John O'Brien

“ What, no Australian song, my dear?
And yet I’ve heard the cottage ring
With notes the world would pause to hear,
When at their work your sisters sing.
They sing the songs of all the earth,
Of tender sky, and dimpling sea,
But all their strains have not the worth
Of one Australian song, for me.
I’ve heard the harp the breezes play
Among the wilding wilga-trees;
I’ve swept my world of care away
When bush birds lift their melodies;
I’ve seen the paddocks all ablaze
When spring in golden glory comes,
The purple hills of summer days,
The autumn ochres through the gums ”

“ Loving eyes to watch our coming, loving arms to twine around us—
Tender tendrils, soft and silken, firmer far than iron stay—
All our little world upholding, gentle hearts and home enfolding,
And a cheery, friendly neighbour dropping in upon his way:
Mellow joy the soul refreshes with the scented breath of heaven,
With the whispered songs of other spheres, hereafter understood:
Angels keep their sure watch o’er us: and another laughing chorus
Flings a vesper blessing round the world, because the world is good.
PETER NELSON’S FIDDLE
Do you ever dream you hear it, you who went the lonely track? ”

“ THE CAREYS
Their new house stood just off the road,
A fine big brick two-storey,
All gabled, tiled, and porticoed,
To flaunt its owners’ glory.
We never had, to tell the truth,
At Carey’s door alighted,
We had good reasons too, forsooth—
We hadn’t been invited.
But down to Mass we passed the gate,
And passed it, too, returning,
And hid away in mien sedate
The grievance in us burning.
But in the Old Mass Shandrydan—
Well, envy little varies—
We heard “herself” and her good man
Discourse about the Careys:
“Wisha, that big house of Carey’s with its power of fal-de-daries.” ”

“ The world is not a world to-night without poor Father Pat.
Nigh eighty years I’ve known him now. Since ever we were boys
Across the sea in Ireland, each other’s cares and joys
We’ve shared as with their leaden step they strode across the mat;
The kindest heart that ever beat is stilled in Father Pat.
They knew him round the country wide; from here to Carrathool
The teamster toiling by his dray, the youngsters home from school,
Would greet him with a curt “good day,” and shyly pull the hat
Down farther on the forehead in respect for Father Pat. ”

“ And by every good soul in the parish accursed,
Is that scamp of a Presbyt’ry Dog.
He’s a hairy old scoundrel as ugly as sin,
He’s a demon that travels incog.,
With a classical name, and an ignorant grin,
And a tail, by the way, that is scraggy and thin,
And the rest of him merely a dog.
He is like a young waster of fortune possessed,
As he rambles the town at a jog;
For he treats the whole world as a sort of a jest,
While the comp’ny he keeps—well, it must be confessed
It’s unfit for a Presbyt’ry Dog. ”

“ The butcher-bird up in his eyrie,
The trills! Oh, I wish I could hear you again,
My dear little Chocolate Wiree!
To the ears of a stranger our birds may lack song,
Our flowers have no scent for the alien ”

“ And pointing always to the sky,
It stood upon the hill.
And through our lives in wondrous ways
Its holy purpose led
From limpid lisping cradle-days
To where the silent moonlight lays
White hands upon the dead. ”

“ Kept sliding in on Father Pat, and woke him at the touch.
Then, pensioned off at last and done, a sorry thing it stood,
With sagging cobwebs round it spun, and nest-eggs in the hood.
Just once a year it lived again, and groaned and creaked along
To fetch the bishop from the train with limping Currajong.
Ah, newer methods, younger men! the times are moving fast,
And but in dreams we tread again the wheel-ruts of the past;
The eyes are filmed that watched of old, the kindly hearts are still,
And silent tombstones white and cold are glimmering on the hill. ”

“ Set me loose in Casey’s paddock, where I’d be a boy again!
Yes, ’twas good to be a pilgrim in a world that held such wonders,
Though eternal bad behaviour put me neath parental ban,
Though the staring, and the wandering, and a score of general blunders
Got me gaoled behind the taffrail of the Old Mass Shandrydan.
“Yerra, Johnnie, stop that gawkin.” Is it—with the pulses pumping,
And the little heart high-stepping to the music of the drum—
Is it “stop it,” with a something in the young blood madly thumping
With a foreword of the purpose of the pregnant years to come? ”

“ Come the happy honeymooners from the country far away,
Two days old, and very awkward as they wander straight ahead,
Much too careful lest the people should suspect them country-bred.
He’s a well set-up young fellow; she’s a dainty little bride;
And he follows where she leads him with the bush swing in his stride,
Makes himself at home—or tries to—with defiance in his stare,
Thinks he’s in the old bush kitchen with his hat beneath the chair.
Every eye is turned upon them, and the kindly smiles that flit
O’er the faces of the diners seem to bless them where they sit ”

“ Kissed the sleeping world to dreams of better things.
Joy was lit in every corner, love was smiling at our side,
Golden glamour o’er the dawning days was cast;
Gaily, gaily sang the fiddle, while we marched with swinging stride
Through the flowers that hid the failures of the past.
Do you ever dream you hear it? Does it bring the vision back,
With the curlew, and the moonlight on the trees?
Do the wavelets ripple shoreward with the flotsam as the wrack,
When a fiddle plays the simple melodies? ”

“ The men who sailed in sixty-five along with Father Pat.
We left the friendly stars astern, the Irish lights agleam,
We dared the seas in sailing-ships before the days of steam,
We faced a weird wild waste of world that brave men trembled at:
No shipside welcome met the men who came with Father Pat.
We turned our horses’ heads out west, beyond the farthest track,
With nothing but an alien star to light the journey back. ”

