Bright Star

 

I've been spending a lovely Saturday afternoon snuggling with my boy watching Bright Star, whilst sipping English Breakfast Tea and listening to the rain. This is about as good as it gets, really.

Have you seen this lovely film, my friend? Are you snuggling with your best beloved? Are you having a blissful weekend too?

Bright Star

John Keats

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—
No—yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death.

 

Shakespeare and poetry

 

A great video for AO7 Grammar of Poetry students. And for the rest of you that love the Bard.

 

Jamie Douglas

Have you heard about Jamie Douglas?

 

Jamie Douglas

by K A Peters

'Twas in the days when Claverhouse was scouring moor and glen,
To shake with fire and bloody sword the faith of Scottish men,
They had made a covenant with the Lord, firm in their faith to bide,
Nor break with Him their plighted word whatever might betide.
The sun was nearly setting, when o'er the heather wild,
And up a narrow mountain-path alone there walked a child.
He was a bonnie, blithesome lad, lithe and strong of limb,
A father's pride and a mother's love were fast bound up in him.

His bright blue eyes glanced fearless round, his step was firm and light.
What was it underneath his plaid his little hands clasped tight?
'Twas the bannocks which that morning his mother had made with care
From out her scanty store of meal, and now, with many a prayer,
Had sent by Jamie, her ain boy, a trusty lad and brave,
To good old Pastor Tammas Roy, now hiding in yon cave;
For whom the bloody Claverhouse had hunted long in vain,
And swore he would not leave that glen, till old Tam Roy was slain.

So Jamie Douglas went his way with heart that knew no fear.
He turned the great curve in the rock nor dreamed that death was near,
But lurking there were Clavers' men, who laughed aloud with glee.
He turned to flee, but all in vain, they drag him back a pace
To where their cruel leader stands, and set them face to face.
The cakes concealed beneath the plaid soon tell the story plain.
" 'Tis old Tam Roy these cakes are for!" exclaimed the angry man.
Boy, guide me to his hiding-place, and I will let you go."
But Jamie shook his yellow curls, and stoutly answered, "No."

"I'll drop you down the mountain cliffs, and there among the stones,
The old gaunt wolf and carrion crow shall battle for your bones; "
And in his brawny strong right hand he lifted up the child,
And held him o'er a clefted rock, a chasm deep and wild
So deep it was, the trees below like willow wands did seem.
The poor boy looked in frightened maze, it seemed some horrid dream.
He looked up to the sky above, and then at the men close by:
Had they no little ones at home, and could they let him die?

But no one spoke, and no one moved, or lifted hand to save
From such a fearful, awful death, the little lad so brave.
"It's waefu' deep," he shuddering cried, "but, oh !.I canna tell:
Sae drap me doon there if ye will, it's nae sae deep as hell."
A childish scream - a faint, dull sound - oh, Jamie Douglas true!
Long, long within that lonely cave shall Tam Roy wait for you;
And long for your welcome coming waits the mother on the moor,
And watches and cries, " Come, Jamie, lad," through the half-open door.

No more adown the rocky, path you come with fearless tread,
Or on the moor and mountains take the good man's daily bread ;
But up in heaven the shining ones a wondrous story tell,
Of a child snatched up from a rocky gulf that's nae sae deep as hell.
And there before the great white throne, forever blessed and glad,
His mother dear and Auld Tam Roy shall meet their bonnie lad.

 

Idylls of the King

 

Our reading of The Iliad last year has created a monster. Or rather, it has created a great love of epic poetry in my daughter and me. It that the same thing? Last term we devoured Beowulf and The Green Knight. This term, to our great delight we have started Tennyson's Idylls of the King.

The photos here are a bit of a fraud ( it is April Fool's Day, after all), since my book of poetry abridged the Idylls, and so we're reading off a kindle version, which is far more practical, but produces somewhat less atmospheric photographs. In our kindle version, we need to read five pages per day to get through the poem in a term, and so we just read to there, and then look for a sensible place to end. This poem is such a delight, that we're finding it hard to stop, but it is early days as yet.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, is the scheduled AO poet for this term, AO7 Term 2. He was probably the most important poet of the Victorian period, and his works include some of the finest poetry in the English language. It is exciting to be studying him together with Jemimah. The Idylls of the King is one of his best-known compositions and it is a delightful read aloud.

