Mary Gilmore

I span and Eve span,
A thread to bind the heart of man!

It's us two when it's morning, And us two when it's night;
And us two when it's troubled, And us two when it's bright;And us two don't want nothing To make life good and true,
And lovin'-sweet, and happy, While us two's got us two.

Moorangoo, the dove, in her high place mourned,
And Mulloka, the Water Spirit, turned
In his shade as he heard her weep,
Sad as the lone that cries in his sleep
At the sound of the gun,
Asking for pity where pity was none.

It was, it was a fairy man Who came to town today.
"I'll make a cake for sixpence, If you will pay, will pay."I paid him with a sixpence, And with a penny, too;
He made a cake of rainbows, And baked it in the dew.
[...]
He iced it with a moonbeam, He patterned it with play,
And sprinkled it with star-dust From off the Milky Way.

I have no thunder in my words, Thunder is much too high;
But I can see as far as birds, And feel the wind go by.And I can follow through the grass The darling-breasted quail;
For, though things great in splendour mass, I choose the lesser grail.

I shall go as my father went,
A thousand plans in his mind,
With something still held unspent
When death lets fall the blind.I shall go as my mother went,
The ink still wet on the line:
I shall pay no rust as rent
For the house that is mine.

I never knew how wide the dark,
I never knew the depth of space,
I never knew how frail a bark,
How small is man within his place,Not till I heard the swans go by,
Not till I marked their haunting cry,
Not till, within the vague on high,
I watched them pass across the sky. ...

Never allow the thoughtless to delcare
That we have no tradition here!

Emptied of us the land, Ghostly our going,
Fallen, like spears the hand Dropped in the throwing.We are the lost who went, Like the cranes, crying;
Hunted, lonely, and spent, Broken and dying.

Nurse no long grief,
Lest the heart flower no more;
Grief builds no barns; its plough
Rusts at the door.

I have grown past hate and bitterness, I see the world as one;
But though I can no longer hate, My son is still my son.All men at God's round table sit, And all men must be fed;
But this loaf in my hand, This loaf is my son's bread.

Never admit the pain,
Bury it deep;
Only the weak complain.
Complaint is cheap.

I am not very patient, Yet patient I must be
With him beside my pillow And the babe upon my knee.
[...]
Strange that I was given
Thoughts that soar to heaven,
Yet must I sit and keep
Children in their sleep!

Youth troubles over eternity; age grasps at a day and is satisfied to have even the day.

"I'm old
Botany Bay;
Stiff in the joints,
Little to say.I am he
Who paved the way,
That you might walk
At your ease to-day;
[...]
I split the rock;
I felled the tree:
The nation was —
Because of me!"Old Taking the sun
From day to day. ...
Shame on the mouth
That would deny
The knotted hands
That set us high!