• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

The Institute of Australian Culture

Heritage, history, and heroes; literature, legends, and larrikins

  • Home
  • Articles
  • Biographies
  • Books
  • Ephemera
  • Poetry & songs
    • Recommended poetry
    • Poetry and songs, 1786-1900
    • Poetry and songs, 1901-1954
    • Rock music and pop music [videos]
    • Early music [videos]
  • Slang
  • Timeline
    • Timeline of Australian history and culture
    • Calendar of Australian history and culture
    • Significant events and commemorative dates
  • Topics

Feed My Sheep [poem by Menie Parkes]

12 January 2014 · Leave a Comment

[Editor: This poem by Menie Parkes was published in Poems (1867).]

Feed My Sheep.

Awake from your indolent slumbers,
And your breath to a life-pulse quicken;
Awake, if ye’ve hearts in your bosoms,
Or souls that with woe may be stricken:
Awake! for God’s trumpet is calling
The men of the earth to his standard:
He goes forth to succour the falling,
And seek for the lost and the wandered.

Are ye blind with the smoke of the city?
Is wealth, then, your only care?
Has gold cased your heart from all pity?
Are ye deaf to the voice of despair?
Oh, the air that around you is beating —
The very last wave of your breath —
Is thick with the cry and the wailing
Of shame that is darker than death.

The sin-nurtured children of sorrow,
With broken words lisping the thought,
Are cursing their life at its dawning,
So deeply with woe it is fraught:
They are swarming the streets and the alleys,
Uncared-for, unloved, and untaught.
Are ye idle, ye wealthy and listless?
Oh, work may be found if ’tis sought:
Unblest by the home-love that hallows,
Of God whom they know not unfearing,
Their course is straight on to the gallows,
Up steps that their own crime is rearing.

Oh, look in the young children’s faces,
Deep-furrowed with thought and with guile;
They know not a mother’s embraces,
Nor the light of a father’s smile:
They call not for censure, but pity,
And your heart’s most lenient love;
Your children, were they left as these are,
Be sure, in the same paths would rove.

The loud laugh of the fallen woman
Arises to God thro’ the air:—
She, too, is immortal and human,
Could ye see through that surface-bold stare.
Oh, her soul shrinketh back in its sorrow,
And its terrible utterance of woe,
A voice in that wild laugh doth borrow,
Whose bitterness none can know.

The heart-wail of the weeping mother,
Her children starving for food,
Drawing closer the rags far too scanty to cover
The forms of her famishing brood:
And the groans of the father and husband who finds
His strong hand as helpless as tho’ it were frail,
That God’s curse, “thou shalt work,” is blessing to that
Which man doth pronounce, “of work thou shalt fail.”
There are dens in your cities, Australians,
The wild beasts would never inhabit;
But your people have learned to endure them,
AND WISH FOR NO BETTER THRO’ HABIT.
They foster and pamper diseases,
Invite and encourage all vices,
And our statesmen say, wrinkling their eyebrows,
“They’re the best we can get for the prices.”

And shall it be thus, and we idle?
By all that is noble and true,
By the holy promptings within us,
We will rise, and will go forth to do;
And we call on the weak and the mighty,
On the high and the lowly we call;
We call thro’ the breadth of the city, —
“Come, come, there is labor for all.”

We need the pen of the writer,
We need the voice of the strong,
We need the hand of the worker,
And we need them steady and long:
We ask from the gentle woman
Her loving and womanly aid;
From the strong man we ask his power;
From the rich that some wealth may be paid
To the cause of the Great Wealth Giver,
Whose children are fainting for bread;
And we say to the weak and the lowly,
Whose hearts have silently bled —
While impotent seemeth their feeling,
Bound firm by Poverty’s fetter —
That a kindly smile and a gentle word
Are oft, in God’s thinking, far better
Than a careless coin from a heavy purse,
Or a careless word from a ready pen, —
And riches and talent may often do worse
Than a friendly word from the poorest of men.

We must take the poor young children,
And smile off the frown from their eyes,
And teach them to live for a purpose,
From sin and from shame to rise.
We must take the fallen woman,
And teach her to hope and pray,
To feel there is still a retrieval —
That her night may be followed by day.
We must give to the homeless a dwelling,
Find labor for those that can work,
Give food to the helpless and starving,
Drive sins from the dens where they lurk,
And the light of the day shall destroy them,
As the breath of God’s fruitful air
Doth wither the corpse to ashes,
If brought from its dim grave-lair.