One of the things I love about CM homeschooling is the opportunity to continue my own education. Despite having studied English literature in the upper forms, I had never read epic poems, and I just adore them. I'm so glad Jemimah has a chance to know and love them too.

Maybe next term we'll read Keats' Endymion!

 

Drunken Parrots

Each year around this time we have a rather interesting problem. The Drunken Parrot Problem.  No, it's not too much Christmas glögg, either.

Musk parrots are a type of lorikeet, mostly green, with a yellow patch at the side of the breast. They have bright red forehead and ear coverts, which make them rather Christmassy, doesn't it?  Their call is a harsh, metallic screech, and they constantly chatter while they're eating.  'Muskies' are nomadic, travelling widely in search of flowering and fruiting trees, and we see them here a couple of times a year - when the eucalypts are in flower, and around Christmas for the pears.

Ah yes, the pears.

Each year the birds arrive in a large flock, ready to gorge on their Christmas dinner.  For a couple of days all is well, but then the birds begin displaying some very odd symptoms.  They get aggressive - even more pugnacious than usual - and lose coordination, falling out of trees and having difficulty in flying straight.  This is all very funny, but not long after, they start attacking their own reflections and fly, screeching loudly all the while, straight for our floor to ceiling windows.

Mostly, these foolish birds die in their noble attempt for supremacy, but enough survive to keep us busy rescuing them and keeping them safe and warm until they recover enough to fly away.  Those that fall into the pool are bravely rescued from a watery grave by Jemimah, who remains in her bathing suit at the ready.  At the height of the silly season we can fish up to twenty of these silly inebriated birds from the water each day.  They don't make it easy, either.  Often they manage to escape down the leaf trap under the deck, where rescue is far more difficult.

Australian poet, Judith Wright wrote a lovely poem about the parrots that came each year to feast on her loquats:

There’s not a fruit on any tree
to match their crimson, green and gold.
To see them cling and sip and sway,
loquats are no great price to pay.

We pay a much bigger price, I think - I would love it if they would leave a few of the pears for us - but I would be sad if they stopped coming to visit, with their funny antics and their beautiful red and green festive display.  We can always buy pears from the market.

Don't you love Jemimah's face?

Here's the rest of Judith Wright's poem.

Parrots

Loquats are cold as winter suns.
Among rough leaves their clusters glow
like oval beads of cloudy amber,
or small fat flames of birthday candles.

Parrots, when the winter dwindles
their forest fruits and seeds, remember
where the swelling loquats grow,
how chill and sweet their thin juice runs,

and shivering in the morning cold
we draw the curtains back and see
the lovely greed of their descending,
the lilt of flight that blurs their glories,

and warm our eyes upon the lories
and the rainbow-parrots landing.
There’s not a fruit on any tree
to match their crimson, green and gold.

To see them cling and sip and sway,
loquats are no great price to pay.

Judith Wright 1960

Beautiful Burns

Jean, I'll be mair thought o' a hundred years hence that now. - Robert Burns to his wife.

The book orders for next year have begun arriving, and for the past week or so I've been posting the most interesting arrival each day on A Peaceful Day's FaceBook page. Sort of book porn, if you will.

Today's book is possibly the most beautiful book I've ever seen, and now it's mine.  All mine!  Anyhow, I thought that it was beautiful enough to deserve a post on my poor neglected blog.  After all, I know many of you are fellow FaceBookers, but I'm sure not all of you are, and I thought you might like a little peak too.  Isn't it just lovely - so Victorian in all its over-the-top exuberance!

Here's a look inside:

The illustrations are not quite as OTT as the cover, are they?  They're quite restrained an elegant, in fact!

For those of you interested in such things, it was published in 1884 in New York by R. Worthington, and its full title is The Poetical Works of Robert Burns - Illustrated.  Abe has three copies of widely varying prices here.

Burns is my favourite poet - possibly, okay, probably, because he was my dear Dad's before me, and this new book, despite being the most beautiful of the many on my shelves is not the most precious to me.  That honour goes to this far more restrained and demure little paperback version below.  This was my Dad's favourite book, and was given to me by my mum soon after he died.  I love it very much.

Although it far less beautiful than my new book, this one is interesting in its own right.  Despite being, to my father at least, an excellent selection of Burns' most wonderful poems, this book has as its full name Brithers A' - A Minute a Day with Burns, Poet, Lover and Prophet of Brotherhood.

