In an old manse mid purple heather,
Vigorous with the bracing weather
Of breezy Scottish hills,
Two bright children grew up together
For triumphs or for ills.
Bred in the parish-school to knowledge,
Bent in their ripening years to college
In the old classic towers,
Their wild blood forced them to acknowledge
That there are inner powers
Which bow not to the calculations
Of those who tend our education,
But mould us at their wills,
Our several predestinations
In due time to fulfil.
Both left those towers without emotion,
Both tendered their young life's devotion
To the time-honoured hope
And refuge of high-hearts --- the ocean
With its prodigious scope;
And there they parted, one to mingle
With clenched hilt and tight-drawn surcingle
In the fierce surge of war,
Far from the Highland fireside's ingle,
From his boy-brother far.
And after to lay down the sabre,
And through unheard of risk and labour
To wield a soldier's pen;
To make grim war his next-door neighbour,
And live with dying men,
Until all Europe rang the praises
Of him who chronicled the phases,
Events, and daily stride
Of warfare in such glowing phrases,
And for his work defied
The lurking perils of night-watches,
And a great fight's shell-mangled batches,
Like combatants themselves:
That we might have exact depatches
To range on our bookshelves.
The other on the sea went roaming,
Until some chance controlled his coming
To Queensland's sunny shore,
Unconscious that the Powers were dooming
That he should leave no more.
And here the same fierce blood, which hurried
His brother swift and undeterred
To where the war was waged,
Left him no rest till he was buried,
As in his veins it raged.
Now you could hear his stockwhip rattle,
Mustering roving herds of cattle
Out on a western run;
Now he was fighting a stark battle
Under a northern sun
With quartz reefs for their golden treasures,
Enshrining his wild pains and pleasures
In strong pathetic verse,
And giving in his rugged measures
A picture rich and terse
Of miners and their wild existence,
Of bush life in the untamed distance,
Of shanty-revelry,
And of stern struggles for subsistence
When creek and run were dry.
Ten years had passed since last the tidings
Of his migrations and abidings
Had reached his far-off friends,
When, following the inner guidings
Which shape us to our ends,
Or by some chance, the elder brother
His footsteps turned to where the other
Had breathed out his bright life,
Without the hand of child or mother
To soothe in the last strife.
He knew not where to seek, nor even
Whether a kind and gracious Heaven
Had held a shielding hand
Over that head, and it were given
To him in this far land
To clasp his long-lost brother to him;
Nor could he learn till those who knew him,
The lost one, in old times,
Came shyly one by one unto him
With wild yarns and stray rhymes
Of the bush-poet --- brother drovers
And mining-mates and some few rovers,
And Jacks of ev'ry trade,
Like the dead brother, all staunch lovers
Of him, who 'neath the shade
Of the God's-acre trees was lying,
Where nightly the hill-winds come sighing
Over Toowoomba's heights.
Where friendly hands received him dying,
And tended his faint lights
So tenderly. And some wild rover,
Stockman or mining-mate or drover,
Brought out one day a book
Well-thumbed, with torn green-paper cover,
And bade the brother look
Onto the pages ornamented,
In type unevenly indented,
And lines that were not flush,
With stirring rough-hewn poems printed
As "Voices from the Bush."
Adieu, staunch mates who fondly cherished
The memory that else had perished
Of him with his wild rhymes,
Who faithfully maintained and nourished
His fame till better times!
Adieu, great, tender, soldier brother
Come from so far to seek the other
Who here breathed out his life
Too soon, without a child or mother
To soothe in the last strife.
And thou adieu, bright, genial poet,
Given at last, couldst thou but know it,
Thy tardy well-earned fame,
And with the bay, could we but show it
To thee, twined round thy name.
First published in The Queenslander, 22 September 1883;
and later in
A Poetry of Exiles and Other Poems by Douglas Sladen, 1884.
Author reference sites: Austlit, Australian Dictionary of Biography
See also.
