Andrew Barton Paterson (`Banjo')

The Daylight is Dying

The daylight is dying
 Away in the west,
The wild birds are flying
 In silence to rest;
In leafage and frondage
 Where shadows are deep,
They pass to their bondage —
 The kingdom of sleep.
And watched in their sleeping
 By stars in the height,
They rest in your keeping,
 Oh, wonderful night.

When night doth her glories
 Of starshine unfold,
'Tis then that the stories
 Of bushland are told.
Unnumbered I hold them
 In memories bright,
But who could unfold them,
 Or read them aright?

Beyond all denials
 The stars in their glories
The breeze in the myalls
 Are part of these stories.
The waving of grasses,
 The song of the river
That sings as it passes
 For ever and ever,
The hobble-chains' rattle,
 The calling of birds,
The lowing of cattle
 Must blend with the words.
Without these, indeed, you
 Would find it ere long,
As though I should read you
 The words of a song
That lamely would linger
 When lacking the rune,
The voice of the singer,
 The lilt of the tune.

But, as one half-hearing
 An old-time refrain,
With memory clearing,
 Recalls it again,
These tales, roughly wrought of
 The bush and its ways,
May call back a thought of
 The wandering days.
And, blending with each
 In the mem'ries that throng,
There haply shall reach
 You some echo of song.

Clancy of the Overflow

I had written him a letter which I had, for want of better
 Knowledge, sent to where I met him down the Lachlan, years ago,
He was shearing when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him,
 Just "on spec", addressed as follows, "Clancy, of The Overflow".

And an answer came directed in a writing unexpected,
 (And I think the same was written with a thumb-nail dipped in tar)
'Twas his shearing mate who wrote it, and verbatim I will quote it:
 "Clancy's gone to Queensland droving, and we don't know where he are."

. . . . .

In my wild erratic fancy visions come to me of Clancy
 Gone a-droving "down the Cooper" where the Western drovers go;
As the stock are slowly stringing, Clancy rides behind them singing,
 For the drover's life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know.

And the bush hath friends to meet him, and their kindly voices greet him
 In the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars,
And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended,
 And at night the wondrous glory of the everlasting stars.

. . . . .

I am sitting in my dingy little office, where a stingy
 Ray of sunlight struggles feebly down between the houses tall,
And the foetid air and gritty of the dusty, dirty city,
 Through the open window floating, spreads its foulness over all.

And in place of lowing cattle, I can hear the fiendish rattle
 Of the tramways and the 'buses making hurry down the street,
And the language uninviting of the gutter children fighting,
 Comes fitfully and faintly through the ceaseless tramp of feet.

And the hurrying people daunt me, and their pallid faces haunt me
 As they shoulder one another in their rush and nervous haste,
With their eager eyes and greedy, and their stunted forms and weedy,
 For townsfolk have no time to grow, they have no time to waste.

And I somehow rather fancy that I'd like to change with Clancy,
 Like to take a turn at droving where the seasons come and go,
While he faced the round eternal of the cash-book and the journal —
 But I doubt he'd suit the office, Clancy, of "The Overflow".

Black Swans

As I lie at rest on a patch of clover
In the Western Park when the day is done,
I watch as the wild black swans fly over
With their phalanx turned to the sinking sun;
And I hear the clang of their leader crying
To a lagging mate in the rearward flying,
And they fade away in the darkness dying,
Where the stars are mustering one by one.

Oh! ye wild black swans, 'twere a world of wonder
For a while to join in your westward flight,
With the stars above and the dim earth under,
Through the cooling air of the glorious night.
As we swept along on our pinions winging,
We should catch the chime of a church-bell ringing,
Or the distant note of a torrent singing,
Or the far-off flash of a station light.

From the northern lakes with the reeds and rushes,
Where the hills are clothed with a purple haze,
Where the bell-birds chime and the songs of thrushes
Make music sweet in the jungle maze,
They will hold their course to the westward ever,
Till they reach the banks of the old grey river,
Where the waters wash, and the reed-beds quiver
In the burning heat of the summer days.

Oh! ye strange wild birds, will ye bear a greeting
To the folk that live in that western land?
Then for every sweep of your pinions beating,
Ye shall bear a wish to the sunburnt band,
To the stalwart men who are stoutly fighting
With the heat and drought and the dust-storm smiting,
Yet whose life somehow has a strange inviting,
When once to the work they have put their hand.

