SALTBUSH BILL, J.P., AND OTHER VERSES

  Not for the love of women toil we, we of the craft,
   Not for the people's praise;
  Only because our goddess made us her own and laughed,
   Claiming us all our days,

  Claiming our best endeavour—body and heart and brain
   Given with no reserve—
  Niggard is she towards us, granting us little gain;
   Still, we are proud to serve.

  Not unto us is given choice of the tasks we try,
   Gathering grain or chaff;
  One of her favoured servants toils at an epic high,
   One, that a child may laugh.

  Yet if we serve her truly in our appointed place,
   Freely she doth accord
  Unto her faithful servants always this saving grace,
   Work is its own reward!

  We have sung the song of the droving days,
   Of the march of the travelling sheep;
  By silent stages and lonely ways
   Thin, white battalions creep.
  But the man who now by the land would thrive
   Must his spurs to a plough-share beat.
  Is there ever a man in the world alive
   To sing the song of the Wheat!

  It's west by south of the Great Divide
   The grim grey plains run out,
  Where the old flock-masters lived and died
   In a ceaseless fight with drought.
  Weary with waiting and hope deferred
   They were ready to own defeat,
  Till at last they heard the master-word—
   And the master-word was Wheat.

  Yarran and Myall and Box and Pine—
   'Twas axe and fire for all;
  They scarce could tarry to blaze the line
   Or wait for the trees to fall,
  Ere the team was yoked, and the gates flung wide,
   And the dust of the horses' feet
  Rose up like a pillar of smoke to guide
   The wonderful march of Wheat.

  Furrow by furrow, and fold by fold,
   The soil is turned on the plain;
  Better than silver and better than gold
   Is the surface-mine of the grain;
  Better than cattle and better than sheep
   In the fight with drought and heat;
  For a streak of stubbornness, wide and deep,
   Lies hid in a grain of Wheat.

  When the stock is swept by the hand of fate,
   Deep down in his bed of clay
  The brave brown Wheat will lie and wait
   For the resurrection day:
  Lie hid while the whole world thinks him dead;
   But the Spring-rain, soft and sweet,
  Will over the steaming paddocks spread
   The first green flush of the Wheat.

  Green and amber and gold it grows
   When the sun sinks late in the West;
  And the breeze sweeps over the rippling rows
   Where the quail and the skylark nest.
  Mountain or river or shining star,
   There's never a sight can beat—
  Away to the sky-line stretching far—
   A sea of the ripening Wheat.

  When the burning harvest sun sinks low,
   And the shadows stretch on the plain,
  The roaring strippers come and go
   Like ships on a sea of grain;
  Till the lurching, groaning waggons bear
   Their tale of the load complete.
  Of the world's great work he has done his share
   Who has gathered a crop of wheat.

  Princes and Potentates and Czars,
   They travel in regal state,
  But old King Wheat has a thousand cars
   For his trip to the water-gate;
  And his thousand steamships breast the tide
   And plough thro' the wind and sleet
  To the lands where the teeming millions bide
   That say:  "Thank God for Wheat!"

      Brumby is the Aboriginal word for a wild horse.  At a recent trial
      a N.S.W. Supreme Court Judge, hearing of Brumby horses, asked:
      "Who is Brumby, and where is his Run?"

  It lies beyond the Western Pines
   Towards the sinking sun,
  And not a survey mark defines
   The bounds of "Brumby's Run".

  On odds and ends of mountain land,
   On tracks of range and rock
  Where no one else can make a stand,
   Old Brumby rears his stock.

  A wild, unhandled lot they are
   Of every shape and breed.
  They venture out 'neath moon and star
   Along the flats to feed;

  But when the dawn makes pink the sky
   And steals along the plain,
  The Brumby horses turn and fly
   Towards the hills again.

  The traveller by the mountain-track
   May hear their hoof-beats pass,
  And catch a glimpse of brown and black
   Dim shadows on the grass.

  The eager stockhorse pricks his ears
   And lifts his head on high
  In wild excitement when he hears
   The Brumby mob go by.

  Old Brumby asks no price or fee
   O'er all his wide domains:
  The man who yards his stock is free
   To keep them for his pains.

  So, off to scour the mountain-side
   With eager eyes aglow,
  To strongholds where the wild mobs hide
   The gully-rakers go.

  A rush of horses through the trees,
   A red shirt making play;
  A sound of stockwhips on the breeze,
   They vanish far away!

       .    .    .    .    .

  Ah, me! before our day is done
   We long with bitter pain
  To ride once more on Brumby's Run
   And yard his mob again.

  Come all you little rouseabouts and climb upon my knee;
  To-day, you see, is Christmas Day, and so it's up to me
  To give you some instruction like—a kind of Christmas tale—
  So name your yarn, and off she goes.  What, "Jonah and the Whale"?

  Well, whales is sheep I've never shore; I've never been to sea,
  So all them great Leviathans is mysteries to me;
  But there's a tale the Bible tells I fully understand,
  About the time the Patriarchs were settling on the