"We'Re All Australians Now"
Australia takes her pen in hand
To write a line to you,
To let you fellows understand
How proud we are of you.
From shearing shed and cattle run,
From Broome to Hobson's Bay,
Each native-born Australian son
Stands straighter up today.
The man who used to "hump his drum",
Miners
There was a whispering in my hearth,
A sigh of the coal.
Grown wistful of a former earth
It might recall.
I listened for a tale of leaves
And smothered ferns,
Frond-forests; and the low, sly lives
Before the fawns.
“shouting” For A Camel
It was over at Coolgardie that a mining speculator,
Who was going down the township just to make a bit o' chink,
Went off to hire a camel from a camel propagator,
And the Afghan said he'd lend it if he'd stand the beast a drink.
Yes, the only price he asked him was to stand the beast a drink.
He was cheap, very cheap, as the dromedaries go.
So the mining speculator made the bargain, proudly thinking
He had bested old Mahomet, he had done him in the eye.
Then he clambered on the camel, and the while the beast was drinking
Remembrances
Summer pleasures they are gone like to visions every one
And the cloudy days of autumn and of winter cometh on
I tried to call them back but unbidden they are gone
Far away from heart and eye and for ever far away
Dear heart and can it be that such raptures meet decay
I thought them all eternal when by Langley Bush I lay
I thought them joys eternal when I used to shout and play
On its bank at 'clink and bandy' 'chock' and 'taw' and
ducking stone
Where silence sitteth now on the wild heath as her own
Peter Bell, A Tale
PROLOGUE
There's something in a flying horse,
There's something in a huge balloon;
But through the clouds I'll never float
Until I have a little Boat,
Shaped like the crescent-moon.
And now I 'have' a little Boat,
In shape a very crescent-moon
Starting From Paumanok
STARTING from fish-shape Paumanok, where I was born,
Well-begotten, and rais'd by a perfect mother;
After roaming many lands--lover of populous pavements;
Dweller in Mannahatta, my city--or on
southern savannas;
Or a soldier camp'd, or carrying my knapsack and gun--or a miner in
California;
Or rude in my home in Dakota's woods, my diet meat, my drink from the
spring;
Song Of The Exposition
AFTER all, not to create only, or found only,
But to bring, perhaps from afar, what is already founded,
To give it our own identity, average, limitless, free;
To fill the gross, the torpid bulk with vital religious fire;
Not to repel or destroy, so much as accept, fuse, rehabilitate;
To obey, as well as command--to follow, more than to lead;
These also are the lessons of our New World;
--While how little the New, after all--how much the Old, Old World!
Song Of The Broad-Axe
WEAPON, shapely, naked, wan!
Head from the mother's bowels drawn!
Wooded flesh and metal bone! limb only one, and lip only one!
Gray-blue leaf by red-heat grown! helve produced from a little seed
sown!
Resting the grass amid and upon,
To be lean'd, and to lean on.
Strong shapes, and attributes of strong shapes--masculine trades,
Here Died
There's many a schoolboy's bat and ball that are gathering dust at home,
For he hears a voice in the future call, and he trains for the war to come;
A serious light in his eyes is seen as he comes from the schoolhouse gate;
He keeps his kit and his rifle clean, and he sees that his back is straight.
But straight or crooked, or round, or lame – you may let these words take root;
As the time draws near for the sterner game, all boys should learn to shoot,
From the beardless youth to the grim grey-beard, let Australians ne'er forget,
Sing Of The Banner At Day-Break
POET.
O A new song, a free song,
Flapping, flapping, flapping, flapping, by sounds, by voices clearer,
By the wind's voice and that of the drum,
By the banner's voice, and child's voice, and sea's voice, and
father's voice,
Low on the ground and high in the air,
On the ground where father and child stand,
Poem For Geeta Radhakrishna Menon
Under starry skies she paints canvas of Vincent's life
Each shiny star a glimmer of hope in his tragic life
A falling star like a teardrop falls on her wet canvas
Her moist eyes holding back so many tears of endured pain
From hellish coal mines Satan rejoicing with such great fervor
As Vincent suffers in anguish for his and the miners' agony
Her prayers for Vincent are in his sermons to God's most faithful
Answered by God informing him that it's not his calling...not yet
His callings conveyed through the blood of a poet's lonely pen
The Mercy
The ship that took my mother to Ellis Island
Eighty-three years ago was named "The Mercy."
