By the Grey Gulf-water
Far to the Northward there lies a land,
A wonderful land that the winds blow over,
And none may fathom or understand
The charm it holds for the restless rover;
A great grey chaos -- a land half made,
Where endless space is and no life stirreth;
There the soul of a man will recoil afraid
From the sphinx-like visage that Nature weareth.
But old Dame Nature, though scornful, craves
Her dole of death and her share of slaughter;
Many indeed are the nameless graves
Where her victims sleep by the Grey Gulf-water.
Slowly and slowly those grey streams glide,
Drifting along with a languid motion,
Lapping the reed-beds on either side,
Wending their way to the North Ocean.
Grey are the plains where the emus pass
Silent and slow, with their dead demeanour;
Over the dead man's graves the grass
Maybe is waving a trifle greener.
Down in the world where men toil and spin
Dame Nature smiles as man's hand has taught her;
Only the dead men her smiles can win
In the great lone land by the Grey Gulf-water.
For the strength of man is an insect's strength
In the face of that mighty plain and river,
And the life of a man is a moment's length
To the life of the stream that will run for ever.
And so it comes that they take no part
In small world worries; each hardy rover
Rides like a paladin, light of heart,
With the plains around and the blue sky over.
And up in the heavens the brown lark sings
The songs the strange wild land has taught her;
Full of thanksgiving her sweet song rings --
And I wish I were back by the Grey Gulf-water.
poem by Andrew Barton Paterson
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Related quotes
Australian Scenery
The Mountains
A land of sombre, silent hills, where mountain cattle go
By twisted tracks, on sidelings deep, where giant gum trees grow
And the wind replies, in the river oaks, to the song of the stream below.
A land where the hills keep watch and ward, silent and wide awake
As those who sit by a dead campfire, and wait for the dawn to break,
Or those who watched by the Holy Cross for the dead Redeemer's sake.
A land where silence lies so deep that sound itself is dead
And a gaunt grey bird, like a homeless soul, drifts, noiseless, overhead
And the world's great story is left untold, and the message is left unsaid.
The Plains
A land as far as the eye can see, where the waving grasses grow
Or the plains are blackened and burnt and bare, where the false mirages go
Like shifting symbols of hope deferred -- land where you never know.
Land of plenty or land of want, where the grey Companions dance,
Feast or famine, or hope or fear, and in all things land of chance,
Where Nature pampers or Nature slays, in her ruthless, red, romance.
And we catch a sound of a fairy's song, as the wind goes whipping by,
Or a scent like incense drifts along from the herbage ripe and dry
-- Or the dust storms dance on their ballroom floor, where the bones of the cattle lie.
poem by Andrew Barton Paterson
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
The Great Grey Water
Now two have met, now two have met,
Who may not meet again—
Two grains of sand, two blades of grass,
Two threads within the skein—
Beside the Great Grey Water.
Two hands to touch, two hearts to touch;
And, here forgathered, we
Will not forget, may not forget,
Where last forgathered three—
Beyond the Great Grey Water.
Two glasses filled, two pipes to fill—
‘To all our fortunes, brother!’
And as they clink—like so—we drink
Fair passage to the other
Across the Great Grey Water.
For three have sailed, and one has sailed,
His sins, like ours, still on him,
God sleep his soul! five oceans roll
Their long weight all upon him.
O God! thy Great Grey Water!
But I am still, and you are still,
And here our chance has flung us;
True comrades we, but…there were three
And one is not among us
Beside the Great Grey Water.
A breathing space, a biding place,
Soft lights and beakers beaded,
Then out again and on again,
Unminded and unheeded,
Across the Great Grey Water.
Now two have met where three have met
With curses or with laughter;
And so our Day shall pass away,
And so our Night come after—
But, ah! the Great Grey Water
poem by Edwin James Brady
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
The Grey World
Grey nights in the wind,
And the grey-faced dead.
Grey hairs in my head,
And grey eyes in my mind.
Grey mists in the morn,
And grey waves that rave,
Grey mould on my grave,
And grey eyes forlorn.
Grey clouds in the sky,
And the grey world asleep,
Grey ghosts that sigh,
And grey eyes that weep.
poem by Leon Gellert
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Never, Never Land
By hut, homestead and shearing shed,
By railroad, coach and track-
By lonely graves where rest the dead,
Up-Country and Out-Back:
To where beneath the clustered stars
The dreamy plains expand-
My home lies wide a thousand miles
In Never-Never Land.
