'Hello Soldier!', Edward Dyson [i have read the book a hundred times .txt] 📗

Many of these verse were originally
printed in the "Bulletin," others in "Punch,"
"The Leader" and Melbourne "Herald."
Some few are now published for the first time.


The paper famine leaving me no option
but to print on peculiar paper, not wholly
prohibitive or to defer the publication of my
verses for an unknown period, the natural
longing of a parent to parade his "well be-
gotten" prevails. If my book is unusual and
bizarre from a craftman's point of view,
I plead the unusual times and extraordinary
conditions. Of these times and conditions.
I hope "Hello Soldier" is in some measure
characteriastic.--Edward Dyson.


AUSTRALIA.

AUSTRALIA, my native land,
A stirring whisper in your ear--
'Tis time for you to understand
Your rating now is A1, dear.
You've done some rousing things of late.
That lift you from the simple state
In which you chose to vegetate.

The persons so superior,
Whose patronage no more endures,
Now have to fire a salvo for
The glory that is fairly yours.
At length you need no sort of crutch,
You stand alone, you're voted "much"--
Get busy and behave as such.

No man from Oskosh, or from Hull,
Or any other chosen place
Can rise with a distended skull,
And cast aspersions in your face.
You're given all the world to know
Your proper standing as a foe,
And hats are off, and rightly so.

You furnished heroes for the fray,
Your sterling merit's widely blown
To all men's satisfaction say,
Now have you proved it to your own?
Now have you strength to stand and shine
In your own light and say, "Divine
The thing is that I do. It's mine!"

The cannon's stroke throws customs down
The black and bottomless abyss,
And quaking are the gilded crown
And palsied feet of prejudice.
The guns have killed, but it is true
They bring to life things good and new.
God grant they have awakened you!

My ears are greedy for the toast
Of confidence before our guest,
The loyal song, the manly boast
Your splendid faith to manifest.
In works of art and livelihood
Shirk not the creed, "What's ours is good,"
Dread not to have it understood.

Australia, lift your royal brow,
And have the courage of our pride,
Audacity becomes you now,
Be splendidly self-satisfied,
No land from lowliness and dearth
Has won to eminence on earth
That was not conscious of its worth.


CONTENTS

AUSTRALIA
BILLY KHAKI
AS THE TROOPS WENT THROUGH
MARSHAL NEIGH V.C.
IN HOSPITAL
SISTER ANN
BRICKS
MUD
MICKIE MOLLYNOO
JAM
WEEPING WILLIE
BILLJIM
THE CRUSADERS
PEACE, BLESSED PEACE
THE HAPPY GARDENERS
THE GERM
JOEY'S JOB
THE GIRL I LEFT BEHIND ME
HOW HERMAN WON THE CROSS
WHEN TOMMY CAME MARCHING HOME
HELLO, SOLDIER!
THE MORALIST
REPAIRED
OUT OF KHAKI
THE SINGLE-HANDED TEAM
BATTLE PASSES
THE LETTERS OF THE DEAD
BULLETS
UNREDEEMED
THE LIVING PICTURE
THE IMMORTAL STRAIN
THE UNBORN
THE COMMON MEN
THE CHURCH BELLS
THE YOUNG LIEUTENANT
THE ONE AT HOME
THE HAPLESS ARMY


BILLY KHAKI

MARCHING somewhat out of order
when the band is cock-a-hoop,
There's a lilting kind of magic in the swagger
of the troop,
Swinging all aboard the steamer with her
nose toward the sea.
What is calling, Billy Khaki, that you're foot-
ing it so free?

Though his lines are none too level,
And he lacks a bit of style.
And he's swanking like the devil
Where the women wave and smile,
He will answer with a rifle
Trim and true from stock to bore,
Where the comrades crouch and stifle
In the reeking pit of war.

What is calling, Billy Khaki? There is
thunder down the sky,
And the merry magpie bugle splits the morn-
ing with its cry,
While your feet are beating rhythms up the
dusty hills and down,
And the drums are all a-talking in the hollow
of the town.

Billy Khaki, is't the splendor of the song the
kiddies sing,
Or the whipping of the flags aloft that sets
your heart a-swing?
Is't the cheering like a paean of the toss-
ing, teeming crowds,
Or the boom of distant cannon flatly bumping
on the clouds ?

What's calling, calling, Billy? 'Tis the rattle
far away
Of the cavalry at gallop and artillery in play;
'Tis the great gun's fierce concussion, and the
smell of seven hells
When the long ranks go to pieces in the
sneezing of the shells.