Now anyone who knows Burns is aware that the first two descriptors are correct, but Prophet?  And of what Brotherhood, precisely?  After reading this website, I am inclined to think that The Brotherhood is another name for the Freemasons, and it is true that Masons consider themselves brothers who have taken an oath of mutual support to each other. (Not that I knew that, but Google did.) This would explain the layout of the book as a sort of devotional to Burns.  The aim of the book is' to place within the limit of an hour's reading, the spirit, teaching and song of Burns on humanity, love and brotherhood.'

Here's what the author says:  Burns had a great message for his time and all time.  His glorious vision was one of love, creative, all-sufficient, all-pervading, unending, undying.  That he failed to fully grasp, obey and follow perfect love that must ultimately rule and guide all things brings him nearer our frailties and failures, and inspires in us a great sympathy and fellow-feeling, for, though his particular failures may not have been ours, each heart knows its own secret failure.

"A fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind."

Yes, well, right.  Moving right along.  Anyhow.  Regardless of the weird and wonderful reasons surrounding the writing of this book, the poems, grouped under interesting sub-headings stand on their own.  Without the mumbo-jumbo.  And I just adore Burns' poetry. And this book.  You can find your own copy here.

So there you are. My most beautiful book, and my most favouritest book both in the same post.

I'll leave you know with lines from couple of my favourite Burns poems. The first is a somewhat autobiographical song, Rantin', Rovin', Robin. Youtube is great for a poet like burns, if your Scots accent is not quite as authentic as my Dad's!

The gossip keekit in his loof,
Quo' scho, "Wha lives will see the proof,
This waly boy will be nae coof:
I think we'll ca' him Robin."

Robin was a rovin' boy,
Rantin', rovin', rantin', rovin',
Robin was a rovin' boy,
Rantin', rovin', Robin!

This next selection, To a Mouse is the first poem I learned by heart.  I can't remember what for - it was something for school, though.  Dad loved that fact that I could recite it!  I remember I thought it wonderful that a great poet like burns would think of writing an ode to a mouse.  I thought that was kinda cool.  Of course, Burns also write a poem to a louse, and another to a haggis, but I suspect I didn't know that at the time. I was about Jemimah's age, I reckon.



These final lines come from the poem, The Cotter's Saturday Night. Do read the whole poem sometime. Here's my favourite bit. It's about family devotions. Enjoy.  I'll be back with more book porn on FaceBook on Monday.

The cheerfu' supper done, wi' serious face,
They, round the ingle, form a circle wide;
The sire turns o'er, with patriarchal grace,
The big ha'bible, ance his father's pride:
His bonnet rev'rently is laid aside,
His lyart haffets wearing thin and bare;
Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide,
He wales a portion with judicious care;
And "Let us worship God!" he says with solemn air.

They chant their artless notes in simple guise,
They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim;
Perhaps Dundee's wild-warbling measures rise;
Or plaintive Martyrs, worthy of the name;
Or noble Elgin beets the heaven-ward flame;
The sweetest far of Scotia's holy lays:
Compar'd with these, Italian trills are tame;
The tickl'd ears no heart-felt raptures raise;
Nae unison hae they with our Creator's praise.

The priest-like father reads the sacred page,
How Abram was the friend of God on high;
Or Moses bade eternal warfare wage
With Amalek's ungracious progeny;
Or how the royal bard did groaning lie
Beneath the stroke of Heaven's avenging ire;
Or Job's pathetic plaint, and wailing cry;
Or rapt Isaiah's wild, seraphic fire;
Or other holy seers that tune the sacred lyre.

Perhaps the Christian volume is the theme,
How guiltless blood for guilty man was shed;
How He, who bore in Heaven the second name,
Had not on earth whereon to lay His head:
How His first followers and servants sped;
The precepts sage they wrote to many a land:
How he, who lone in Patmos banished,
Saw in the sun a mighty angel stand,
And heard great Bab'lon's doom pronounc'd by Heaven's command.

Then, kneeling down to Heaven's Eternal King,
The saint, the father, and the husband prays:
Hope "springs exulting on triumphant wing,"^1
That thus they all shall meet in future days,
There, ever bask in uncreated rays,
No more to sigh, or shed the bitter tear,
Together hymning their Creator's praise,
In such society, yet still more dear;
While circling Time moves round in an eternal sphere

Compar'd with this, how poor Religion's pride,
In all the pomp of method, and of art;
When men display to congregations wide

Devotion's ev'ry grace, except the heart!
The Power, incens'd, the pageant will desert,
The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole;
But haply, in some cottage far apart,
May hear, well-pleas'd, the language of the soul;
And in His Book of Life the inmates poor enroll.

