J. P. Bourke

“ And so we write as Nature sets her gauge—
No worse than most, and better, p’raps, than some,
But should a man remain for ever dumb
When only rhythm fills his aimless page?
[198]
YOUR LEVEL BEST.
When you stand within Life’s limelight to declaim your little piece—
Let your hearers chip and chivvy as they may—
And you go on nigh despairing, ’neath your mummer-paint and grease,
As you massacre the part you have to play:
You may come before the curtain
And erect your ragged crest,
If you’re absolutely certain
That you’ve done your level best! ”

“ We’re whizzing towards the East!
[129]
THE OLD FARM GATE.
There’s an all-pervading glamour and a glitter in the West;
There’s a market here for muscle or for brain:
And Success stands ever near us, with a blossom at her breast,
And a galaxy of beauty in her train!
There are prizes worth the winning, for the daring hearts and bold,
There are gauds and gear for those who work and wait,
But I’m often drifting, drifting, from the palling gleam of gold
Till I stand beside the old farm gate. ”

“ In the same manner I think that every lover of poetry is careful not to contemn the rudest rhyme that may contain a heartbeat. That is to say that every lover of poetry is a faithful Catholic. He may like some kinds of poetry better than others, yet he finds every kind a good kind—however stiffly or crudely it succeeds in transferring its content of emotion. If it does not hold and convey emotion, then it is not poetry, no matter how fine its form or how famous the name of its author. I value this little wild garden of verses the more because it grows in Australia. ”

“ With a very seedy poet, who pours piffle out for pelf,
In the columns of the western Sunday Press.
And when those two collaborate, a change comes o’er the scene,
(It happens so when kindred spirits meet)
For here and there, a patch of red! and here and there, of green!
And a chirpy crowd goes laughing down the street!
The genial face of Friendship ’gainst the window-pane is pressed,
And an optimist keeps boredom well at bay,
Whilst a maiden comes a-tripping, with a rosebud at her breast,
Adown his mental corridors of grey. ”

“ What did Bourke write? The verse that appeals to wanderers, to reckless men, to men who have fought and lost, fought and won, fought and wasted their winnings [22] in all the ways of all the earth. Wasted? Not all wasted; not most, it may be.
What is a purse? A thing to scatter free.
What is a talent but a gift for joy?
What is life’s lesson? To live heartily
To man’s utmost, like a happy boy. ”

“ Got no time to sky the wipe—only time to fight!
Only time for graft and grind, dog and dough and dust!
That’s the tune the music plays—scratchin’ for a crust.
From such a life as that stanza depicts, almost inevitably men turn to intoxicating liquor for consolation or for oblivion. Any reader of Western verses must see first how large a part liquor plays in life, and secondly, how large a part of that life, that life in the desert, in the sand, in the wilderness, can only be assuaged by liquor. ”

“ Straight as a gunbarrel and unfaltering in his denunciation of all that savoured of the mean, the paltry, or the unjust, Bourke was the whitest and the most lovable of men. Gifted with a keen insight into human nature and unlimited power of happy expression, he was a staunch friend and a true mate, and no man on the fields was more personally popular. ”

“ From the deadhead’s room, where a light shines through
With a dimmed and a sickly ray:
There are some folk born with a lucky caul,
And a hobby to ride at will,
While for others—it isn’t the Lord at all,
But the Devil, who drives the mill.
And though you may laugh on the mountain’s crown,
And though I may toil at the base,
It is neither he who is up nor down
Has himself to thank for his place ”

“ No more verses in praise of Wine!
Yet, through a tangle of years and strife,
Constant still do her true eyes shine—
Mother, or sweetheart, or child, or wife.
Is there a haven where Hope is rife,
Holding a remnant of life’s design? ”

“ An artist may touch everything with mastery. These writers are not artists, but men who utter the measures and rhymes that come to them often unsought; they are poetical interpreters of life and manhood. Accept them in that guise, and they need no justification from another’s hand: they justify themselves.
John Philip Bourke, who wrote for The Sun, Kalgoorlie, scores of stanzas that ring harshly or melodiously, but that ring true, has set down his page of Western history over the signature of “Bluebush.” Between East [21] and West his honours are easy ”

