Text Classics
CLARKE, JOHN. Dip. Lid. (Hons), PhD in Cattle (Oxen). Adviser and comforter to the government and people of Australia. Born 1948. Educ. subsequently. Travelled extensively throughout Holy Lands, then left New Zealand for Europe. Held important positions with Harrods, Easibind, John Lewis, Selfridges, etc, 1971–72. Escaped (decorated). Rejoined unit. Arrived Australia 1977. Held positions with ABC radio (sckd), ABC television (dfnct), various newspapers (dcd) and Aust. film industry (fkd). Currently a freelance expert specialising in matters of a general character. Recreations: organising Olympics, covering tennis tournaments. Address: c– the people next door or just pop it inside the door of the fusebox. Should be back Friday.
ALSO BY JOHN CLARKE
Still the Two
A Dagg at My Table
The Howard Miracle
The 7.56 Report
The Tournament
The Catastrophe Continues
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Copyright © John Clarke 1989, 1994, 2003
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
First published by Allen & Unwin 1994
Published with new poems by The Text Publishing Company 2003
This edition published 2012
Designed by WH Chong
Primary print ISBN: 9781921922152
Ebook ISBN: 9781921921773
Author: Clarke, John, 1948-
Title: The even more complete book of Australian verse / John Clarke.
Series: Text classics.
Subjects: Australian poetry.
Dewey Number: A821.00994
For Helen
Table of Contents
Cover Page
About the Author
Also by
Title page
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction
Anon.
Tide Is Igoin Oute
Bob Herrick
Upon Julia’s Speedos
Gavin Milton
On His Government
Alexandra Pope
The Warniad
Jeoffry Smart
Hoosagood Boythen
Bill Blake
The Work of Harmony
Rabbi Burns
To A Howard
Arnold Wordsworth
Lines Composed About Half-Way Across The Pyrmont Bridge
Trevor Henry Leigh Hunt
Jenny Hit Me
Thomas Wolfe
The Burial of Surgeon Moore at Narrunga
Warren Keats
A Customary Tale
Fifteen Bobsworth Longfellow
Myer’s Whopper
Ted Lear
Limericks
The Pibbledy-Pobbledy Man
William McGonigall
The Westgate Bridge Disaster
Emmy-Lou Dickinson
Poems
Thomas ‘The Tank’ Hardy
The Failed Businessman
Carol Lewis
The Hunting of The Smirk
Anon.
Who Killed Ned Kelly?
Very Manly Hopkins
Pied Again
Billy ‘The Swank’ Gilbert
The Pirates of penzance.com
Teddy Bentley
Cheerios
Walter Burley Yeats
The Flashing Gyre
Arthur ‘Guitar Boogie’ Patterson
The Authentic Australian Bush Ballad
Jems Choice
The Ballad of Jasper O’Reilly
R. A. C. V. Milne
The Dog’s Breakfast
Obviousness
Sigrid Sassoon
The Prime Minister
Kahlihliji Bran
The Half-Yearly Prophet
Noeleen Sitwell
Still Raining
William Esther Williams
The Carnival
Pinko Brooke
The Soldier
Alain Frost
The Track Less Thrashed
Ezekiel Mad
Canto MCXVXIV
T. S. (Tabby Serious) Eliot
The Accounting Cat
The Love Song of J. Arthur Perpend
Marianne More
The Majesty of Great Big Animals
Morris Clarke
The Mariner’s Daughter
Dorothy Parkinson
The Story So Far
b. b. hummings
74
Ogden Gnash
Pardon Me Madam But Is That Mandible on A Leash Or What?
Sir Don Betjeman
Another Subaltern’s Wedding
Advice To Chaps From Parents
Stewie Smith
Further Thoughts About The Person From Porlock
W. H. Auding
Muse of Bauxite
Louis ‘The Lip’ MacNeice
What I Did in The Holidays Section IX
Flagpole Music
Norman McCrag
South Uist From A Coracle
Elizabeth Bayshop
One Science
Harry Reed
Facing of Facts
Dylan Thompson
A Child’s Christmas in Warrnambool
Robert Bowell
Bury My Head at Wounded Knee
Larry Parkin
Mr Peacock
This Be The Chorus
Vern Scanlon
Standing Orders
Dream
Miloslab Holden
Pathology Report
Anne Bonkford
Where Was JFK When He Heard That I Was Shot?
