He had offices in Sydney, not so many years ago,
And his shingle bore the legend `Peter Anderson and Co.',
But his real name was Careless, as the fellows understood --
...
Only one old post is standing --
Solid yet, but only one --
Where the milking, and the branding,
...
I only woke this morning
To find the world is fair—
I’m going on for forty,
With scarcely one grey hair;
...
A tall, slight, English gentleman,
With an eyeglass to his eye;
He mostly says “Good-Bai” to you,
When he means to say “Good-bye”;
...
Where the needle-woman toils
Through the night with hand and brain,
Till the sickly daylight shudders like a spectre at the pain –
Till her eyes seem to crawl,
...
I'll tell you what you wanderers, who drift from town to town;
Don't look into a good girl's eyes, until you've settled down.
It's hard to go away alone and leave old chums behind-
It's hard to travel steerage when your tastes are more refined-
...
When the heavy sand is yielding backward from your blistered feet,
And across the distant timber you can SEE the flowing heat;
When your head is hot and aching, and the shadeless plain is wide,
And it's fifteen miles to water in the scrub the other side --
...
By homestead, hut, and shearing-shed,
By railroad, coach, and track --
By lonely graves of our brave dead,
Up-Country and Out-Back:
...
On western plain and eastern hill
Where once my fancy ranged,
The station hands are riding still
And they are little changed.
...
’Tis a yarn I heard of a new-chum ‘trap’
On the edge of the Never-Never,
Where the dead men lie and the black men lie,
And the bushman lies for ever.
...