Vigorous with the bracing weather
Of breezy Scottish hills,
Two bright children grew up together
For triumphs or for ills.
Bred in the parish-school to knowledge,
Bent in their ripening years to college
In the old classic towers,
Their wild blood forced them to acknowledge
That there are inner powers
Which bow not to the calculations
Of those who tend our education,
But mould us at their wills,
Our several predestinations
In due time to fulfil.
Both left those towers without emotion,
Both tendered their young life's devotion
To the time-honoured hope
And refuge of high-hearts --- the ocean
With its prodigious scope;
And there they parted, one to mingle
With clenched hilt and tight-drawn surcingle
In the fierce surge of war,
Far from the Highland fireside's ingle,
From his boy-brother far.
And after to lay down the sabre,
And through unheard of risk and labour
To wield a soldier's pen;
To make grim war his next-door neighbour,
And live with dying men,
Until all Europe rang the praises
Of him who chronicled the phases,
Events, and daily stride
Of warfare in such glowing phrases,
And for his work defied
The lurking perils of night-watches,
And a great fight's shell-mangled batches,
Like combatants themselves:
That we might have exact depatches
To range on our bookshelves.
The other on the sea went roaming,
Until some chance controlled his coming
To Queensland's sunny shore,
Unconscious that the Powers were dooming
That he should leave no more.
And here the same fierce blood, which hurried
His brother swift and undeterred
To where the war was waged,
Left him no rest till he was buried,
As in his veins it raged.
Now you could hear his stockwhip rattle,
Mustering roving herds of cattle
Out on a western run;
Now he was fighting a stark battle
Under a northern sun
With quartz reefs for their golden treasures,
Enshrining his wild pains and pleasures
In strong pathetic verse,
And giving in his rugged measures
A picture rich and terse
Of miners and their wild existence,
Of bush life in the untamed distance,
Of shanty-revelry,
And of stern struggles for subsistence
When creek and run were dry.
Ten years had passed since last the tidings
Of his migrations and abidings
Had reached his far-off friends,
When, following the inner guidings
Which shape us to our ends,
Or by some chance, the elder brother
His footsteps turned to where the other
Had breathed out his bright life,
Without the hand of child or mother
To soothe in the last strife.
He knew not where to seek, nor even
Whether a kind and gracious Heaven
Had held a shielding hand
Over that head, and it were given
To him in this far land
To clasp his long-lost brother to him;
Nor could he learn till those who knew him,
The lost one, in old times,
Came shyly one by one unto him
With wild yarns and stray rhymes
Of the bush-poet --- brother drovers
And mining-mates and some few rovers,
And Jacks of ev'ry trade,
Like the dead brother, all staunch lovers
Of him, who 'neath the shade
Of the God's-acre trees was lying,
Where nightly the hill-winds come sighing
Over Toowoomba's heights.
Where friendly hands received him dying,
And tended his faint lights
So tenderly. And some wild rover,
Stockman or mining-mate or drover,
Brought out one day a book
Well-thumbed, with torn green-paper cover,
And bade the brother look
Onto the pages ornamented,
In type unevenly indented,
And lines that were not flush,
With stirring rough-hewn poems printed
As "Voices from the Bush."
Adieu, staunch mates who fondly cherished
The memory that else had perished
Of him with his wild rhymes,
Who faithfully maintained and nourished
His fame till better times!
Adieu, great, tender, soldier brother
Come from so far to seek the other
Who here breathed out his life
Too soon, without a child or mother
To soothe in the last strife.
And thou adieu, bright, genial poet,
Given at last, couldst thou but know it,
Thy tardy well-earned fame,
And with the bay, could we but show it
To thee, twined round thy name.
First published in The Queenslander, 22 September 1883;
and later in
A Poetry of Exiles and Other Poems by Douglas Sladen, 1884.
Author reference sites: Austlit, Australian Dictionary of Biography
See also.
