.
Annie H. Mark (b.1875 d.1947)
When Morning-glory Trims a Fence
A plain wood fence without a trace
Of beauty in its line, or grace,
Becomes mosaic, mysterious-wise,
With gem-like flowers of purple dyes.
On mornings very far away,
I loved a morning-glory spray;
A garden comes my eyes before
With old grey fences purpled o’er.
The texture of our childish dreams
Is woven in with flowers, it seems,
And they remain joys to behold
In later years when we are old.
When morning-glory trims a fence
With purple petals, gaily dense,
My heart makes happy holiday
Miriny-Mirinymarra Jingkiri (d.1930s)
Koolinda in Harbour1
Look after Koolinda there, you fellows,
(huge plucky thing,
all its masts and derricks sticking up),
on account of the cyclone.
It’s a plucky thing,
just sheltering there for a while.
He’ll head straight out into the wind,
the launch will lead the ship out
as it heads towards the big sea breeze.
Huge Koolinda!
The skipper will take care of it
out in the deep water.
1 The Koolinda was a steamer plying the Western Australian coast.
Kurlintanya
Kurlintanya kanyinpiya,
(yulu mungkarra, wirnta pungkurirri),
wanngirrimannyangurarla.
Yulu mingka kayinyu.
Jurta juntu jina man,
para wii marnanyurulurla laanjilu kulpirrikartilu.
Wanakurru Kurlinta!
Kanyin kipangku warlu martaringura.
At Wurruwangkanya Jawiri is Increasing the Cold
At Wurruwangkanya1 Jawirimarra is doing
an increase ceremony.
The dust is swirling and eddying,
and his torso is sweating as a result of your
blazing heat.
The ones who increase the heat
are piling on the blankets.
How now? Jawirimarra has got you
Huddled in your windbreaks!
The Heat room totem belongs to them —
Yirrmari, Milkuwarna, Wawiri 2 —
but in the cold season 3 their fire is dead —
Jawiri has blackened it!
1 Wurruwangkanya, in Nyamal country, was the increase site for Cold.
2 Names of three leading men whose totem was Heat, quoted as representatives of all those who had Heat as their totem.
3 Literally, ‘When the Seven Sisters go to rest.’ When they set soon after sundown (April to May), the cold season is approaching.
Wurruwangkanya Jipal Pirnu Jawirilu
Wurruwangkanya jipal pirnu Jawirilu.
Kurnturrjartu wunta murli-murli,
ngayiny parrpa ngarringurulu
yinararra
murnaju nyurranga.
Pulangkarti jananmani kanyinpiya winu nyukangkurla.
Waayi nyurranya wungku kurnu Jawirimarralu!
Ngayinykapu pananga — Yirrmarimarrarra
Milkuwarnarra pananga Wawirimarrarra —
Kurri-kurringura yarnangkarla pinurrula
panya warru jarnu.
Katharine Susannah Prichard (b.1883 d.1969)
The Earth Lover
Let me lie in the grass —
Bathe in its verdure
As one bathes in the sea —
Soul-drowned in herbage,
The essence of clover,
Dandelion, camomile, knapweed
And centaury.
Let me lie close to the earth,
Battened against the broad breast
Which brings all things to being
And gives rest to all things.
Let me inspire the odours of birth,
Death, living,
Sweets of the mould,
The generative sap of insects,
Crushed grasses, witch weeds,
Flowering herbs.
For I am an earth child,
An earth lover,
And I ask no more than to be,
Of the earth, earthy,
And to mingle again with the divine dust.
Oscar Walters (b.1889 d.1948)
’17 And ’32
‘Myalup’ refers to a camp set up by the Western Australian Government during the depression to house and provide some ‘employment’ for unemployed workers. This was one of several and it was located at Myalup in vicinity of Harvey, some 100 miles south of Perth. Blackboy Hill was a military training camp during WWI — it was located in the outer suburban area of Perth, in the foothills near Midland Junction, some 15 miles from the city.
They said he was a splendid stamp
Of loyal youth, alert and keen,
When he was training in the camp
At Blackboy Hill in ’17.
They cheered him when he marched away;
Stout patriots rushed to shake his hand;
But he’s at Myalup to-day,
Just one of an unwanted band.
Although he’s drained the bitter cup,
He knows full well that he is still
As good a man at Myalup
As when he marched from Blackboy Hill.
But what a difference between
The patriotic public’s view,