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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=408932" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Spirits of Our Fathers</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">THE SPIRITS of our fathers rise not from every wave,<br>They left the sea behind them long ago;<br>It was many years of “slogging,” where strong men must be brave,<br>For the sake of unborn children, and, maybe, a soul to save,<br>And the end a tidy homestead, and four panels round a grave,<br>And—the bones of poor old Someone down below.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Some left happy homes in old lands when they heard the New Land call<br>(Some were gentlemen and some were social wrecks)<br>Some left squalor and starvation—they were soldiers one and all,<br>And their weapons were the cross-cut and the wedges and the maul.<br>(How we used to run as children when we heard the big trees fall!<br>While they paused to wipe their faces and their necks.)</div><div style="margin:10px 0">They were buried by our uncles where the ground was hard to dig<br>(It was little need for churchmen that they had),<br>And they sobbed like grown-up children, for their hearts were soft and big.<br>And the myrtle and the ivy, and the vine-tree and the fig—<br>And the heather—and the shamrock, where th’ mother kept the pig,<br>Waited vainly for the Grand Australian Dad.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The spirits of our fathers have belts and bowyangs on<br>(Oh, Father! do you live again and know?)<br>Strapped riding pants and leggings parched and perished in the sun,<br>And love-belts “worked” by sweethearts ere the digging days were done,<br>And the cabbage-tree that went out with the muzzle-loading gun<br>That was carried round the cattle out beyond the furthest run<br>Where the brave exploring drovers used to go.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The spirits of our fathers, they rise from every grave<br>(Each side the line that Burke and Leichhardt crossed),<br>And where still in “settled districts” ghastly Bush-lost madmen rave<br>(While the grim search parties, haggard, struggle hopelessly to save)<br>Till the spirit timber beacons and the spirit waters lave,<br>And no spirit of a father has been lost.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The spirits of our fathers, they rise from level sand<br>(Like an ocean where an ocean used to be),<br>Out where Heaven’s grandest ’lectrics light the Never Never Land<br>With the glorious hope and promise that the Bushmen understand<br>When the rain and grass are coming till the desert-plain is grand,<br>And the drought-divorced Australian meets his soul.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Listen! There’s the word that’s spoken when no other soul seems near,<br>And the one who hears is sober, calm and sane,<br>And the name called, amongst many, when the called alone can hear—<br>Words by lone huts and in prison, speaking comfort, hope and cheer—<br>And the Warning, not admited to each other, calm and clear—<br>Then the fathers of a nation speak again.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">There are spirits of our fathers in the theatres to-night<br>(And the places where rich sons of settlers go),<br>And a half-dressed daughter shivers, and a tailored son turns white,<br>For the heritage world-squandered, and the Land put out of sight,<br>And that awful thirst for Nothing that they bought with their birthright<br>And a haggard mother’s spirit bending low.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">There are spirits of our fathers by the pleasant South Coast roads<br>Where motor cars of sons of stockmen go,<br>In the wealth robbed from Up Country, oh, the shame of it is black!<br>And the laugh and giggle ceases and the car swerves and turns back,<br>’Tis the old dad, smiling grimly, with arms folded by the track,<br>And the shades of horse and swagmen that they know.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">There’s the flagship of the First Fleet rising grimly on the tide<br>(Out by Watson where the motor, launches go),<br>And the features known to many of our families of pride—<br>But the launches veer like seabirds, veer and turn and circle wide<br>From the shadow of a free ship where the waiting liners ride<br>And pale faces of brave emigrants look sadly o’er the side—<br>Boys and girls who were our parents long ago.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">There the word said in the Senate by the patriot unafraid<br>(Senate where the comic fatmen never mind)<br>And the tissue starts and wakens, summons “Haw-haws!” to its aid,<br>But the honest men sit upright who were wearied of tirade.<br>And a nation’s aims are furthered! and a nation’s law is made—<br>For the spirit of a father stands behind.</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=408932" data-title="The Spirits of Our Fathers de Henry Lawson" data-description="THE SPIRITS of our fathers rise not from every wave,
They left the sea behind them long ago;
It was many years of “slogging,” where strong men must be brave,
For the sake of unborn children, and, maybe, a soul to save,
And the end a tidy homes..."></div>
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