[Editor: This is a poem from Beyond the City Gates: Australian Story & Verse (1923) by Jack Moses.]
Bungabee
(Bungabee is a rich dairying district seven miles from Lismore.)
On my way through Bungabee
The plough was is the land;
The cattle rested is the shade,
Where clumps of gum-trees stand.
There’s the stockman in his saddle,
And his pipe is drawing free,
As he rides a-down the valley
’Tween the hills of Bungabee.
You may talk about your sunsets,
And the waving wheat you’ve seen,
The flocks of snow-white cockatoos,
Like silver on the green.
And your clipper ship that’s sailing
In the moonlight, on the sea;
But the cows, they fill the buckets,
In the hills of Bungabee.
When I was leaving Bungabee
The scene was fresh and green,
And where the sunbeam kissed the corn
It left a golden sheen.
The magpies sang with liquid note,
But the crows seemed poor to me,
Yet I hope they’ll never pick a bone
In the hills of Bungabee.
Source:
Jack Moses, Beyond the City Gates: Australian Story & Verse, Sydney: Austral Publishing Co., 1923, page 55
Editor’s notes:
draw = to move or flow in a particular direction (e.g. drawing smoke through a chimney or a pipe)
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