Who would potter round a farm Fearful of clubbed gunstroke, And, keeping cosy out of harm, Die of loafer’s sunstroke? Gusts of distant battle-noise Tell that men are falling; Get your guns, my bonny boys, Here’s your Mother calling! Buckle on your cartridge belts, Waste no time about it! Force is massing on the veldts, We must off and rout it. What if fate should work its worst! Men can grin in falling; Come on, chaps, and be the first,-- Here’s your Mother calling! _Arthur Maquarie._ ADAMS CCXXV THE DWELLINGS OF OUR DEAD They lie unwatched, in waste and vacant places, In sombre bush or wind-swept tussock spaces, Where seldom human tread And never human trace is-- The dwellings of our dead! No insolence of stone is o’er them builded; By mockery of monuments unshielded, Far on the unfenced plain Forgotten graves have yielded Earth to free earth again. Above their crypts no air with incense reeling, No chant of choir or sob of organ pealing; But ever over them The evening breezes kneeling Whisper a requiem. For some the margeless plain where no one passes, Save when at morning far in misty masses The drifting flock appears. Lo, here the greener grasses Glint like a stain of tears! For some the common trench where, not all fameless, They fighting fell who thought to tame the tameless, And won their barren crown; Where one grave holds them nameless-- Brave white and braver brown. But, in their sleep, like troubled children turning, A dream of mother-country in them burning, They whisper their despair, And one vague, voiceless yearning Burdens the pausing air.... ‘_Unchanging here the drab year onward presses, No Spring comes trysting here with new-loosed tresses, And never may the years Win Autumn’s sweet caresses-- Her leaves that fall like tears._ _And we would lie ’neath old-remembered beeches, Where we could hear the voice of him who preaches And the deep organ’s call, While close about us reaches The cool, grey, lichened wall._’ But they are ours, and jealously we hold them; Within our children’s ranks we have enrolled them, And till all Time shall cease Our brooding bush shall fold them In her broad-bosomed peace. They came as lovers come, all else forsaking, The bonds of home and kindred proudly breaking; They lie in splendour lone-- The nation of their making Their everlasting throne! _Arthur Adams._ OGILVIE CCXXVI THE BUSH, MY LOVER The camp-fire gleams resistance To every twinkling star; The horse-bells in the distance Are jangling faint and far; Through gum-boughs lorn and lonely The passing breezes sigh; In all the world are only My star-crowned Love and I.