Poems by Edward Dyson

We were challenged by The Dingoes , they're the pride of Squatter's Gap,

There's a fresh track down the paddock

‘No, you can’t count me in, boys; I’m off it,

There’s a wind up that licks like a flame,

Up a dark and fetid alley, where the offal and the slime

The first one with conviction penned:

I heard this day, as I may no more,

Australia, my native land,

From her home beyond the river in the parting of the hills,

He was working on a station in the Western when I knew him,

A quaint old gabled cottage sleeps between the raving hills.

Down to it is Plugger Bill,

Marching somewhat out of order when the band is cock-a-hoop,

All was up with Richard Tanner

Dear Ned, I now take up my pen to write you these few lines,

As bullets come to us they're thin,

From a river siding, the railway town,

When the horse has been unharnessed and we've flushed the old machine,

In politics there’s room for jest;

Skirting the swamp and the tangled scrub,

Back again 'n' nothin' missin' barrin' arf a hand,

The boarder in the bar-room rose,

Once in a blue eternity they gave us dabs of rum

It is thirty moons since I slung me hook

Out of work and out of money,out of friends that means, you bet,

‘I’m off on the wallaby!’ cries Old Ben,

What is meant by active service

In days before the trouble Jo was rated as a slob.

Out of luck, mate? Have a liquor. Hang it, where’s the use complaining?

He came from tumbled country past the humps of Buffalo

Men of all the lands Australian from the Gulf to Derwent River,

A mile-long panto dragon ploddin' 'opeless all the day,

This war's a waste of slurry, and its atmosphere is mud,

I have a trim typewriter now,

‘Hello! that’s the whistle, be moving.

Happy he in whom the honest love of fair endeavour lingers,

I slung me khaki suit to-day.

Here in the flamin' thick of thick of things,

Simson settled in the timber when his arm was strong and true,

Ben Unger’s wife was dark and small,

Hauled I was from out the tip

When Flo resolved to go to town from brothers three a yell went up,

My hut is built of stringy-bark, the window’s calico,

I'm lyin' in a narrow bed,

I’m stewing in a brick-built town;

He was almost blind, and wasted

"Who'll bid? Who'll bid?" the question rang

The Viennese authorities have melted down the great bell in St. Stephen's to supply metal for guns or muntions. Every poor village has made a similar gift. - Lokal Anzeiger.

The great men framed the fierce decrees

What price yer humble, Dicko Smith, in gaudy putties girt,

Past a dull, grey plain where a world-old grief seems to brood o’er the silent land,

We are wondering why those fellows who are writing cheerful ditties

We've a tale to tell you of a spavined emit,

I'm wonderin' why those fellers who go buildin' chipper ditties,

A straight old fossicker was Lanky Mann,

Just beyond All Alone, going back,

I took to khaki at a word,

I said: “I leave my bit of land,

“A soldier braving disease and death on the battlefield has a seven times better chance of life than a new-born baby.” - Secretary of War, U.S.A.

We were living in a flat; it was number eighty-three.

We were storemen, clerks and packers on an ammunition dump

“Late Midshipman John Travers (Chester), aged 16 years. He was mortally wounded early in the action, yet he remained alone in a most exposed post awaiting orders, with his gun's crew dead all round him.”

A letter came from Dick to-day;

He rode along one splendid noon,

Three other soldier blokes 'n' me packed 'ome from foreign lands;

We don't keep a grand piano in our hut beside the creek,

He's an old grey horse, with his head bowed sadly,

Don told me that he loved me dear

When the white sun scorches the fair, green land in the rage of his fierce desires,

There's a sudden, fierce clang of the knocker, then the sound of a voice in the shaft,

There are tracks through the scrub, there’s a track down the hill,

We’re more than partners, Ned 'n' me,

In the morn when the keen blade bites the tree,

’Tis the tale of Simon Steven, braceman at the Odd-and-Even,

Quite a proud and happy man is Finn the Packer

He was a jobbing hand from the printers’ flat. His name was Raymond Cato, but he acquired “Toucher” as a complimentary title when we knew him better. He was tall, sallow, languid and distressingly impecunious. I put it that way because Mr Cato’s impe

If you want a game to tame you and to take your measure in,

I see grim War, a bestial thing,

Brown passed away, and Mrs Brown,

On summer nights when moonbeams flow

The young lieutenant's face was grey.

There was a moment when of you

We specked as boys o'er worked-out ground

Would you be the King, the strong man, first in council and in toil,

I saw the Christ down from His cross,

’Twas old Flynn, the identity, told us

Whey our trooper hit wide water every heart was yearin' back

I’ve sung of Honor’s golden hair

’Twas a sleepy little chapel by a wattled hill erected,

‘That's the boiler at The Bell, mates! Tumble out, Ned, neck and crop,

Devine came back the other day.

I see thee still in doublet wide,

‘Harry! what, that yourself, back to old Vic., man,

The Spring is gone. I have not seen

Our Mr. Jiggs was certainly an estimable youth,