“ Did you ever see gold glitter in the dull light of the glim,
Where the face is specked and sprinkled with the best of sovereign-dust,
And you calkerlate your income at a pick-blow to the jim?
Hello, on top! Hello!
Hook on, and let her go!
Or we’ll never make our tucker in a five-ounce show!
[66]
Oh, the days go by like drinkin’—for it’s entertainin’ graft,
And you hear your mate discoursin’ to the crowd around the brace,
As he tugs away the hide, and it goes skimmin’ up the shaft,
While a smile ’ud trip a bullock jest illumernates his face—
Hello, on top! ”

“ The East has more refined writers, more cultivated and more artistic writers; but not more manly writers.
Poetry is a man’s work if it performs a man’s deeds. When, on the night of 24th April, 1792, Rouget de l’Isle tramped his lodging-house room “with a head of ice and fire” to compose “The Marseillaise,” how many deeds were his exultant verses worth! How vainly he himself would have fought to achieve the feats of swelling valour to which his art inspired others. In a literary aspect the words are little more than a rant:—
“Aux armes, citoyens! ”

“ THE WESTERN WRITER TO HIS MUSE.
I have no wild desire to sing, and sing,
Or kneel at Nature’s feet, and be her mummer.
Poetic fancies are not rioting
For liberty, like prisoned birds in summer.
No thoughts, like maidenhair, climb round and cling
To rhyming roosters writing on a thrummer ”

“ Doubtless, its Australian appeal detracts from its quality considered as universal literature; yet that detraction is balanced by the additional attraction it has for readers here and now. I am not concerned to measure out comparative credit, but only to emphasise the point that we have here something that is worthy our credit.
The opinion offered, the attitude taken, follow after reading some hundreds of representative Western verses. The merit of those verses is to be found in the impression one receives from the whole—an impression gained from many patches of gold that shine in the quartz. ”

“ Shirking the fight that a man should fight.
There are keen sight and shrewd sense underlying Bourke’s verses. There is sentiment, too, intermingled with pathos, in many places—as in “His Letter from W.A.”
It’s scarcely six months since I left Cooranbean,
But seems longer than all of last year;
The moon ain’t so bright and the grass ain’t so green,
And the sky, somehow, isn’t so clear.
Oh! I’d give all their towns to the very last brick,
And the mines with the forchins they yield,
Just to hear the old ripple of Cooranbean crick,
And the rustle of corn in the field. ”

“ CHURNING “COPY” FOR THE PRESS.
Men are rushing through the level, or are delving in the shaft,
Or a-belting like the devil at a moil—
With a bitter curse for Adam, as the pioneer of graft
And the bloke who took a patent out for toil. ”

“ Hearts grow withered and locks grow white,
Dodging the joys that a man should know,
Shirking the fight that a man should fight.
No more verses in praise of Wine!
Where are the glorious days we knew
Touched with the rays of a light divine,
Decked with a garland of thyme and rue?
[195] Where is their glamour for yours and you? ”

“ All the country around is as green as a leaf
And there’s never no fires or no drought,
And they say it’s old weatherwise Riley’s belief
That the seasons is goin’ to hang out;
And they say that young fellers is fools to go West
When there’s whips of good land on the run—
And the stick-at-home policy’s always the best
When the summin’-up comes to be done. ”

“ There must be allowed, also, to the little school of Western Australian writers, besides their vigour and vivacity, a real singing talent, and no slight mastery of striking phraseology. Often enough their subjects are commonplace, yet it is rarely that their treatment of a subject is entirely commonplace. Almost always there is found a personal touch that in its way and to its extent is a true style, and a style effective to move the readers to whom it is addressed. ”

“ Let other hands delve ’mid the garbage and grime,
And let other lips puff till they blaze—
Oh! ’tis weary work marching when fools beat the time—
But ’tis easy to drift and to laze
All our nights and our jubilant days,
Sweet Eileen! ”

“ Calling men to where the loaves and fishes are.
For crude, unbroken fancies get the bit between their teeth,
While the earth puts on a very different guise,
And even Sorrow’s self assumes a far less sombre wreath
When the poet and the snifter fraternise.
They are rushing through the levels, and are drumming in the stopes,
And a-cursing at the ‘presser’ and the hose ”

“ That is not refined poetry; but it is essentially poetry; and let us never forget that all the refinements of life spring from precisely such realities as are illustrated by this humble “battler.” That a lady from whose body and mind every speck and thought of defilement are kept, may walk sedately down the shady side of St. George’s Terrace, some such man as Bill’s mate must have sweated crudely in the region of Kalgoorlie. The fancy is far-fetched, but it has a real basis; a large part of the burden of civilization is borne by “humble battlers;” ”