But your eyes are laughing, Billy, and a
ribald song you sing,
While the old men sit and tell us war it is a
ghastly thing,
When the swift machines are busy and the
grim, squat fortress nocks
At your bolts as vain as eggs of gulls that spatter on the rocks.

When the horses sweep upon you to complete
a sudden rout,
Or in fire and smoke and fury some brave
regiment goes out,
War is cruel, Bill, and ugly. But full well
you know the rest,
Yet your heart is for the battle, and your face
is to the west.

For if war is beastly, Billy, you can picture
something worse--
There's the wrecking of an empire, and its
broken people's curse;
There are nations reft of freedom, and of hope
and kindly mirth,
And the shadow of an evil black upon the
bitter earth.

So we know what's calling, Billy. 'Tis the
spirit of our race,
And its stir is in your pulses, and its light is
on your face
As you march with clipping boot-heels
through the piping, howling town
To uphold the land we live in, and to pull a
tyrant down.

Thou his lines are none too level,
And he's not a whale for style,
And he's swanking like the devil
When the women wave and smile
He will answer with a rifle,
Trim and true from stuck to bore,
When the comrades sit and stifle
In the smoking pit of war.


AS THE TROOP WENT THROUGH

I HEARD this day, as I may no more,
The world's heart throb at my workshop door.
The sun was keen, and the day was still;
The township drowsed in, a haze of heat.
A stir far off on the sleepy hill,
The measured beat of their buoyant feet,
And the lilt and thrum
Of a little drum,
The song they sang in a cadence low,
The piping note of a piccolo.

The township woke, and the doors flew wide;
The women trotted their boys beside.
Across the bridge on a single heel
The soldiers came in a golden glow,
With throb of song and the chink of steel,
The gallant crow of the piccolo.
Good and brown they were,
And their arms swung bare.
Their fine young faces revived in me
A boyhood's vision of chivalry.

The lean, hard regiment tramping down,
Bushies, miners and boys from town.
From 'mid the watchers the road along
One fell in line with the khaki men.
He took the stride, and he caught their song,
And Steve went then, and Meneer, and Ben,
Long Dave McCree,
And the Weavers three,
All whisked away by the "Come! Come! Come!"
The lusty surge of the vaunting drum.

I swore a prayer for each soldier lad.
He was the son that might have had;
The tall, bold boy who was never mine,
All brave with dust that the eyes laughed through,
His shoulders square, and his chin in line,
Was marching too with the gallant few.
Passed the muffled beat
Of their swanking feet,
The swell of drum, the exulting crow,
The wild-bird note of the piccolo.

They dipped away in the listless trees;
A mother wept on her beaded knees
For sons gone out to the long war's end;
But more than mother or man wept I
Who had no son in the world to send.
The hour lagged by, and drifting high
Came the fitful hum
Of the little drum,
And faint, but still with an ardent flow,
The pibroch, call of the piccolo.


MARSHAL NEIGH, V.C.

HE came from tumbled country past the
humps of Buffalo
Where the snow sits on the mountain 'n' the
Summer aches below.
He'd a silly name like Archie. Squattin'
sullen on the ship,
He knew nex' to holy nothin' through the gor-
forsaken trip.

No thoughts he had of women, no refreshin'
talk of beer;
If he'd battled, loved, or suffered vital facts
did not appear;
But the parsons and the poets couldn't teach
him to discourse
When it come to pokin' guyver at a pore,
deluded horse.

If nags got sour 'n' kicked agin the rules of
things at sea,
Artie argued matters with 'em, 'n' he'd kid
'em up a tree.
"Here's a pony got hystericks. Pipe the word
for Privit Rowe,"
The Sargint yapped, 'n' all the ship came
cluckin' to the show.

He'd chat him confidential, 'n' he'd pet 'n'
paw the moke;
He'd tickle him, 'n' flatter him, 'n' try him
with a joke;
'N' presently that neddy sobers up, 'n' sez
"Ive course,
Since you puts it that way, cobber, I will be
a better horse."

There was one pertickler whaler, known
aboard ez Marshal Neigh,
Whose monkey tricks with Privit Rowe was
better than a play.
He'd done stunts in someone's circus, 'n' he
loved a merry bout,
Whirlin' in to bust his boiler, or to kick
the bottom out.

Rowe he sez: "Well, there's an idjit! Oh,
yes, let her whiz, you beauty!
Where's yer 'orse sense, little feller? Where's
yer bloomin' sense iv duty?
Well, you orter serve yer country!" Then
there'd come a painful hush,
'N' that nag would drop his head-piece,