Vance Palmer Poems

Youth that rides the wildest horse,
Youth that throws the deadliest steer,
Spending strength without remorse,
Grappling with the ghosts of fear,
...

NIGHT, and a bitter sky, and strange birds crying,
The wan trees whisper and the winds make moan,
Here where in ultimate peace their bones are lying
In gaunt waste places that they made their own,
...

Will they never fade or pass!
The mud, and the misty figures endlessly coming
In file through the foul morass,
And the grey flood-water ripping the reeds and grass,
...

Fat and full of health are the valleys of the Condamine,
There the yellow maize and the green tobacco grow,
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It's a long road, a cruel road, the road to Roma Jail,
birds in all the branches mocking as you pass,
...