“ In pieces like “Old Bill Bates” the note of mateship is struck; the note that has been the keynote of so many Western lives linked in the hearty give-and-take comradeship of two men—two bound closer, almost, than husband and wife, by long-shared [25] years of effort together. “At Bummer’s Creek” warrants all that has been said of the manly virtue of Western poetry—and is there anyone who has worked with men who has not found Dave’s mate? ”

“ But Bourke does himself injustice. His is a strain of toiling life once again made vocal—the real truth of real toil, as it may happen, as it has happened to thousands who have struggled “to gain from the West her [23] glorious golden prize”—and who have gained and have squandered, or have died struggling, or have “gone out on flukes,” as Bayley did, “with the new life just begun.”
Got no time to ruminate! Got no time to read!
Got no time to foller on! Got no time to lead!
Got no time to stoop and pluck the daisies by the pad!
Got no time for triflin’, for hobby-horse or fad! ”

“ A man can defend them and enjoy them, because they are not vulgar; they are not affected or insincere; they express the primitive man as he is found—under more or fewer layers of veneer—in every other man who is worth a woman’s salt. The work of John Philip Bourke must be taken now and then with a good deal of salt ”

“ And the men pass out, as they lose the game
That we play in the Golden West:
But their thoughts must turn as the days grow late.
In a dream, to some “cocky” patch
Where the old folk stand at their homestead gate,
And they laugh ’neath their whitening thatch. [94]
DAN THE HATTER.
An Old North Country Identity.
I tramped again ’neath a blazing sky,
In a Western land where the deserts lie:
But the rush and roar, and the life we knew,
When the ’Nineties echoed the whole world through,
Were silent, or uttered their speech alone
With a drab and dreary monotone. ”

“ But this rant, as Carlyle says, when added to the stirring tune, “will make the blood tingle in men’s veins; and whole armies and assemblages will sing it with eyes weeping and burning, with hearts defiant of death, despot, and devil.”
The vigorous Western Australian verses that I praise are of that kind and approximate to that standard. They are written in peace, and cannot gain the hottest of mortal ardours, the exultation of war. But if there were [19] Australian war, here are the men to write our marching songs. ”

“ Where a suit o’ tailor’s clobber pulls the strings;
But (I wouldn’t say it public) I am feelin’ pretty glum
When I start a-cogitatin’ about things:
But you’ll find a hearty welcome where the sky begins ter dip,
Out where mates is mostly men, and men is mates,
And I wish yer luck ... and say!
If yer chance upon his way,
Jest remember me to Old Bill Bates.
[87]
WE TOOK THE PLEDGE TILL MAY.
Dave Barker is a mate of mine,
A solid mate and chum,
And when we’re out upon the wine
I guess we make things hum:
We go the pace all fair and square,
But rapid, I’ll allow ”

“ J. P. BOURKE.
They say that, when Abraham Lincoln had seen Walt Whitman, he summed his impression in the emphatic “This is a man.” That is what one feels in reading the verses of Western Australian [18] writers—“This is a man.” The work of the tribe of pseudonymous writers in Western newspapers—especially Kalgoorlie Sun and Perth Sunday Times—the work of “Bluebush” and “Dryblower,” “Crosscut,” “Prospect Good,” and the rest—is the most virile and the most original poetry that has been made in Australia since the Commonwealth began. “Here’s manhood,” I say, and “Here’s Australian manhood.” ”

“ It is a doctrine that must be preached cautiously; yet it is the best doctrine of all. So many people miss life by not grasping it; in saving other things they spend life itself: and at the end there is pity for those who cannot say “Vixi!” Let Bourke express himself ”

“ John Philip Bourke.
[7]
When I am dead
Bring me no roses white,
Nor lilies spotless
And immaculate,
But from the garden roses red,
Roses full blown
And by the noon sun kissed,
Bring me the roses
That my life has missed
When I am dead.
[8]
J. P. BOURKE.
[9]
OFF THE BLUEBUSH
VERSES FOR AUSTRALIANS
WEST AND EAST
BY
J. P. BOURKE
(“Bluebush”)
Edited by A. G. STEPHENS
Illustrated by NED WETHERED
SYDNEY
TYRRELL’S LIMITED
22 Castlereagh Street
1915. ”