Old Farmer Jack
Old farmer Jack gazed on his wheat,
And feared the frost would nip it.
Said he, "it's nearly seven feet -
I must begin to strip 'it.
He stripped it with a stripper and
He bagged it with a bagger;
The bags were all so lumpy that
They made the bumper stagger.
The lumper staggered up the stack
Where he was told to stack it;
And Jack was paid and put the cash
Inside his linen jacket.
Wangaratta
At the meeting of the waters
Where the dark tree shadows play
Wangaratta's sons and daughters
Dream the drowsy hours away;
Placid see the season's greeting
Winter storm and summer sun
Wed, to flow henceforth as one.
Where two northbound rivers meeting,
Long since prone to sudden dangers
When, to dim her dawning pride,
Morgan and his wild bushrangers
Thronged her pleasant countryside,
Now in her quiet graveyard resting
Lies old shame and that rash lad,
Where a mate, on tin attesting,
Pleads that 'he was not all bad.'
Crime and she are almost strangers
Now, since those ill doers died.
Bishops reign where once bushrangers
Slew her peace and shamed her pride.
And content within her waxes
In this pious atmosphere
Where naught now save threat-worn taxes
Wakens echoes of past fear.
At the meeting of the waters
Where tree shadows shift and sway,
Nothing lingers here that slaughters
Her bucolic calm away.
Done at last with Youth's adventure
Quiet lady slow to move,
And wealthier grown she lives down censure
As she drifts in one straight groove.
Frankenstein
We roam about the countryside
And view the farmlands rolling wide
A picture surely this of peace, of planty.
We mark within these sylvan scenes
The whirr and clatter of machines
That help one man to do the work of twenty.
We mark the orchards fruited deep,
The flocks of well-contented sheep,
The drowsing kine all corpulent and sated.
We gaze with gladness undisguised,
And thank our stars we're civilised;
Yet long for life a shade less complicated.
For birds, now vocal in the trees,
And beasts, with grass about their knees,
Accept in simple wise the gifts abounding,
But, of all creatures, man alone,
The brainiest being ever known,
Must scratch his head and fall to self-confounding.
Alas, that man's own cleverness
Should land him in this pretty mess
Where man blames man and nation charges nation.
Tho' wise blokes con it o'er and o'er
The sum of all their labored lore
Seems but to complicate the complication.
To pluck an apple form a tree
And feed upon it seems to be
A simple act where none could be mistaken.
Alas, our world has grown so big
That, tho' one man may raise a pig,
It needs a score to sell the breakfast bacon.
From earth alone man wins his bread;
By earth alone are all things fed;
A fact we'll recognise when we grow calmer.
Justice for all may then prevail,
For farmers first, then down the scale
To the man who farms the man who farms the farmer.