“ Where the nation is a-building in the hearts of splendid men—
There’s a Little Irish Mother always there.
There’s a Little Irish Mother—and her head is bowed and gray,
And she’s lonesome when the evening shadows fall;
Near the fire she “do be thinkin’,” all the “childer” are away,
And their silent pictures watch her from the wall.
For the world has claimed them from her; they are men and women now,
In their thinning hair the tell-tale silver gleams ”

“ When out beyond the rim of things we marched with Father Pat.
We said our Mass in canvas tents, and neath the gnarléd trees;
Of red-gum slabs and sheets of bark we built our sanctuaries;
Our axes rang on timbered slopes above the mining flat,
And church and school and convent mark the path of Father Pat.
We made our bow to wild and waste, and hardships worse than those;
We leave a gracious golden land that blossoms like the rose. ”

“ God help the one who dared complain in front of Josephine!
The people called her “curate,” yes, and “bishop” too, I hear;
They even called her “parish-priest”—in disrespect, I fear.
They told me that she’d “roon” the church—too long with me she’d been;
But only death could give the sack to faithful Josephine.
Ah, soft and sweet be sleep to her who friendless trod her track
Along the beaten road of life that knows no turning back.
I marked the splendid Irish faith that met the closing scene,
And heard the beat of angels’ wings that came for Josephine. ”

“ Racing in and out and fussing, so to strike the country dumb;
But they’ll talk of Mary’s wedding for a score of years to come!
Yes, the breakfast down at Mother’s—there’s the long, long table spread,
And a houseful of the neighbours with the old priest at their head;
And the speeches—Lord, the speeches—hitting hurdles every stride,
Full of awkward, heartfelt blessings for the bridegroom and the bride;
And the lad himself “respondin’,” when the cheers had died away,
Shifting crumbs around the table in the worst speech of the day. ”

“ I have seen the road careering from a whirring motor-car,
Where the Careys couldn’t pass us, or our sense of fitness jar;
But the world is somehow smaller, somehow less enchanting than
When I saw it o’er the tail-board of the Old Mass Shandrydan.
PITCHIN’ AT THE CHURCH
On the Sunday morning mustered,
Yarning at our ease;
Buggies, traps and jinkers clustered
Underneath the trees,
Horses tethered to the fences;
Thus we hold our conferences
Waiting till the priest commences—
Pitchin’ at the Church.
Sheltering in the summer’s shining
Where the shadows fall ”

“ Blessed by every tear that stained it since the cruel parting morn.
Mighty things were done at Casey’s. Men of solid reputation,
Ringing bells and giving orders, kept the programme moving by;
And they made you sickly conscious of your humble situation
When they glared upon your meanness with a cold official eye.
Every “maneen” with a broken voice and backers there beside him,
And his socks outside his breeches, was a hero in his way;
Every nag around the country with a raw bush lad astride him
Was a racehorse with an Irish name upon St. Patrick’s Day. ”

“ The neighbours braved the stormy night
When old man Carey died.
All blank was Carey’s new brick place
As, entering through the gloom
With noiseless step, we just might trace
Within a darkened room
The purple stole that purifies,
The old wife’s stricken head,
The Carey girls, with swollen eyes,
All kneeling round the bed—
We’d move the world to help them, then:
Our feuds were laid aside,
For all were neighbours once again
When old man Carey died.
And, when he’d paid the debt perforce
That every man must pay,
We came again with hearse and horse
To bear him on his way. ”

“ Chastened, lonely, and so weary; making Home,
Praying God to pardon what you’ve been because your eyes were blind,
Making Home.
COULD I HEAR THE KOOKABURRAS ONCE AGAIN
May a fading fancy hover round a gladness that is over?
May a dreamer in the silence rake the ashes of the past?
So a spirit might awaken in the best the years have taken,
And the love that left him lonely might be with him at the last. ”

“ THE TRIMMIN’S ON THE ROSARY
Ah, the memories that find me now my hair is turning gray,
Drifting in like painted butterflies from paddocks far away;
Dripping dainty wings in fancy—and the pictures, fading fast,
Stand again in rose and purple in the album of the past.
There’s the old slab dwelling dreaming by the wistful, watchful trees,
Where the coolabahs are listening to the stories of the breeze;
There’s a homely welcome beaming from its big, bright friendly eyes,
With The Sugarloaf behind it blackened in against the skies ”

“ Our flowers have no scent for the alien;
But we, who have rambled the gullies along
Bedecked in soft colours Australian,
We laugh them to scorn as we read the old phrase—
We’ve laughed, since, at many another—
And bless in our hearts in a chorus of praise
The face of our happy young mother.
WHEN THE CIRCUS CAME TO TOWN
When the circus came to town
With its coaches and four, and its steeds galore,
And a band and a painted clown,
Out to the road with a shout we’d fly
To gape at the elephants trudging by,
And our hearts beat fast and our hopes ran high,
As we followed it up and down ”

“ There’s a track, through the timber that rambles along,
And a cantering horse vamps the time to a song
That the heart of a dreamer is singing.
There are bells for a wedding that ring in the breeze,
That sound in the grass that is brushing his knees;
And down in the crowfoot, and up in the trees
They’re ringing, and ringing, and ringing.
SAID THE WHITE-HAIRED PRIEST
Said the white-haired priest, “So the boy has come,
And the old, old dreams are o’er you,
And you give no thought to the gray humdrum
Of the world that lies before you!
’Tis a queer old world ”