Classic Poem

I. T HEN

I spent a year in Junee,
I spent a year in Bourke;
And one I spent revising
The year I spent in work.
They seemed so close together
They nearly broke my heart;
And yet those fateful two years
Were twenty years apart.

O down the Lachlan River
Where father used to camp,
The old grey horse is missing,
And I'm too old to tramp.

No Union flag was flying,
Because it never flew;
The cause was dead or dying
Round Bourke in 'Ninety-Two.
Through bogs of sodden black soil
We fell back, down and done,
Heart-broken from the battle
We'd lost in 'Ninety-One.

From Union camps of hunger
And cold and sodden beds
Our leaders followed after,
Black-listed at the sheds.
They tramped and worked for tucker
To live for higher aims,
And round the furthest stations
Shore under other names.

O greybeard meeting greybeard!
O hearts of younger men!
'Tis long since I was called by
The name I — went by — then.

We'd meet and know each other —
No matter how we knew;
We'd spies amongst the squatters
Right back in 'Ninety-Two;
And safer than the wireless,
Or any means for hire,
And surer were the messages
We sent by mulga wire.

Tall, gaunt and quaintly solemn,
To mask the lurking grin,
Matilda up at sunset,
Our delegate came in;
He'd look the rep. up (casual),
And, after tea, perhaps,
He'd say by light of slush-lamp
— A few words to you chaps — .

The few short words were spoken
And mulga'd further on;
The shed-bell rang at sunrise —
Our delegate was gone.
No par was in the Herald ,
He wrote not to the Sun
To tell the world what he had
Or what he had not done.

We had no grand head-office,
Where staffs are mild and meek,
And bosses fight for freedom
On fifteen pounds a week;
Where pen-cranks blur the lessons
We'd learned in 'Ninety-Three,
And well-dressed Union bullies
Bludge on Democracy.

Headquarters then were anywhere
Where headquarters might be —
The skillion of a shanty
Or underneath a tree,
In sheep or cattle country,
Drought-blaze or freezing rain.
O there we fought the battles
We'll have to fight again!

Way down the Murrumbidgee
And up the Lachlan Side
Are young bay horses saddled —
I'm not too old to ride.

II.N OW

I spent a year in Junee,
The railway runs to Hay,
And up at Cootamundra
It runs the other way.
And there are many hardships
And many wrongs to meet;
But puppy politicians
Go on to Spencer Street.

Ah me! in all this weary world,
Of all the lines that run
There is no line that runs to Bourke
In Eighteen-Ninety-One.

They come from much or nothing,
Blue or plebeian blood;
But mostly from their cad-hood
Their beds are soft as mud.
But certes there's no doubting
They're fitted for their — job — —
Born with the gift of shouting
The obvious to the mob.

No great ideas they pilfer,
Because they never heed;
They steal no words of wisdom,
Because they never read;
If higher lights should beacon,
They always keep in mind,
For the safety of their billets,
The level of their kind!

They work a small man's mischief
And draw a big man's screw.
We'll never know how little,
Or how much harm they do,
Till their conceit unseats them —
An end that's always plain;
And they go — organizing —
Or — whispering — again.

O they outblight all blighters
In tram or motor car,
Exploit, then drop, the writers
Who put them where they are.
They're first to stumble over
Their big splay feet and say,
— Me Lord! — and eke — Yer Lordship! —
For ever and a day.

They travel — first — and — sleeper — ,
At sea they — go saloon — ;
They go without a keeper,
But they shall need one soon.
They buzz where strife is stirring
Like flies to rotten meat;
It is their billets and the soul
Of pitiful conceit.

'Tis all tone and no tucker;
The pubs they call their own;
The pubs wherein we rested
Were tucker and no tone.
The greatest mateship treaty
Was signed, when we grew strong,
In Mother Minty's shanty
Down by the Billabong.

And O to see the lounging
In smoke-rooms free of charge!
And O to watch the aping
Of gentlemen at large!
The playful condescending
To empty-headed girls,
And hear the patronizing
Of bards who dined with earls.

They have a separate table
Wherever they may go,
And boast that they are able
To keep their gulls in tow;
They shout, or else they mutter,
They tolerate or hate,
They drag down to the gutter
The name of delegate.

They shame the honest memory
Of working mums and dads;
They simply have the minds without
The dirt of — undercads — .
They scamp the Grand Old Union's work,
Ragtime the songs we sung;
Ah me! 'Twas well that Donald
Macdonell died so young.

A grey ghost far behind us —
The old grey horse that glides,
North, South, and eastward veering,
No spectral horseman rides.