When Mother Calls to Dinner [poem by Uloola]

[Editor: This poem by Uloola was published in The Bulletin Reciter, 1901.]

When Mother Calls to Dinner.

We ’re on a farm not far from town —
There ’s just a dozen acres ;
Our neighbours range from atheists
And infidels to Quakers ;
We ’ve got the good old pious sort
’Long-side the hardened sinner —
But that won’t spoil our appetite
When Mother calls to dinner.

When, years ago, we started first
And did the pioneering —
The fencing and the breaking-up,
The stumping and the clearing —
If stuck at some old ironbark
Which looked a likely winner,
We always got our courage up
When Mother called to dinner.

We ’ve had some floods, when weeks of rain
Have given us a notion
We ’d wake some day and find the place
Adrift towards the ocean ;
And then such droughts and failing crops
As daunt the green beginner !
But still we fought and struggled on,
And Mother called to dinner.

So though the droughts may scourge the land,
Or floods roar like a river,
We ’ll hope that better times ’ll come —
The bad can’t last for ever !
And though the worry and the care
Are making Dad grow thinner,
There ’s always hope of winning yet
While Mother calls to dinner.

Uloola.

Source:
A.G. Stephens (editor). The Bulletin Reciter: A Collection of Verses for Recitation from “The Bulletin” [1880-1901], The Bulletin Newspaper Company, Sydney, 1902 [first published 1901], pages 66-67