It lies beyond the farming belt,
Wide wastes of scrub and plain,
A blazing desert in the drought,
A lake-land after rain;
To the skyline sweeps the waving grass,
Or whirls the scorching sand-
A phantom land, a mystic realm!
The Never-Never Land.
Where lone Mount Desolation lies
Mounts Dreadful and Despair-
'Tis lost beneath the rainless skies
In hopeless deserts there;
It spreads nor-west by No-Man's Land
Where clouds are seldom seen
To where the cattle stations lie
Three hundred miles between.
The drovers of the Great Stock Routes
The strange Gulf country Know
Where, travelling from the southern droughts,
The big lean bullocks go;
And camped by night where plains lie wide,
Like some old ocean's bed,
The watchmen in the starlight ride
Round fifteen hundred head.
Lest in the city I forget
True mateship after all,
My water-bag and billy yet
Are hanging on the wall;
And I, to save my soul again,
Would tramp to sunsets grand
With sad-eyed mates across the plain
In Never-Never Land.
poem by Henry Lawson
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
By Hut, Homestead And Shearing Shed,
By hut, homestead and shearing shed,
By railroad, coach and track-
By lonely graves where rest the dead,
Up-Country and Out-Back:
To where beneath the clustered stars
The dreamy plains expand-
My home lies wide a thousand miles
In Never-Never Land.
It lies beyond the farming belt,
Wide wastes of scrub and plain,
A blazing desert in the drought,
A lake-land after rain;
To the skyline sweeps the waving grass,
Or whirls the scorching sand-
A phantom land, a mystic realm!
The Never-Never Land.
Where lone Mount Desolation lies
Mounts Dreadful and Despair-
'Tis lost beneath the rainless skies
In hopeless deserts there;
It spreads nor-west by No-Man's Land
Where clouds are seldom seen
To where the cattle stations lie
Three hundred miles between.
The drovers of the Great Stock Routes
The strange Gulf country Know
Where, travelling from the southern droughts,
The big lean bullocks go;
And camped by night where plains lie wide,
Like some old ocean's bed,
The watchmen in the starlight ride
Round fifteen hundred head.
Lest in the city I forget
True mateship after all,
My water-bag and billy yet
Are hanging on the wall;
And I, to save my soul again,
Would tramp to sunsets grand
With sad-eyed mates across the plain
In Never-Never Land.
poem by Henry Lawson
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Grey Wolves Grey
The Russian march is soft and slow,
Through dust and heat, or slush and snow,
When the Russian skies hang grey and low
To the frontiers far where the Russians go;
And they march to-night and they march to-day
Like the grey wolves grey, like the grey wolves grey.
Nor song nor sound their track reveals,
Save the ceaseless “clock” of the waggon wheels;
But a rift in the mist shows a glint of sun
On the long, dark shape of a toiling gun;
And they strain by night and they drag by day
To a distant goal, like the grey wolves grey.
As the horses toil at the ends of trains,
And the ends of roads on the Blacksoil Plains.
And Ivan digs in the frozen clay,
And he rolls the logs a bed to lay
For a gun that’s five hundred miles away,
But as sure to come as the grey wolves grey.
He is marching on with a purpose grand,
For brother Slav in another land;
Whose tongue, perchance, he cannot understand.—
But he knows the cry from the far-away,
And he smells the blood like the grey wolves grey.
And Ivan’s wife in her den at home,
While hunger looms and his lean wolves come—
With her grey-black bread like the Darling mud,
And her tea-bricks bound with the bullock’s blood—
She shields her cubs by night and day
Like the crouching sluts of the grey wolves grey.
And I march with Ivan where’er he be,
With the foreign blood that is strong in me,
And the love and the hate that is fantasy,
Like the ghosts of a father’s memory.
With the blood that is strange to us to-day
As the strange wild blood of the grey wolves grey.
Grey wolves,
Grey wolves—
The strange wild blood of the grey wolves grey.
poem by Henry Lawson
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
The Wild Geese
Wild geese fly overhead
In the wild Autumn weather.
Souls of the newly-dead
Crying and flying together.
Home from the last great fight,
The souls of the Irish farin'
With a wild heart in the night,
A grey eye turned to Erin.
High and high in the sky,
From the red fields of slaughter
Ever they fly and cry
For the brown bog, the grey water.
Wild geese in the wild even,
Steady and strong their flight,
Their beds are made in Heaven,
All of the down white.
They have forgone that bliss
Till they have seen once more
The little land of peace,
Green and bright as of yore.
