Tip Kelaher Poem by Francis Duggan

He penned such great verse to his Homeland afar
But he never did return home from the war
In Egypt he fell in nineteen forty two
The races at Randwick never more to view.

Tip Kelaher an Aussie soldier and poet
A fellow one might say well worthy of note
He sung of the Bush and the Sydney he knew
And to the wide brown lands till death he was true.

He never returned to see old Coogee Bay
To smell the sea weed in the warm sunlight of day
Washed up on the beach and left there by the tide,
In Egypt he fought and in Egypt he died.

In the Stockman's September one can visualize
How home must have seemed in the soldier poet's eyes
Around the old homestead yellow daisies in bloom
And the Bushlands in Spring scent of Nature's perfume.

The good only die young at least so they say
And Tip did not return from the war far away
He fell in Egypt on a day in July
And his love of Homeland with the young poet did die.