Read Online 60 Classic Australian Poems for Children by Cheng & Rogers - Free Book Online

the Christmas Day
    And I must rise and go,
    For I have a mighty way to ride
    To the land of the Esquimaux.
    â€˜And it’s there I must load my sledges up,
    With the reindeers four-in-hand,
    That go to the north, south, east, and west,
    To every Christian land.’
    â€˜Tae the Esquimaux,’ said the dour good wife,
    â€˜Ye suit my husband well!
    For when he gets up on his journey horse
    He’s a bit of a liar himsel’.’
    Then out with a laugh went the bonny wee man
    To his old horse grazing nigh,
    And away like a meteor flash they went
    Far off to the northern sky.

    When the children woke on the Christmas morn
    They chattered with might and main—
    Wi’ a sword and gun for little son Jack,
    And a braw new doll had Jane,
    And a packet o’ nails had the twa Emus;
    But the dour gude wife gat nane.
    Australian Town and Country Journal , 1906

42
The Shearer’s Wife
Louis Esson
    The dark—but drudgin’s never done;
    Now after tea inside the door
    I patch an’ darn from set o’ sun,
    Till hands git stiff and eyes grow sore,
    While Dick’s outback.
    And times I lie awake o’ nights
    An’ watch the moon throw tricksy lights
    An’ shadows skeer with creepy sights
    Out in the ranges black.
    Before the glare o’ dawn I rise
    To milk the sleepy cows, an’ feed
    The chooky-hens I dearly prize:
    I set the bunny traps, then knead
    The weekly bread.
    There’s hay to stook, an’ spuds to hoe,
    An’ ferns to cut in the scrub below,
    An’ I lay out palin’s row on row
    To make a new cow-shed.
    The poorness of this Savage Bush
    Has crushed us since we came from town,
    (To-night I’m dreamin’ through the hush:
    My eyes are bright, my hair’s still brown,
    And I’m Young Lil.
    â€˜We’ll have a farm,’ Dick used to say,
    â€˜Where we’ll be happy all the day,’
    But now I’m wrinkled, worn, an’ grey,
    And Dick’s a shearer still.)
    Blurred runs the track whereon he comes,
    And tired am I with labour sore;
    Tired o’ the bush, an’ cows, an’ gums,
    Tired—an’ I want to think no more.
    What tales he tells
    The moon is lonesome in the sky,
    The bush is lone, and lonesome I
    But Stare as the red dust clouds whirl by,
    And start at the cattle bells.
    The Bulletin , 1907

43
A Snake Yarn
WT Goodge
    â€˜You talk of snakes,’ said Jack the Rat,
    â€˜But blow me, one hot summer,
    I seen a thing that knocked me flat—
    Fourteen foot long or more than that.
    It was a reg’lar hummer!
    Lay right along a sort of bog,
    Just like a log!
    â€˜The ugly thing was lyin’ there
    And not a sign o’ movin’,
    Give any man a nasty scare;
    Seen nothin’ like it anywhere
    Since I first started drovin’.
    And yet it didn’t scare my dog.
    Looked like a log!
    â€˜I had to cross that bog, yer see,
    And bluey I was humpin’;
    But wonderin’ what that thing could be
    A-lyin’ there in front o’ me
    I didn’t feel like jumpin’.
    Yet, though I shivered like a frog,
    It seemed a log!
    â€˜I takes a leap and lands right on
    The back of that there whopper!’
    He stopped. We waited. Then Big Mac
    Remarked: ‘Well, then, what happened, Jack?’
    â€˜Not much,’ said Jack, and drained his grog.
    â€˜It was a log!’
    The Bulletin , 1899

44
Song of the Artesian Waters
Banjo Paterson
    Now the stock have started dying, for the Lord has sent a drought;
    But we’re sick of prayers and Providence—we’re going to do without;
    With the derricks up above us and the solid earth below,
    We are waiting at the lever for the word to let her go.
    Sinking down, deeper down;
    Oh, we’ll sink it deeper down.
    As the drill is plugging downward at a thousand feet of level,
    If the Lord won’t send us water, oh, we’ll get it from the devil;
    Yes, we’ll get it from the devil deeper down.
    Now, our engine’s