High o'er the sheep and cattle,
The bogs and the mountains lone,
The souls new-home from the battle
Cry their love and are flown.
poem by Katharine Tynan
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Grey
Grey road stretched through grey rain.
Grey rain fell though grey mist.
Grey mist enveloped all,
all the eye could see,
all the land,
all the sky
and me.
Grey covered all,
all the way down to the sea.
Glimpsed through grey the swell of the ocean,
riding the waves a wind surfer surfing,
chopping, fighting the crests with swift motion
skirting the spray, sail unfurling.
Stopping, I stared at that sight in the mist,
oh how he came dancing over the sea,
right through the rain a state of sheer bliss,
the wondrous frolic rippling throughout me
making me tingle right down deep inside.
That misty image ripped all grey apart
a glorious vision of freedom untied,
returning tremendous joy to my heart
filling me up, bringing tears to my eyes,
emerging from grey a great love of life.
poem by Diana Rosser
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Grey, Grey Sky
Someday I will ride the great bird
Into the sky, into the grey
And will take a bright secret of mine
Into the grey, grey sky.
And the light will come, piercing my eyes
Out of the sky, out of the grey
Come blinding and searing these eyes
Out of the grey, grey sky.
And I will find comfort in this
In the wide sky, in the wide grey
In the painful dark brightness of light
Light of the grey, grey sky.
My secret will fly away home
Into the sky, into the grey
And the great bird will follow it there
Into the grey, grey sky.
And I will be riding that bird
Bird of the sky, bird of the grey
And I will come home once again
Home to the grey, grey sky.
But for now I am weighted, earthbound
One of the mud, one of the ground
And I write this sad song to sad sound
Girl of the pavement sighs.
poem by Grace Hutton
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Grey Lady Of The Sea
(lebon)
Youve whispered out loud
But your breeze doesnt bend
Were lying in the palm of your hand
No land we see, no place to be
The salt of your tears, adds stain to our hearts
Theres no long years can tear us apart
Our futures entwined with your past
Because when we lie awake
Well be thinking of you
Blow, grey lady blow your ships back home
Blow, grey lady blow your ships back home
Bravado is all but gone
And patience is down
You scared us and youve turned us around
But you wont let us drown
Because when we lie asleep
Well be dreaming of you
Blow, grey lady blow your ships back home
Blow, grey lady blow your ships back home
So answer us when we call
And say if you think were old
When life is so short we can stay long
But youll never be alone
Because one day well return
Well be waiting for you
Blow, grey lady blow your ships back home
Blow, grey lady blow your ships back home
Blow, grey lady blow your ships back home
Blow, grey lady blow your ships back home
Blow, grey lady blow your ships back home
song performed by by Duran Duran
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
The Plains
A land, as far as the eye can see, where the waving grasses grow
Or the plains are blackened and burnt and bare, where the false mirages go
Like shifting symbols of hope deferred - land where you never know.
Land of the plenty or land of want, where the grey Companions dance,
Feast or famine, or hope or fear, and in all things land of chance,
Where Nature pampers or Nature slays, in her ruthless, red, romance.
And we catch a sound of a fairy's song, as the wind goes whipping by,
Or a scent like incense drifts along from the herbage ripe and dry
- Or the dust storms dance on their ballroom floor, where the bones of the cattle lie.
poem by Andrew Barton Paterson
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
This Land Is Your Land
Well I rode that ribbon highway
I saw above me the endless sky
I saw below me the golden valley
This land was made for you and me
Ive roamed and rambled and followed my footsteps
Through the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
And all around me a voice was calling
This land was made for you and me
This land is your land
This land is my land
From california
To the new york island
From the redwood forest
To the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me
Well the sun came shining and I was strolling
Through wheat fields waving and dust clouds rolling
And a voice was sounding
As the fog was lifting
Saying this land was made for you and me
This land is your land
This land is my land
From california
To the new york island
From the redwood forest
To the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me
song performed by by Bruce Springsteen
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
The Never-Never Country
By homestead, hut, and shearing-shed,
By railroad, coach, and track --
By lonely graves of our brave dead,
Up-Country and Out-Back:
To where 'neath glorious the clustered stars
The dreamy plains expand --
My home lies wide a thousand miles
In the Never-Never Land.
It lies beyond the farming belt,
Wide wastes of scrub and plain,
A blazing desert in the drought,
A lake-land after rain;
To the sky-line sweeps the waving grass,
Or whirls the scorching sand --
A phantom land, a mystic land!
The Never-Never Land.
