Joseph Furphy

Rating: 4.67
Rating: 4.67

Joseph Furphy Poems

Sing the evil days we see, and the worse that are to be,
In such doggerel as dejection will allow,
...

Life is a Poem, short or long,
A dismal Dirge, or jovial Song,
A Psalm of faith, or Lay of Pride,
One stanza by each year supplied.
...

Lincoln is gone — who ruled the Western Land
From the Pacific to the Atlantic's brim —
And cold and nerveless lies the mighty hand
...

Are you, like me, a peevish brat,
With feelings extra-fine?
Are you disposed to whip the cat
When misadventure lays your flat?
...

The fleecy clouds had passed away
Before the bright approach of day,
...

Deem not this wielder of this pen
The happiest bloke alive,
For I am only five-foot-ten,
And ye are ten-foot-five.
...

“Are you the Cove?” he spoke the words
As swagmen only can;
The Squatter freezingly inquired,
“What do you mean, my man?”
...

Now the truce of night brings respite to the sordid care of day,
And in listlessness I pace the river side,
...

You argue — as sympathy governs your bias —
That Wisdom distributes the capon and crust,
...

When the great Creator fashion'd us, and saw that we were good,
He commission'd us to dominate the planet as it stood.
...

'Prove what Life can give of gladness;
Seek for aught that merits trust —
All thy mirth will turn to sadness,
All thy bliss to cold disgust.
...

A gentle loving thoughtful boy,
But happy gay and bright:
A gleam of sunshine from the sky
That filled a home with light.
...

O Time! Time! Time!
Thou wondrous mystery!
Within whose rune and rhyme
Lies all Man's history
...

O kid! with face of healthy tan,
With lunch-bag, books and slate;
You needn't long to be a man,
Self-confident and great;
...

In spite of his imposing plea,
A freeman whom the truth makes free
Is often fairly up a tree,
And marvels why it should be thus.
...

Nurse your 'unconquerable soul,'
But diligently bear in mind
That Life is not a wayward stroll,
For Circumstance asserts control,
...

Would I were a profit monger,
Buying cheap, and selling dear,
Groceries, or something stronger,
Toys, or pipes, or sporting gear,
...

While changing Seasons run their course,
Controlled and guided from above,
It is thy part to re-enforce
...

The Seraph-song of morning's prime
That hail'd Messiah's birth,
The charter of a coming time
When Love shall rule the earth,
...

Opposed to Jewish Temple-rites,
Strange to the lore of Greece,
That message comes from starry heights,
A key to lasting Peace.
...

Joseph Furphy Biography

Joseph Furphy was born at Yering in the upper valley, Victoria, the son of Protestant Irish bounty emigrants who arrived in Australia in 1841. It was Joseph's older brother, John, who invented the Furphy water-cart, which was the means the expression ‘furphy’ came into Australian English.) Joseph Furphy gained his education at a small school in Kyneton, and subsequently worked on his father’s farm before trying his luck on the goldfields. He was then employed as a threshing machine operator in the Daylesford district. Joseph married Leonie Germaine, a French girl, in 1867, and worked her mother’s vineyard and farm. In 1868 he acquired a selection in the Lake Cooper district, but was unsuccessful and after five years left the farm to find work on the goldfields and as a labourer. He then moved his family to the Riverina in NSW and became a bullocky with his own team in 1877. Furphy carted wool and various other goods from his base in Hay along the Murray and to northern stations. It was not an easy life for him or his family and after the 1883 drought, which practically decimated his team, he went to work in his brother’s foundry in Shepparton, Victoria. With the security of a weekly wage he had time to write and in 1889 he submitted essays and short stories to the Bulletin under the pseudonym ‘Warrigal Jack’; From 1893 he became ‘Tom Collins’. In 1897 he concluded a novel of 1125 pages and sent it to the editor of the Bulletin, J.F. Archibald. Archibald’s literary editor, A.G. Stephens suggested revisions and the book was finally published in 1903. Furphy used the excised sections of his novels to compose two more books. However, due to the slow sales of Such is Life, neither was published during his life. In 1905 Furphy moved to WA to join his sons who had set up an iron foundry. He died there in 1912. Furphy is regarded as one of the most substantial of pre-First World War Australian fiction writers.)

The Best Poem Of Joseph Furphy

The Gumsucker's Dirge

Sing the evil days we see, and the worse that are to be,
In such doggerel as dejection will allow,
We are pilgrims, sorrow-led, with no Beulah on ahead,
No elysian Up the Country for us now.

For the settlements extend till they seem to have no end;
Spreading silently, you can't tell when or how;
And a home-infested land stretches out on every hand,
So there is no Up the Country for us now.

On the six-foot Mountain peak, up and down the dubious creek,
Where the cockatoos alone should make a row,
There the rooster tears his throat, to announce with homely note,
That there is no Up the Country for us now.

Where the dingo should be seen, sounds the Amy tambourine,
While the hardest case surrenders with a vow;
And the church-bell, going strong, makes us feel we've lived too long,
Since there is no Up the Country for us now.

And along the pine-ridge side, where the mallee-hen should hide,
You will see some children driving home a cow;
Whilst, ballooning on a line, female garniture gives sign,
That there is no Up the Country for us now.

Here, in place of emu's eggs, you will find surveyors' pegs,
And the culvert where there ought to be a slough;
There, a mortise in the ground, shows the digger has been round,
And has left no Up the Country for us now.

And across this fenced-in view, like our friend the well-sung Jew,
Goes the swaggy, with a frown upon his brow,
He is cabin'd, cribb'd, confin'd, for the thought is on his mind,
That there is no Up the Country for him now.

And the boy that bolts from home has no decent place to roam,
No region with adventure to endow,
But his ardent spirit cools at the sight of farms and schools,
Hence, there is no Up the Country for him now.

Such a settling, spreading curse must infallibly grow worse,
Till the saltbush disappears before the plough,
But the future, evil-fraught, is forgotten in the thought,
That there is no Up the Country for us now.

We must do a steady shift, and devote our minds to thrift,
Till we reach at length the standard of the Chow
For we're crumpled side by side in a world no longer wide,
And there is no Up the Country for us now.

Better we were cold and still, with our famous Jim and Bill,
Beneath the interdicted wattle-bough,
For the angels made our date five-and-twenty years too late,
And there is no Up the Country for us now.

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