She remembers trying to eat a banana
without first peeling it and seeing her first orange
in the hands of a young Scot, a seaman
who gave her a bite and wiped her mouth for her
with a red bandana and taught her the word,
"orange," saying it patiently over and over.
A long autumn voyage, the days darkening
with the black waters calming as night came on,
Our Mother Pocahontas
(Note: — Pocahontas is buried at Gravesend, England.)
"Pocahontas' body, lovely as a poplar, sweet as a red haw in November or a pawpaw in May — did she wonder? does she remember — in the dust — in the cool tombs?"
CARL SANDBURG.
I
Powhatan was conqueror,
A Childhood Summer
I remember those long hot Summers as if they were yesterday,
When the sun shone down on our street, the place I loved to play.
For many a window glistened, cleaned well to a sparkling shine,
Where starched white shirts blew gaily, on many a washing line.
I remember the sounds of the trains at night, as they passed on the track below,
Way down, the steep embankment, where many wild ferns would grow.
And many a door was left ajar, a life filled with Honesty and Trust,
When everyone toiled and struggled, to bring home a well earned crust.
Vincent Van Gogh 36 - A Wave Of Passion
Back in his room at Denise's bakery,
Vincent placed his new drawings on the table.
Looking at it, he felt he had made shabby sketches.
He copied them into a new sheet of paper,
Improving and refining his drawings.
A sudden excitement gripped Vincent.
He wanted to see pictures all around him.
It was like a wave of passion,
Rushing, gushing all over his being.
He craved for art and paintings!
Vincent Van Gogh 26 - A Quick Decision!
Vincent had to take a quick decision!
He should either run away from the Borinage,
Or stay in Borinage and live like the miners,
To serve the miners, not just by preaching alone,
But by becoming a miner himself.
That was the proper way to serve God!
How could he live in luxury in Madam Denis's house,
When the poor miners were suffering without enough food?
Vincent packed up his clothes, shoes, books,
Our Lady Of The Mine
The Blue Horizon wuz a mine us fellers all thought well uv,
And there befell the episode I now perpose to tell uv;
'T wuz in the year uv sixty-nine,--somewhere along in summer,--
There hove in sight one afternoon a new and curious comer;
His name wuz Silas Pettibone,--a' artist by perfession,--
With a kit of tools and a big mustache and a pipe in his possession.
He told us, by our leave, he 'd kind uv like to make some sketches
Uv the snowy peaks, 'nd the foamin' crick, 'nd the distant mountain
Vincent Van Gogh 19 - In Black Pit
The life of a miner anywhere in the world is pathetic,
Most of their lives, they live in darkness!
Deep down in the mine, it is dark, black and suffocating.
The air around them is full of coal dust and poisonous gas.
The miners can hardly breathe!
When they carry the coal inside the dark mine,
They can hardly stand straight, they crouch and crawl,
Bend on their knees and doubled into two.
Young children of eight or nine years work in the mine,
When they reach the age of twenty, they all have lung ailments.
Vincent Van Gogh 12 - Reading - Lust For Life
I remember reading the book - ‘ Lust for life'
Penned by Irving Stone, some years back.
It was so engrossing and stimulating!
I just could not keep the book down.
I kept reading the book for a whole year.
The sad story of an artiste moved me so much.
Being an artiste myself, I fully identified with his struggle.
It was at a time, when I had begun my career as a danseuse
In India, it is so difficult for an artiste to rise
Localities
Wagon wheel gap is a place I never saw
And Red Horse Gulch and the chutes of Cripple Creek.
Red-shirted miners picking in the sluices,
Gamblers with red neckties in the night streets,
The fly-by-night towns of Bull Frog and Skiddoo,
The night-cool limestone white of Death Valley,
The straight drop of eight hundred feet
From a shelf road in the Hasiampa Valley:
Men and places they are I never saw.