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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=408921" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Soldier Birds</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">I mind the river from Mount Frome<br>To Ballanshantie’s Bridge,<br>The Mudgee Hills, and Buckaroo,<br>Lowe’s Peak, and Granite Ridge.<br>The “tailers” in the creek beneath,<br>The rugged she-oak boles,<br>The river cod where shallows linked,<br>The willowed water-holes. <br>I mind the blacksoil river flats,<br>The red soil levels, too,<br>The sidings where below the scrub<br>The golden wattles grew;<br>The track that ran by Tierney’s Gap,<br>The dusk and ghost alarms,<br>The glorious morning on the hills,<br>And all the German farms. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">I mind the blue-grey gully bush,<br>The slab-and-shingle school,<br>The “soldier birds” that picked the crumbs<br>Beneath the infants’ stool.<br>(Ah! did those little soldier birds,<br>That whispered, ever know<br>That one of us should rise so high<br>And sadly sink so low?) </div><div style="margin:10px 0">I mind the lessons that we droned<br>In books from Irish schools,<br>The canings and the keepings-in<br>For breaking bounds and rules.<br>Ah! little did the teacher dream<br>That one of us, perchance,<br>Might write in London to be read<br>In Germany and France. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">I mind the days we played at camp<br>With billy-can and swag,<br>I mind the notes sent home by girls<br>When someone “played the wag.”<br>Ah! little did the master think<br>(Who’d lost the roving star)<br>What truants in their after years<br>Would play the wag so far. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">I mind when first he gave to me<br>A pen and ink to write,<br>And, last, the “Fourth Class Forms” he made<br>I shared with Lucy White.<br>The other boys were other boys,<br>With cricket ball and bat,<br>They had a fine contempt for girls,<br>But they got over that. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">The “rounders” where the girls came in—<br>The Tomboy and the rest—<br>The earnest game of Pris’ners’ Base—<br>The game that I liked best.<br>The kangarooing on the ridge,<br>And in the brown moonlight,<br>The “possuming” across the flats,<br>With dogs and gun at night. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">The “specking” in old diggers’ heaps<br>For “colours” after rain,<br>The horse-shoes saved against the time<br>The circus came again,<br>And sold to Jimmy Siver-right—<br>The blacksmith on the flat;<br>The five-corners, the swimming hole—<br>Oh! I remember that! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">I mind the holland “dinner bags”—<br>A book bag of green baize—<br>The bread and dripping, bread and meat,<br>And bread and treacle days.<br>The bread and butter swopped for meat,<br>The crumb we swopped for crust—<br>We’ve married—and divorced—since then,<br>And most old homes are dust. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">It was the time, it was the place—<br>Australia’s hardest page—<br>When boys were cast for farming work<br>At fourteen years of age.<br>It was the time, it was the place,<br>The latter “Early Day,”<br>When boys ride home from old bark schools<br>And to the world away. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">I’ve drifted through Port Said since then,<br>Naples and Leicester Square,<br>And Collins and Macquarie Streets—<br>I know the secrets there.<br>Ah me! The country boy and girl,<br>The country lass and lad,<br>As innocent as soldier birds,<br>Though we thought we were bad! </div><div style="margin:10px 0">But, spite of all their daring truth,<br>And some work that shall last,<br>The bitter years of my brave youth<br>Are better in the past.<br>This does not call for bitterness,<br>Nor does it call for tears,<br>The purest little thing perhaps<br>I’ve printed here for years. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">The railway runs by Mudgee Hills,<br>Old farms are lost or lone,<br>And children’s children sadly go<br>To schools of brick and stone.<br>Yet are the same. The Mudgee Hills<br>And Mudgee skies as fair—<br>And the little grey-clad soldier birds<br>Are just as busy there.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Henry+Lawson">Henry Lawson</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=408921" data-title="The Soldier Birds de Henry Lawson" data-description="I mind the river from Mount Frome
To Ballanshantie’s Bridge,
The Mudgee Hills, and Buckaroo,
Lowe’s Peak, and Granite Ridge.
The “tailers” in the creek beneath,
The rugged she-oak boles,
The river cod where shallows linked,
The willowed wa..."></div>
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