Cases have been published recently of gallant work done by country doctors who, without hope of reward, have performed self-sacrificing deeds in the service of suffering humanity. Opportunities rarely occur to praise such men as these, the most truly altruistic workers in remote places of the land.
The quiet country doctors
Of many a country town,
Whose lives are spent to service bent,
With scant hope of renown -
Those sturdy country doctors,
That walk the healer's way,
At beck and call of one and all
That pain be smoothed away.
Those patient country doctors,
That journey day and night
By country roads to far abodes
To ease some sufferer's plight;
Thro' fire and flood and tempest
They make their pilgrimage
To bring release and healing peace,
The comforters of age.
Those modern country doctors,
They do not advertise;
Surcease they bring for suffering
And hope to pain-filled eyes.
These be their ends to be man's friends,
And so they shape and plan,
Divorced from greed to serve man's need,
And give their lives to man.
Those quiet country doctors,
Unsung, unknown to fame,
Refusing none what may be done
In skilful healing's name -
Philosophers, friends, mentors,
Thro' pain and death and birth,
And who shall say that such as they
Are not salt of the earth?
First published in The Herald, 16 July 1934;
and later in
The Queenslander, 9 August 1934.
Author reference sites: C.J. Dennis, Austlit, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Australian Poetry Library
See also.
