[Editor: This poem by John O’Brien was published in Around the Boree Log and Other Verses, 1921.]
Calling To Me
Through the hush of my heart in the spell of its dreaming
Comes the song of a bush boy glad-hearted and free;
Oh, the gullies are green where the sunlight is streaming,
And the voice of that youngster is calling to me.
It is calling to me with a haunting insistence,
And my feet wander off on a hoof-beaten track,
Till I hear the old magpies away in the distance
With a song of the morning that’s calling me back.
It is calling me back, for the dew’s on the clover,
And the colours are mellow on mountain and tree:
Oh, the gold has gone gray in the heart of the rover,
And the bush in the sunshine is calling to me.
It is calling to me, though the breezes are telling
Gay troubadour tales to the stars as they roam;
For the tapers are lit in the humble old dwelling,
And the love that it sheltered is calling me home.
It is calling me home — but the white road lies gleaming,
And afar from it all must I tarry and dree;
Just an echo far off, in the hush of my dreaming,
Is the voice of a youngster that’s calling to me.
Published in:
John O’Brien. Around the Boree Log and Other Verses, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1921
Editor’s notes:
dree = to endure
tarry = to stay longer than intended
This was the first John O’Brien poem that ‘called to me’. I found it so haunting that I sought out other ones like it. It was in my school reader with others by Henry Lawson etc. both poems and prose that birthed my love of my country and it’s literature. I still have my school readers and I’m 77.