Robert Frost poetry

I've spent a bit of time recently searching all the bookshelves for my old Robert Frost school poetry book. I kinda thought that it would be sweet to read to Jemimah from my old book, and to discuss what I'd written in the margins and whether she agreed. Sadly, the book, it appears, is AWOL, and so we're beginning the term instead with Frost's own selection of his poetry for young people, You Come Too, Favourite Poems for Young Readers. Possibly, despite the nostalgia, this is a better choice anyway, since despite their apparent simplicity, Frost's poems often contain levels of meaning below the surface, and it is good to begin with the simpler poems that the poet, himself, thought appropriate. As Jemimah heads into AO6 I want her to advance from understanding merely the basic story of a poem to understanding the meaning behind the words, and this selection of poetry is an ideal one with which to make this move.

Certainly, more than any other poet's work that we've studied so far, Frost's works benefit from subtle helps with interpretation to enhance the pleasure of the poem. The challenge for me as teacher is to introduce this type of deeper thought about the verses whilst ensuring that it does not become the type of painful analysis that gets between the poet and his audience. I remember thinking at school that authors would be horrified if they saw what teachers were reading into their work. I really believe a significant portion was dreamed up in the hallowed halls of some university lit department somewhere, and didn't occur to the writer at all.

Frost's poems are beautiful and powerful, and I want my daughter to think as fondly of them in later years as I do, and yet I also want Jemimah to appreciate as much of what Frost was, in fact, trying to say behind the words as she is able. Robert Frost himself said, "Every poem is a new metaphor inside or it is nothing", implying, I think, that the surface meaning of a poem is only the beginning, a jumping off point, as it were. Frost's poems grow with meaning and depth of thought as you read them over and over, and it would be a pity to leave kids with nothing more than the obvious in the poem.

On the other hand, if course is the dreaded over-analysis I was talking of earlier. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening is probably Frost's best known poem, and, as such, was being over-analysed in the minutest detail even in the poet's lifetime. Much, more is read into this work than what Frost intended for the short and simple piece. Frost, himself, was annoyed by this, saying that they were “pressing it for more than it should be pressed for. It means enough without its being pressed…I don’t say that somebody shouldn’t press it, but I don’t want to be there.”

So what are we doing with these lovely collection? Mostly we're just reading it. Sometimes we're discussing a poem, or comparing it with another piece of writing or an experience that we've had, or a story from history, or talking about how the words make us feel or what we picture in our heads when we read. We read a poem over again, just because we like it. Sometimes we read a poem from yesterday or from last week. We enjoy the beautiful poetry from this exceptional poet.

I have lovely memories of my time with Robert Frost when I was at school. His poems have remained with me, and as I've grown in years, and hopefully in knowledge, and wisdom and experience, the poems have grown in significance with me. That's what I want for Jemimah.

Here's Robert Frost himself reading his best known poem.

The People's Poet

Lawson has lived the life that he sings, and seen the places of which he writes; there is not one word in all his work which is not instantly recognised by his readers as honest Australian. The drover, the stockman, the shearer, the rider on the skyline, the girl waiting at the sliprails, the big bush funeral, the coach with flashing lamps passing at night along the ranges, the man to whom home is a bitter memory and his future a long despair; the troops marching to the beat of the drum, the coasting vessel struggling through blinding gales, the great grey plain, the wilderness of the Never Never—in long procession the pictures pass,and every picture is a true one because Henry Lawson has been there to see with his eyes and heart.

David McKee Wright in the Preface to Henry Lawson's Selected Poems (Sydney, 1918)

Those of you who follow my Australianised poetry rotation will notice that I've made an alteration for AO6.  I had hoped to find a copy of Mulga Bill's Bicycle and Other Banjo Paterson Classics illustrated by Bruce Whatley, which is out of print.  It turns out that it is impossible to procure.

As a consequence, I've decided to leave the Banjo for secondary school, and to spend a term with his equally iconic coeval or contemporary, Henry Lawson.  Nowadays, Patterson is probably the better known of the two, although at the time they both had excellent reputations as writers.  Whereas Patterson wrote about the Australian bush as a highly romanticised bucolic paradise, Lawson's bush was harsh, bleak and lonely, but both identified a real Australia, and both contributed significantly to Australia's growing sense of a National Identity. 

