John O'Brien

“ And the nest beneath The Sugarloaf no longer is their own;
For a hand has written “finis” and the book is closed for good—
There’s a stately red-tiled mansion where the old slab dwelling stood;
There the stranger has her “evenings,” and the formal supper’s spread,
But I wonder has she “trimmin’s” now, or is the Rosary said?
Ah, those little Irish mothers passing from us one by one!
Who will write the noble story of the good that they have done?
All their children may be scattered, and their fortunes windwards hurled,
But the Trimmin’s on the Rosary will bless them round the world. ”

“ Waves a friendly hand across the range to bid the world “good-bye.”
Comes a buoyant peal of laughter from the tall, white, slender timber,
Rugged mirth that floods the bushland with the joy of brotherhood,
With the rustic notes sonorous of a happy laughing chorus,
When the kookaburras bless the world because the world is good.
Oh, ’tis good and clean and wholesome when we take the sheep-track homewards,
And the kindly kitchen chimney flaps its homely bannerets;
All our twigs of effort, shooting golden promise for the fruiting,
Bring a night in peace enfolded that a useful day begets. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Till it stood in all its glory as the Old Mass Shandrydan.
When at last, with velvet sandals shod, the Holy Morning crept
Through the mists above The Sugarloaf, that silent vigil kept
O’er a little old slab dwelling which the years have brushed away,
You would hear the Little Mother stirring round before the day,
Rousing sleepy heads from blankets, washing faces, doing hair,
Scolding, coaxing, bustling, breathless in her hurry everywhere.
Half the night before she laboured, and we’d hear her come and go
With the Sunday suits of “reach-me-downs” to place them in a row. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Mighty things were done at Casey’s. Mighty impulse was behind them,
’Twas the sacred spark enkindled that was burning to the bone;
Never yet were men more loyal to the holy ties that bind them,
And the love they gave their country made me conscious of my own.
Never yet were men more loyal. Be they met in thousands teeming,
Be they gathered down at Casey’s with their kindred and their kind ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 would flash the living bayonets in the strong hands of my brothers,
And the blood that coursed for nationhood, through all the years of pain,
In the veins of patriot fathers and of Little Irish Mothers
Would be hot as hissing lava streams to thrill the world again. ”

“ And a sweet hope gilds the future with the colour of the grain;
Gentle visions softly tripping in the ploughing and the stripping,
While the kookaburras chorus once again.
Let a dying fancy hover round the glories that are over;
Lift a song to sing the present—to the hopeless hope impart—
For above the past’s bewailing, golden-writ but unavailing,
Is the simple little ditty that can cheer a drooping heart.
Lift it high for all to hear it. In the Helper’s love endear it,
And my ageing heart shall hasten to applaud the sweet refrain ”

“ Back to where the lingering dew of morn bedecked the barley-grass,
When I watched the wild careering of the neighbours through the clearing
Down that sweet bush track to Casey’s, o’er the paddock down to Casey’s;
Spending Sunday down at Casey’s after Mass.
For, as soon as Mass was over, round the church they swarmed like bees,
Filled their pipes and duly lit them, brushed the dust from off their knees;
Then they’d “ready-up” for Casey’s—self-invited down to Casey’s—
Harness horses for the women with a bushman’s careless ease. ”

“ And it rattled like a saw-mill, and it thundered like a dray;
Faith, you’d hear the circus coming a half-a-dozen miles away!
All along the road the neighbours used to take the time from us,
For they never made a start until they heard our omnibus;
Then a shrill soprano shouted, “Put the horses in the van,
“Them’s The Sugarloaf O’Briens in the Old Mass Shandrydan.” ”

“ And haply in their breeze-swept song a requiem divines:
The people raised a little stone to keep her memory green,
And handed to the winds and rain the name of Josephine.
How quickly have the days gone by! she’s dead—now, let me see—
She’s dead twelve months: to-morrow is her anniversary:
Now who’s the Saint to-morrow? Ah, a semi—“Hedwig, Queen.”
I’ll use the black—and may God rest the soul of Josephine!
THE OLD MASS SHANDRYDAN ”

“ And you came—God bless you for it, boy—the partin’ prayer to say.
Ay, the partin’ Rosary, darlin’—I can see you kneelin’ there,
With your big broad shoulders bendin’, and your hands joined on the chair,
And your man’s voice like an organ rollin’ out its soul apart—
Och, to-night, boy, in my dreamin’ it is dronin’ in my heart.
Yes, we said it with the music strummin’ ragtime songs throughout,
Just our two selves there together, answerin’ t’other turn about.
’Tis a quare, quare world, alannah, when the storm can work its stress
On the strong limb, while the withered leaf is left in loneliness. ”