Banjo Paterson Poems

This is the story the stockman told
On the cattle-camp, when the stars were bright;
The moon rose up like a globe of gold
And flooded the plain with her mellow light.
...

Out where the grey streams glide,
Sullen and deep and slow,
And the alligators slide
From the mud to the depths below
...

The roving breezes come and go, the reed-beds sweep and sway,
The sleepy river murmers low,and loiters on its way,
It is the land of lots o'time along the Castlereagh.
. . .. . . . .
...

I had spent the night in the watch-house --
My head was the size of three --
So I went and asked the chemist
To fix up a drink for me;
...

Beside the bare and beaten track of travelling flocks and herds
The woodpecker went tapping on, the postman of the birds,
"I've got a letter here," he said, "that no one's understood,
Addressed as follows: 'To the bird that's like a piece of wood.'
...

I

This is the sunburnt bushman who
Came down from Goondiwindi, Q.
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It came from the prison this morning,
Close-twisted, neat-lettered, and flat;
It lies the hall doorway adorning,
A very good style of a mat.
...

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”?
...

The grey gull sat on a floating whale,
On a floating whale sat he,
And he told his tale of the storm and the gale,
And the ships that he saw with steam and sail,
...

Under the spreading deficit,
The Fitzroy Smithy stands;
The smith, a spendthrift man is he,
With too much on his hands;
...