No Foe Shall Gather Our Harvest by Dame Mary Gilmore

<< prev. poem	Poems by Dame Mary Gilmore: 4 / 11	next poem >>

No Foe Shall Gather Our Harvest

Sons of the mountains of Scotland,
Welshmen of coomb and defile,
Breed of the moors of England,
Children of Erin's green isle,
We stand four square to the tempest,
Whatever the battering hail-
No foe shall gather our harvest,
Or sit on our stockyard rail.

Our women shall walk in honour,
Our children shall know no chain,
This land, that is ours forever,
The invader shall strike at in vain.
Anzac!...Tobruk!...and Kokoda!...
Could ever the old blood fail?
No foe shall gather our harvest,
Or sit on our stockyard rail.

So hail-fellow-met we muster,
And hail-fellow-met fall in,
Wherever the guns may thunder,
Or the rocketing air-mail spin!
Born of the soil and the whirlwind,
Though death itself be the gale-
No foe shall gather our harvest
Or sit on our stockyard rail.

We are the sons of Australia,
of the men who fashioned the land;
We are the sons of the women
Who walked with them hand in hand;
And we swear by the dead who bore us,
By the heroes who blazed the trail,
No foe shall gather our harvest,
Or sit on our stockyard rail.

Dame Mary Gilmore

Read poems about / on: women, children, green, death, son, woman, child, hero

User Rating:

10.0 /10
(4 votes)

E-mail this poem to e friend

• Send this poem as eCard

• Add this poem to MyPoemList

• Print friendly version

Comments about this poem (No Foe Shall Gather Our Harvest by Dame Mary Gilmore)

more comments >>

Click here to write your comments about this poem (No Foe Shall Gather Our Harvest by Dame Mary Gilmore)

Sian Thomas (9/14/2006 4:32:00 AM)
i was studying the Australian expierence in school when i came across this poem as one of my texts. it was interesting to notice how ironic some of the lines are when you view them from the perspective of an Indigenous Australian, especially those of 'fashioning the land' and continually reference to the stockyard rail which is of course a European Invention.

William Burt (10/13/2004 4:22:00 PM)
I remember reading the poem at school and being overwhelmed by the patriotism is exudes.

Mary Gilmore is representative of an Australia long gone; an Australia which truly saw itself as a new experiment in democracy and had no doubt about its superiority not only over those nations to our North but over the 'old and tired' nations of Europe.

To 'sit on the stockyard rail' is a metephor for visiting as a friend.

I truly love this poem and my chest swells and my eyes water when I read it

Read all 2 comments >>