Where lone Mount Desolation lies,
Mounts Dreadful and Despair --
'Tis lost beneath the rainless skies
In hopeless deserts there;
It spreads nor'-west by No-Man's-Land --
Where clouds are seldom seen --
To where the cattle-stations lie
Three hundred miles between.
The drovers of the Great Stock Routes
The strange Gulf country know --
Where, travelling from the southern drought
The big lean bullocks go;
And camped by night where plains lie wide,
Like some old ocean's bed,
The watchmen in the starlight ride
Round fifteen hundred head.
And west of named and numbered days
The shearers walk and ride --
Jack Cornstalk and the Ne'er-do-well
And the grey-beard side by side;
They veil their eyes -- from moon and stars,
And slumber on the sand --
Sad memories steep as years go round
In Never-Never Land.
By lonely huts north-west of Bourke,
Through years of flood and drought,
The best of English black-sheep work
Their own salvation out:
Wild fresh-faced boys grown gaunt and brown --
Stiff-lipped and haggard-eyed --
They live the Dead Past grimly down!
Where boundary-riders ride.
The College Wreck who sank beneath,
Then rose above his shame,
Tramps west in mateship with the man
Who cannot write his name.
'Tis there where on the barren track
No last half-crust's begrudged --
Where saint and sinner, side by side,
Judge not, and are not judged.
Oh rebels to society!
The Outcasts of the West --
Oh hopeless eyes that smile for me,
And broken hearts that jest!
The pluck to face a thousand miles --
The grit to see it through!
The communion perfected! --
And -- I am proud of you!
The Arab to true desert sand,
The Finn to fields of snow,
The Flax-stick turns to Maoriland,
While the seasons come and go;
And this old fact comes home to me --
And will not let me rest --
However barren it may be,
Your own land is the best!
And, lest at ease I should forget
True mateship after all,
My water-bag and billy yet
Are hanging on the wall;
And if my fate should show the sign
I'd tramp to sunsets grand
With gaunt and stern-eyed mates of mine
In the Never-Never Land.
poem by Henry Lawson
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
The Life Beyond
He wakes, who never thought to wake again,
Who held the end was Death. He opens eyes
Slowly, to one long livid oozing plain
Closed down by the strange eyeless heavens. He lies;
And waits; and once in timeless sick surmise
Through the dead air heaves up an unknown hand,
Like a dry branch. No life is in that land,
Himself not lives, but is a thing that cries;
An unmeaning point upon the mud; a speck
Of moveless horror; an Immortal One
Cleansed of the world, sentient and dead; a fly
Fast-stuck in grey sweat on a corpse's neck.
I thought when love for you died, I should die.
It's dead. Alone, most strangely, I live on.
poem by Rupert Brooke (1910)
Submitted by Veronica Serbanoiu
Vote! | Copy!
Life Beyond, The
He wakes, who never thought to wake again,
Who held the end was Death. He opens eyes
Slowly, to one long livid oozing plain
Closed down by the strange eyeless heavens. He lies;
And waits; and once in timeless sick surmise
Through the dead air heaves up an unknown hand,
Like a dry branch. No life is in that land,
Himself not lives, but is a thing that cries;
An unmeaning point upon the mud; a speck
Of moveless horror; an Immortal One
Cleansed of the world, sentient and dead; a fly
Fast-stuck in grey sweat on a corpse's neck.
I thought when love for you died, I should die.
It's dead. Alone, most strangely, I live on.
poem by Rupert Brooke
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Grey Blue Eyes
I feel for the light
Your glory was lost that night
And no mind can't get me right
And now I'm praying that you'll find me out
Stone, stone has pulled me down
But my faith has got me bound to your grey blue eyes
Oh, oh
Oh, oh
Don't forget my broken heart
You remember it from the start
You made it and it's all a part
Of your grey blue eyes
Oh, oh
Oh, oh
You're gone and I know I'm dead
I've lost my way
Can't find me in your grey blue eyes
Grey blue eyes
Grey blue eyes
Grey blue eyes
song performed by by Dave Matthews Band
Submitted by Lucian Velea
Vote! | Copy!
The Great Grey Plain
Out West, where the stars are brightest,
Where the scorching north wind blows,
And the bones of the dead gleam whitest,
And the sun on a desert glows --
Yet within the selfish kingdom
Where man starves man for gain,
Where white men tramp for existence --
Wide lies the Great Grey Plain.
No break in its awful horizon,
No blur in the dazzling haze,
Save where by the bordering timber
The fierce, white heat-waves blaze,
And out where the tank-heap rises
Or looms when the sunlights wane,
Till it seems like a distant mountain
Low down on the Great Grey Plain.
