Good poems
/ page 522 of 545 /
Tommy Corrigan
© Andrew Barton Paterson
He gave the shirkers extra heart, he steadied down the rash,
He rode great clumsy boring brutes, and chanced a fatal smash;
He got the rushing Wymlet home that never jumped at all --
But clambered over every fence and clouted every wall.
You should have heard the cheers, my boys, that shook the members' stand
Whenever Tommy Corrigan weighed out to ride Lone Hand.
Conroy's Gap
© Andrew Barton Paterson
This was the way of it, don't you know --
Ryan was "wanted" for stealing sheep,
And never a trooper, high or low,
Could find him -- catch a weasel asleep!
The Man From Snowy River
© Andrew Barton Paterson
There was movement at the station, for the word has passed around
That the colt from old Regret had got away,
And had joined the wild bush horseshe was worth a thousand pound,
So all the cracks had gathered to the fray.
With French to Kimberley
© Andrew Barton Paterson
The Boers were down on Kimberley with siege and Maxim gun;
The Boers were down on Kimberley, their numbers ten to one!
Faint were the hopes the British had to make the struggle good --
Defenceless in an open plain the Diamond City stood.
Boots
© Andrew Barton Paterson
We've travelled per Joe Gardiner, a humping of our swag
In the country of the Gidgee and Belar.
We've swum the Di'mantina with our raiment in a bag,
And we've travelled per superior motor car,
Jim Carew
© Andrew Barton Paterson
Gentleman Jiim on the cattle-camp,
Sitting his horse with an easy grace;
But the reckless living has left its stamp
In the deep drawn linies of that handsome face,
And the harder look in those eyes of blue:
Prompt at a quarrel is Jim Carew.
Riders in the Stand
© Andrew Barton Paterson
They'll say Chevalley lost his nerve, and Regan lost his head;
They'll tell how one was "livened up" and something else was "dead" --
In fact, the race was never run on sea, or sky, or land,
But what you'd get it better done by riders in the Stand.
The Lung Fish
© Andrew Barton Paterson
"These barramundi are the blokes
To give you all the sport you need:
For when the big lagoons and soaks
Are dried right down to mud and weed
They don't sit there and raise a roar,
They pack their traps and come ashore.
A Ballad of Ducks
© Andrew Barton Paterson
The railway rattled and roared and swung
With jolting and bumping trucks.
The sun, like a billiard red ball, hung
In the Western sky: and the tireless tongue
Mulga Bill's Bicycle
© Andrew Barton Paterson
'Twas Mulga Bill, from Eaglehawk, that sought his own abode,
That perched above the Dead Man's Creek, beside the mountain road.
He turned the cycle down the hill and mounted for the fray,
But ere he'd gone a dozen yards it bolted clean away.
It left the track, and through the trees, just like a silver streak,
It whistled down the awful slope towards the Dead Man's Creek.
Old Pardon, the Son of Reprieve
© Andrew Barton Paterson
You never heard tell of the story?
Well, now, I can hardly believe!
Never heard of the honour and glory
Of Pardon, the son of Reprieve?
Matt's Manifesto
© Jonathan Bohrn
The Renaissance men are aging now,
having survived Industrialization's Original Sin
and the Information Age flood;
The need for specialization
The Bell From Europe
© Weldon Kees
The tower bell in the Tenth Street Church
Rang out nostalgia for the refugee
Who knew the source of bells by sound.
We liked it, but in ignorance.
One meets authorities on bells infrequently.
Blue Bridge
© Geraldine Connolly
In the last gasp
of August, they erase the time
it might be now, whispering
into the darkness that passed,
blue plumes of smoke and cicada,
eager and doomed.
Essay On The Personal
© Stephen Dunn
Because finally the personal
is all that matters,
we spend years describing stones,
chairs, abandoned farmhouses
With No Experience In Such Matters
© Stephen Dunn
To hold a damaged sparrow
under water until you feel it die
is to know a small something
about the mind; how, for example,
it blames the cat for the original crime,
how it wants praise for its better side.
At The Smithville Methodist Church
© Stephen Dunn
It was supposed to be Arts & Crafts for a week,
but when she came home
with the "Jesus Saves" button, we knew what art
was up, what ancient craft.
Story
© Stephen Dunn
Praise the odd, serendipitous world.
Nothing I'd be inclined to think of
would have stopped that dog.
Only the facts saved her.
I Come Home Wanting To Touch Everyone
© Stephen Dunn
The dogs greet me, I descend
into their world of fur and tongues
and then my wife and I embrace
as if we'd just closed the door