Facing it yet! Oh, my friend stout-hearted,
What does it matter for rain or shine,
For the hopes deferred and the gain departed?
Nothing could conquer that heart of thine.
And thy health and strength are beyond confessing
As the only joys that are worth possessing.
May the days to come be as rich in blessing
As the days we spent in the auld lang syne.

I would fain go back to the old grey river,
To the old bush days when our hearts were light,
But, alas! those days they have fled for ever,
They are like the swans that have swept from sight.
And I know full well that the strangers' faces
Would meet us now in our dearest places;
For our day is dead and has left no traces
But the thoughts that live in my mind to-night.

There are folk long dead, and our hearts would sicken —
We would grieve for them with a bitter pain,
If the past could live and the dead could quicken,
We then might turn to that life again.
But on lonely nights we would hear them calling,
We should hear their steps on the pathways falling,
We should loathe the life with a hate appalling
In our lonely rides by the ridge and plain.

. . . . .

In the silent park is a scent of clover,
And the distant roar of the town is dead,
And I hear once more as the swans fly over
Their far-off clamour from overhead.
They are flying west, by their instinct guided,
And for man likewise is his fate decided,
And griefs apportioned and joys divided
By a mighty power with a purpose dread.

The Travelling Post Office

The roving breezes come and go, the reed beds sweep and sway,
The sleepy river murmurs low, and loiters on its way,
It is the land of lots o' time along the Castlereagh.

. . . . .

The old man's son had left the farm, he found it dull and slow,
He drifted to the great North-west where all the rovers go.
"He's gone so long," the old man said, "he's dropped right out of mind,
But if you'd write a line to him I'd take it very kind;
He's shearing here and fencing there, a kind of waif and stray,
He's droving now with Conroy's sheep along the Castlereagh.
The sheep are travelling for the grass, and travelling very slow;
They may be at Mundooran now, or past the Overflow,
Or tramping down the black soil flats across by Waddiwong,
But all those little country towns would send the letter wrong,
The mailman, if he's extra tired, would pass them in his sleep,
It's safest to address the note to `Care of Conroy's sheep',
For five and twenty thousand head can scarcely go astray,
You write to `Care of Conroy's sheep along the Castlereagh'."

. . . . .

By rock and ridge and riverside the western mail has gone,
Across the great Blue Mountain Range to take that letter on.
A moment on the topmost grade while open fire doors glare,
She pauses like a living thing to breathe the mountain air,
Then launches down the other side across the plains away
To bear that note to "Conroy's sheep along the Castlereagh".

And now by coach and mailman's bag it goes from town to town,
And Conroy's Gap and Conroy's Creek have marked it "further down".
Beneath a sky of deepest blue where never cloud abides,
A speck upon the waste of plain the lonely mailman rides.
Where fierce hot winds have set the pine and myall boughs asweep
He hails the shearers passing by for news of Conroy's sheep.
By big lagoons where wildfowl play and crested pigeons flock,
By camp fires where the drovers ride around their restless stock,
And past the teamster toiling down to fetch the wool away
My letter chases Conroy's sheep along the Castlereagh.

The Old Australian Ways

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 parrakeets 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.

By the Grey Gulf-Water

Far to the Northward there lies a land,
 A wonderful land that the winds blow over,
And none may fathom nor understand
 The charm it holds for the restless rover;
A great grey chaos — a land half made,
 Where endless space is and no life stirreth;
And the soul of a man will recoil afraid
 From the sphinx-like visage that Nature weareth.
But old Dame Nature, though scornful, craves
 Her dole of death and her share of slaughter;
Many indeed are the nameless graves
 Where her victims sleep by the Grey Gulf-water.

Slowly and slowly those grey streams glide,
 Drifting along with a languid motion,
Lapping the reed-beds on either side,
 Wending their way to the Northern Ocean.
Grey are the plains where the emus pass
 Silent and slow, with their staid demeanour;
Over the dead men's graves the grass
 Maybe is waving a trifle greener.
Down in the world where men toil and spin
 Dame Nature smiles as man's hand has taught her;
Only the dead men her smiles can win
 In the great lone land by the Grey Gulf-water.

For the strength of man is an insect's strength
 In the face of that mighty plain and river,
And the life of a man is a moment's length
 To the life of the stream that will run for ever.
And so it cometh they take no part
 In small-world worries; each hardy rover
Rideth abroad and is light of heart,
 With the plains around and the blue sky over.
And up in the heavens the brown lark sings
 The songs that the strange wild land has taught her;
Full of thanksgiving her sweet song rings —
 And I wish I were back by the Grey Gulf-water.