Leon Gellert

Leon Gellert Poems

There’s a lonely stretch of hillocks:
There’s a beach asleep and drear:
There’s a battered broken fort beside the sea.
There are sunken trampled graves:
...

Thy talks on God, and glories of His fields
Are woven into my unworthy past.
The fragments of thy thoughts my memory yields
...

The guns were silent, and the silent hills
had bowed their grasses to a gentle breeze
I gazed upon the vales and on the rills,
And whispered, "What of these?' and "What of these?
...

Long before the dawn breaks

With a bird's cry,
...

We always had to do our work at night.
I wondered why we had to be so sly.
I wondered why we couldn't have our fight
Under the open sky.
...

The island sleeps,-but it has no delight
For em, to whom that sleep has been unkind.
My thoughts are long of what seems long ago,
...

‘At every cost,’ they said, ‘it must be done.’
They told us in the early afternoon.
We sit and wait the coming of the sun
...

"That just reminds me of a yarn," he said;

And look for the body of Lofty Lane
...

I lie by the garden wall,
Buried and all alone;
The brown camellias fall
One by one on the stone.
...

Be still. The bleeding night is in suspense
Of watchful agony and coloured thought,
And every beating vein and trembling sense,
...

The world rolls wet with blood,
and the skinny hand of Death
gropes at the beating heart.
...

12.

The night has come,, I feel the desert dew,
I lie in Afric's sands
And breath the night, for night like these are few
In other lands;
...

Waft on, thou upward breeze
From the warm south!
And on her wayward mouth
Imprint my far farewells
...

14.

A red-roofed house is shining to the skies;
A house red-roofed and brilliant in the wind:
A house of colour filled with wandering eyes;
...

15.

A moon upon a moonlit sea
To me thou art;
And every shining part
Of heaven belong to thee;
...

Some scarlet poppies lay upon our right.
He watched them through his periscope all day.
He watched then all the day; but in the night
...

17.

When my poor body died,-Alas!
I watched it topple down a hill
And sink beside a tuft of grass.
I laughed like mad,
...

When Christmas comes the Christmas heat'll
bring once more the Christmas Beetle
The first inflammatory breeze'll
set him buzzing like a diesel.
...

The stars, the fields, will know him never-
more;
his friends, his trees, the restless swerving sea.
...

The iron is hidden in forgetfulness.
A smoothness comes to men and lies on lands.
Women of peace arise in lustred dress,
...

Leon Gellert Biography

Leon Maxwell Gellert was born in 1892 and educated in Adelaide, Australia.His Grandparents were Hungarian immigrants. Leon was regularly beaten by his Father James, so at the age of 17 he began a course of self-defence lessons, which were to prove useful when, one day his father attacked him with a heavy piece of timber, James Gellert was thrown on his back. Leon, after leaving school worked for a time as a pupil-teacher until he enlisted as a private in 10th AIF. On October 22 1914, Gellert and the 10th Battalion set off for Egypt. Corporal Gellert became drunk for the first time in his life, on Melbourne Bitter whilst sailing on the Indian Ocean. Gellert resumed writing poetry after arriving in Cairo; his output grew once the 10th set off for the Dardanelles. For seven weeks, his battalion was kept in reserve on their troop ship before being ordered to land at Ari Burnu beach at dawn on April 25. Gellert survived nine weeks on Gallipoli before coming down with dysentery. He had to be evacuated to Malta, where he contracted typhoid and was sent to England to convalesce. This is where most of his poems were written, including The Last to Leave. After collapsing into a coma that doctors suspected was epileptic, Gellert was discharged as medically unfit on June 30, 1916. Amazingly, he re-enlisted in November, only to be discharged four days later when his medical record was uncovered. After the death of his wife Kathleen in 1969 in Sydney he moved back to Adelaide where he died on 22nd August 1977.)

The Best Poem Of Leon Gellert

Anzac Cove

There’s a lonely stretch of hillocks:
There’s a beach asleep and drear:
There’s a battered broken fort beside the sea.
There are sunken trampled graves:
And a little rotting pier:
And winding paths that wind unceasingly.
There’s a torn and silent valley:
There’s a tiny rivulet
With some blood upon the stones beside its mouth.
There are lines of buried bones:
There’s an unpaid waiting debt :
There’s a sound of gentle sobbing in the South.

Leon Gellert Comments

silvia 20 June 2018

I like it, however I do enjoy turnips more

2 1 Reply
Robert Winston 12 February 2019

I remember Leon as an essayist. He had a regular column in the Sydney Morning Herald during the 1950's. I was a regular reader of his thoughtful essays as a school boy. I was astonished to read here of his role on Galipoli. I never came across his poetry and am surprised he was well known for it. Leon deserved to be better known.

1 0 Reply
Sylvia Frances Chan 12 October 2021

Born in Adelaide and died there too after so many years of life with poetry, despite his father's abuse and beaten, he became 85 years old. Sad history of this great poet from Aussie

0 0 Reply
Sylvia Frances Chan 12 October 2021

3) on Melbourne Bitter whilst sailing on the Indian Ocean.The sad youth and young years of this great Australian poet

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Sylvia Frances Chan 12 October 2021

2) James Gellert was thrown on his back. Leon, after leaving school worked for a time as a pupil-teacher until he enlisted as a private in 10th AIF. On October 22 1914, Gellert and the 10th Battalion set off for Egypt. Corporal Gellert became drunk for the first time in his life,

0 0 Reply
Sylvia Frances Chan 12 October 2021

Leon was regularly beaten by his Father James, so at the age of 17 he began a course of self-defence lessons, which were to prove useful when, one day his father attacked him with a heavy piece of timber,

0 0 Reply
Barry Hishion 15 November 2019

One wonders why this poem is not given prminence by the media on Anzac Day. I learnt it at school 1948.

1 0 Reply

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