Awake! the miasma of crime
Is spreading thro’ alley and lane,
And Misery floateth her banner,
Enstrengthening crime in her reign!
Awake! for God’s trumpet is calling
The men o f the earth to His standard;
He goes forth to raise up the fallen,
And bring back the lost and the wandered.



Source:
Menie Parkes, Poems, F. Cunninghame, Sydney, [1867], pages 59-62

Editor’s notes:
hallow = to consecrate, make, or set apart something as holy; to greatly respect, revere, or venerate

miasma = an unwholesome, corrupting, or foreboding atmosphere (can also refer to pollution or noxious vapours in the air)

[Editor: Corrected “But the groans” to “And the groans”, with regard to the “Errata” corrections.]

Filed Under: poetry Tagged With: Menie Parkes (1839-1915) (author), poem, Poems (Menie Parkes 1867), SourceSLV, year1867

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Australian flag, Kangaroo, Wattle, 100hThe Institute of Australian Culture
Heritage, history, and heroes. Literature, legends, and larrikins. Stories, songs, and sages.

Search this site

Featured books

The Man from Snowy River and Other Verses, by Banjo Paterson A Book for Kids, by C. J. Dennis  The Bulletin Reciter: A Collection of Verses for Recitation from The Bulletin The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke, by C. J. Dennis The Complete Inner History of the Kelly Gang and Their Pursuers, by J. J. Kenneally The Foundations of Culture in Australia, by P. R. Stephensen The Australian Crisis, by C. H. Kirmess Such Is Life, by Joseph Furphy
More books (full text)

Featured lists

Timeline of Australian history and culture
A list of significant Australiana
Significant events and commemorative dates
Australian slang
Books (full text)
Australian literature
Rock music and pop music (videos)
Folk music and bush music (videos)
Early music (videos)
Recommended poetry
Poetry and songs, 1786-1900
Poetry and songs, 1901-1954
Australian explorers
Topics
Links

Featured posts

Advance Australia Fair: How the song became the Australian national anthem
Brian Cadd [music videos and biography]
Ned Kelly: Australian bushranger
Under the Southern Cross I Stand [the Australian cricket team’s victory song]

Some Australian authors

E. J. Brady
John Le Gay Brereton
C. J. Dennis
Mary Hannay Foott
Joseph Furphy
Mary Gilmore
Charles Harpur
Grant Hervey
Lucy Everett Homfray
Rex Ingamells
Henry Kendall
“Kookaburra”
Henry Lawson
Jack Moses
“Dryblower” Murphy
John Shaw Neilson
John O’Brien (Patrick Joseph Hartigan)
“Banjo” Paterson
Marie E. J. Pitt
A. G. Stephens
P. R. Stephensen
Agnes L. Storrie (Agnes L. Kettlewell)

Recent Posts

  • [The new stamps] [re the new Tasmanian postage stamps, 2 January 1900]
  • The Leading Lady [poem by “Stargazer”, 31 January 1917]
  • The Naval Contingent: With the Australians in China [17 October 1900]
  • Australia Day [26 January 1953]
  • Australia Day [24 January 1953]

Top Posts & Pages

  • Poetry and songs, 1786-1900
  • Australian slang
  • Rommel’s comments on Australian soldiers [1941-1942]
  • The Man from Snowy River [poem by Banjo Paterson]
  • The Bastard from the Bush [poem, circa 1900]

Archives

Categories

Posts of note

The Bastard from the Bush [poem, circa 1900]
A Book for Kids [by C. J. Dennis, 1921]
Click Go the Shears [traditional Australian song, 1890s]
Core of My Heart [“My Country”, poem by Dorothea Mackellar, 24 October 1908]
Freedom on the Wallaby [poem by Henry Lawson, 16 May 1891]
The Man from Ironbark [poem by Banjo Paterson]
Nationality [poem by Mary Gilmore, 12 May 1942]
The Newcastle song [music video, sung by Bob Hudson]
No Foe Shall Gather Our Harvest [poem by Mary Gilmore, 29 June 1940]
Our pipes [short story by Henry Lawson]
Rommel’s comments on Australian soldiers [1941-1942]
Shooting the moon [short story by Henry Lawson]

Recent Comments

  • rob buntine on No Foe Shall Gather Our Harvest [poem by Mary Gilmore, 29 June 1940]
  • Carol on Poetry and songs, 1786-1900
  • Annie Crestani on Under the Southern Cross I Stand [the Australian cricket team’s victory song]
  • Peter Pearsall on The Clarence [poem by Jack Moses]
  • Trevor Hurst on Timeline of Australian history and culture

For Australia

Copyright © 2023 · Log in