No sign of a stream or fountain,
No spring on its dry, hot breast,
No shade from the blazing noontide
Where a weary man might rest.
Whole years go by when the glowing
Sky never clouds for rain --
Only the shrubs of the desert
Grow on the Great Grey Plain.
From the camp, while the rich man's dreaming,
Come the `traveller' and his mate,
In the ghastly dawnlight seeming
Like a swagman's ghost out late;
And the horseman blurs in the distance,
While still the stars remain,
A low, faint dust-cloud haunting
His track on the Great Grey Plain.
And all day long from before them
The mirage smokes away --
That daylight ghost of an ocean
Creeps close behind all day
With an evil, snake-like motion,
As the waves of a madman's brain:
'Tis a phantom NOT like water
Out there on the Great Grey Plain.
There's a run on the Western limit
Where a man lives like a beast,
And a shanty in the mulga
That stretches to the East;
And the hopeless men who carry
Their swags and tramp in pain --
The footmen must not tarry
Out there on the Great Grey Plain.
Out West, where the stars are brightest,
Where the scorching north wind blows,
And the bones of the dead seem whitest,
And the sun on a desert glows --
Out back in the hungry distance
That brave hearts dare in vain --
Where beggars tramp for existence --
There lies the Great Grey Plain.
'Tis a desert not more barren
Than the Great Grey Plain of years,
Where a fierce fire burns the hearts of men --
Dries up the fount of tears:
Where the victims of a greed insane
Are crushed in a hell-born strife --
Where the souls of a race are murdered
On the Great Grey Plain of Life!
poem by Henry Lawson
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
My Land
A NEW land, like a stainless flower set
In the green foliage of the waving sea;
Or like a maiden whose fair heart is free,
Whose honest eyes with no sad tears are wet,
Whose bosom has no passion to forget,
But thrills and lifts exuberant, as she
Voices some sudden-flooding melody!
A land of strength, life, vigour, youth—and yet
An old land, grey as I, her child, am grey;
Filled with the whispers of old thoughts that stir
And wake, like shadows of the past that play
Deep in the beauty of a child's grave eyes,
And show beneath life's gladness glancing there
The pathos of a hundred histories.
poem by Arthur Henry Adams
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
The Grey Road
A sun-flash on his mounting wing,
A wild note soaring high—
The lark is up, the minstrel king,
The poet of the sky.
To thrill, to sing of Youth and Spring
Those golden numbers flowed.
What message then
Has he for men
Who tread the long grey road?
Knee-deep in grass the cattle stand,
The river winds along,
And chants through sunny meadow land
A low mysterious song.
Ah! sunlit vale and lover’s tale
Youth’s day is quickly gone—
Past current-beat
And meadow-sweet
The grey road stretches on!
Grim bastions frowning down below—
And rising, tier on tier,
Sublime, and crowned with ageless snow
The awful peaks appear.
The heights belong unto the strong
Who scale, by crags untried,
The great cliffs face—
But at its base
The grey road turns aside!
No hope in Heaven, no minstrel strain,
No vales where summer shone
A leaden sky, a silent plain,
The grey road stretching on.
O Christ, who trod the thorny path,
And bore the bitter load,
Have mercy then
On weary men
Who tread the long grey road!
poem by George Essex Evans
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!
Till All the Bad Things Came Untrue
BY blacksoil plains burned grey with drought
Where desert shrubs and grasses grow,
Along the Land of Furthest Out
That only Overlanders know.
I dreamed I camped on river grass
In bends where river timber grew—
I dreamed, I dreamed the days to pass
Till all the bad things came untrue.
I dreamed that I was young again,
But was not young as I had been,
My path through life seemed fair and plain,
My sight and hearing clear and keen.
No longer bent nor lined and grey,
I met and loved and worshipped you—
I dreamed, I dreamed the days away
Till all the sad things came untrue.
I dreamed a home of freestone stood
With toned tiled roofs as roofs should be,
By cliff and fall and beach and wood
With wide verandahs to the sea.
I dreamed a hale gudeman and wife,
With sons and daughters well-to-do,
Lived there the glorious old home life
And all the mad things were untrue.
From blacksoil plains burned bare with drought
Where years are sown that never grow—
From dead grey creeks of dreams and drought,
Through black-ridged wastes of weirdest woe,
I tramped and camped with fearsome fare
Until the sea-scape came in view,
And lo! the home lay smiling there
And all the bad things were untrue.
poem by Henry Lawson
Submitted by Poetry Lover
Vote! | Copy!