Ted Cruise
Is Everybody Happy?
Derek Benaud
The Central Commentary Position
Sylvia Blath
Self Defence
Henry Adrian
Here Are The News
John Platten
Are We There Yet?
Nob Dylan
Rain Pain Train Song Number 407B
Leonard Con
The Emperor's New Album
Paul Dorkan
Significant Events
Hamish Sweeney
St Frances And The Brolgas
Margaret Attwood
Everyone Dances
Notes
Text Classics
INTRODUCTION
For many years it was assumed that poetry came from England. Research now clearly demonstrates, however, that a great many of the world’s most famous poets were actually Australians. Works by major poets have been discovered in various parts of Australia and are published here for the first time. This collection aims to put on record the wealth of imagery and ideas in Australian verse.
English is a language relatively new to Australia and obviously in a nation so young there can be no Icelandic Sagas, no Chaucer, and no Shakespeare1. Certain other works have been tragically lost. The great Neville Shelley of Eildon, for instance, survives only in the oral tradition2. Ewen Coleridge, the so-called ‘Automatic Writer’, left nothing whatever and Stumpy Byron V.C.3 has not been included because so much of his work was written in
Greece and Italy. It is virtually impossible to find anything from Brian Browning4 or from ‘Shagger’ Tennyson, who refused point blank to write anything down.
In other respects, however, this is the most complete collection of Australian verse ever published.
Such an anthology would not be possible were it not for the kind assistance of the poets, their descendants or executors. I would also thank Ms Lurleen Hopcroft for her work in typing the manuscripts and for her tireless support and cheerful presence.
Anon.
Trad. (From the Harleian-Davidson MSS, British Museum. Fragment originally found during excavations for the construction of Botany Bay Gaol, 1788.)
TIDE IS IGOIN OUTE
Tide is igoin oute
Lhude yelleth yikes
Water disappeareth fast
Ebbeth before eyen
Moon it pulleth tide oute
Layeth boate on keel
Sand it stretcheth meny myle
Gulle it drifts on wynde
Season goeth round each yeare
Wind it winnow croppe
Farmer reapeth harveste fulle
Meade it fylleth cup
Polly putte ye kyttle on
We wylle all haue tea
Leaf growe sere and branch growe bare
Trees istandin bleak in field
Flocks do fall to rest in fold
Storm it beats on sturdy thatch
Snowe in isolated places
Above aboute ten thousande feet
Rains ifallin on new seed
Springeth up from groun
Mare growe heavy, cowe have calf
Lambe it poppeth oute in field
Birds isingin, suns ishinin
Fysshe ajumpin, cotton hyghe,
Nature goeth on and on
Boreth britches off
Bob Herrick
A Boer War veteran who passed away some years back, Bob is well remembered by local churchpeople in the Mittagong area, where he lived and worked.
UPON JULIA’S SPEEDOS
Whenas in Speedos Julia goes,
Their fabric seemeth to expose
The wonders it doth juxtapose!
Next, when I cast mine eyes and see,
That lycra stretching each way free,
Tumescence overtaketh me!
Gavin Milton
Gavin became a political activist at university and wrote an unbroken string of pearlers: ‘Addidas’ about a promising mate of his who threw a seven during a boat trip, ‘Il Ponderosa’ about a group of ageing baritones trying to run a farm, and ‘Lost and Found’ about a retirement village.
ON HIS GOVERNMENT
When I consider how my tax is spent,
And bear in mind I’m talking forty years,
Perhaps sometimes a whisker in arrears,
But by and large as incomes go, it went.
I understand the cost of unemployment,
And writing off the loans to racketeers,
I know because recession perseveres,
The rich need subsid…I’m sorry, adjustments,
But would you mind please, not Italian suits.
Could unconcern be slightly less baroque?
And might the crappier aspects of the play
Be slightly less accompanied by lutes?
And perhaps some footnotes might explain the joke
When Placido gives Telecom away.
Alexandra Pope
Alexandra did a quadricep muscle in the lead-up to the Sydney Olympics and was somewhat acerbic in her appraisal of those more fortunate. Most of her better-known works concerned themselves with sport and human folly: ‘Laker and Lock’, ‘Abelard around the Wicket to Eloise’, ‘Imitations of Morris’ and ‘Essay on Twelfth Man’, many of which were first published in the Spectator.
