A B Banjo Paterson Poems

The Boastful Crow and the Laughing Jack
Were telling tales of the outer back:
"I've just been travelling far and wide,
At the back of Bourke and the Queensland side;
...

The Mountains
A land of sombre, silent hills, where mountain cattle go
By twisted tracks, on sidelings deep, where giant gum trees grow
And the wind replies, in the river oaks, to the song of the stream below.
...

West of Dubbo the west begins
The land of leisure and hope and trust,
Where the black man stalks with his dogs and gins
And Nature visits the settlers' sins
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Ambition
I am the maid of the lustrous eyes
Of great fruition,
Whom the sons of men that are over-wise
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On Western plains, where shade is not,
'Neath summer skies of cloudless blue,
Where all is dry and all is hot,
There stands the town of Dandaloo --
...

There's a sunny Southern land,
And it's there that I would be
Where the big hills stand,
In the South Countrie!
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On the outer Barcoo where the churches are few,
And men of religion are scanty,
On a road never cross'd 'cept by folk that are lost,
One Michael Magee had a shanty.
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The mountain road goes up and down
From Gundagai to Tumut Town
And, branching off, there runs a track
Across the foothills grim and black,
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HIGH EXPLOSIVE by A.B. "Banjo" Paterson


'Twas the dingo pup to his dam that said,
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The drought is down on field and flock,
The river-bed is dry;
And we must shift the starving stock
Before the cattle die.
...