THE WARNIAD
Prodigious talent is a dang’rous thing;
In cricket, whether pace or spin or swing;
A bowler’s gift, though great, can scarce be said,
To change the course of history, raise the dead;
Advance the state of man or still the storm;
But here’s a rule t’which flannelled fools conform:
Perspective, in a sportsman on TV,
Is in inverse proportion to the fee. 8
Imagine doing tweak*, or line and length; wrist spin
Or whatever you imagined was your strength;
In front of thousands, some of whom who came,
Sunburnt and pissed as skunks, to chant your name;
Disguising by your role as sporting oaf;
Your enormous wealth, Italian car, or boaf. 14
It’s heady stuff, but no man is divine;
And those the gods would mock, they first re-sign;
Then elevate with flattery* from those; blandishments
Whose own base purpose services their prose;
Until the point, with Hubris at the wheel;
It’s too late to renegotiate the deal;
Now temptation and the blandishments* begin; flattery
And a shifting of allegiance comes with sin. 22
You protest that you resisted, but ‘tis limp;
The front page is not your friend. It is the pimp;
And now the trap. You sold yourself. ‘Tis commerce;
That will distance you from truth to keep your promise;
Since ‘tis tricky, with the road to Mammon* open; Map 17 F3
To recall exact maternal wording spoken. 28
Take one, take two; but do not read the label;
The one behind the legs that was unplayable;
‘Twill be the more impressive when your weight;
Is less the pudgy look the sponsors hate;
And more the Lleyton Hewitt whippet look;
You can always say you misheard or mistook;
The dosage; and Australia as a nation;
Is accustomed to pigs flying in formation. 36
Catch, catch the ball good Gillie! Got him! Out!
‘You’re out you useless prick!’ goes up the shout;
You’re re-deified and think you’re back in clover;
But when the umpire hands your hat back with ‘It’s over’;
Face then thy facts, presume not fate to sledge;
Shut-up, get off the smokes and take the pledge. 42
Jeoffry Smart
An Adelaide poet, whose work often concerned the relationship between men and freeways, alienation and the colour grey.
HOOSAGOOD BOYTHEN
For I will consider my dog, Grant.
For he is an example to all living creatures.
For he expresses joy in his every movement.
For he knows each day contains fresh delights.
For he wags his tail when he sees me in the morning.
For he is sometimes so excited he tries to climb up me.
For he pays attention to details, such as jumping in the back of the ute.
For he is adept in the areas of barking and running from side to side.
For I tell him to sit down and shut-up and he sits down and shuts up.
For before he sits down he turns around.
For he knows his way around a building site.
For when he was a pup I used to slip him down inside my jumper.
For he comes to where I am working and sits near me.
For when I say gidday Grant, he barks once.
For this signifies the team is together.
For if a vehicle pulls up he goes to see who it is.
For I sometimes ask him where I’ve left my hammer.
For when I have a pie I give him a bit off the end.
For he also enjoys milkshakes.
For these are a break from water in a plastic container.
For he pleases himself about when he eats.
For he is something of a scavenger.
For we have discussed this on many occasions.
For I must be careful what I say.
For he is looking at me now as I write.
For in his behaviour he is not always angelic.
For he is sometimes the devil.
For every now and then he falls to the occasion.
For example I disapproved of him this morning.
For I was installing some bathroom fittings.
For he entered the room and placed on the floor an offering.
For he announced this tribute with a single, very loud bark.
For I nearly fell off my ladder and shat myself.
For the offering was a blue-tongue lizard.
For he had made a fair old mess of it.
For I will spare you the details.
For you can probably imagine.
For in the evening he sometimes jumps on the couch.
For we watch TV together if there’s something good on.
For he especially likes the footy.
For he isn’t allowed to watch TV with my girlfriend.
For she doesn’t like it when he tries to root her leg.
For I tell her that he means well.
For he means better than any other creature I know.
For he is a very smart boy all round.
For he understands he can’t fit down my jumper any more.
For he stole the jumper and put it in his bed.
Bill Blake
The late Bill Blake, rebel, painter and engraver, was a seasonal rabbiter who only dabbled in poetry until finishing runner-up in ‘New Faces’ with The Book of Thel. After that, there was no holding him and many of his works are now among the most familiar in the language.