Lawson remains one of Australia's most highly regarded writers, and his picture was on the original blue ten dollar note.We read his legendary short story, The Drover's Wife in AO4, but it is fitting to read a term of his poetry and prose here in AO6.

Here's a Lawson poem that we won't be studying, but it amuses me all the same!

Australian Bards And Bush Reviewers

Henry Lawson In The Days When The World Was Wide 1900

While you use your best endeavour to immortalise in verse
The gambling and the drink which are your country's greatest curse,
While you glorify the bully and take the spieler's part --
You're a clever southern writer, scarce inferior to Bret Harte.

If you sing of waving grasses when the plains are dry as bricks,
And discover shining rivers where there's only mud and sticks;
If you picture `mighty forests' where the mulga spoils the view --
You're superior to Kendall, and ahead of Gordon too.

If you swear there's not a country like the land that gave you birth,
And its sons are just the noblest and most glorious chaps on earth;
If in every girl a Venus your poetic eye discerns,
You are gracefully referred to as the `young Australian Burns'.

But if you should find that bushmen -- spite of all the poets say --
Are just common brother-sinners, and you're quite as good as they --
You're a drunkard, and a liar, and a cynic, and a sneak,
Your grammar's simply awful and your intellect is weak.

We'll be using this book of Lawson's work illustrated by Dee Huxley.  It's actually in print (wow!), and is brought alive with Huxley's delightful black and white drawings and full page paintings. All the best known and favourite stories and poems of Henry Lawson are included including The Loaded Dog, The Drover's Wife, Andy's Gone with Cattle, and The Fire at Ross's Farm.

We'll also be using an out of 'print' CD, called The Loaded Dog and More Classic Favourites read by the inimitable Colin Friels.  The collection includes That There Dog of Mine, The Ironbark Chip, The Loaded Dog, Mitchell: A Character Sketch, and The Union Buries its Dead, and it is well worth looking out for. Friels has a great voice - strong and distinctly Australian, without becoming a parody of Australiana. He articulates well, and I find him a pleasure to listen to. My only criticism of this audiobook and indeed on the Huxley book comes from the author himself, Henry Lawson. When I read these stories aloud, I do some judicious editing to remove the profanities and blasphemies, thereby making the classic Aussie stories acceptable for a juvenile audience. Colin doesn't do this, and I find the use of God's name unacceptable.   This is one of the reasons that I've saved Lawson's work until AO6.

We'll study the Banjo and Lawson again in our schooling - possibly together to explore the Bulletin Debate in detail -  but I am looking forward to Jemimah's introduction to his work next year.  Hopefully some of you might join us.

Go and open the door

Image from The Book Chook

The Door

By Miroslav Holub
Translated by Ian Milner and George Theiner

Go and open the door.
Maybe outside there's
A tree, or a wood,
A garden,
Or a magic city.

Go and open the door.
Maybe a dog's rummaging.
Maybe you'll see a face,
Or an eye,
Or the picture
Of a picture.

Go and open the door.
If there's a fog
It will clear.

Go and open the door.
even if there's only
the darkness ticking,
even if there's only
the hollow wind,
even if nothing is there,
go and open the door.

At least
there'll be
a draught.

Wallis and Matilda and Banjo

I was struggling to free myself from the Sandman's clutches yesterday morning in time to get ready for church. I was struggling because...well, never you mind, but I was. Anyhow, I was lying there listening to the bedside radio when suddenly the following song started playing.



Suddenly I was wide awake. This song - a real blast from my past - is the wonderful Banjo Paterson poem, Clancy of the Overflow set to music, and I just had to know who sang it. The announcer kept me in suspense for another three songs until the end of the set, but then finally reminded me that the band was named Wallis and Matilda. Which you may scornfully already know I guess, but I'd forgotten in my haze of early-morningness.

I couldn't wait to leap up to google to discover whether the band had set any other Paterson poems to music, which it turns out they have. Dozens of them. Oh joy!

It strikes me that these will be a fantastic adjunct to our poetry studies, and I hope they might help some of you too. (Please listen to Paterson's words carefully. Many of his poems contain blasphemy and other profanity that make them unacceptable for my family. You may also be concerned by the drinking and gambling contained in some.)

We only have to think of all the songs we know word perfectly to to realise that setting text to music facilitates memorisation. Unfortunately, it also appears that the melody and text are learned as a unit, which makes learning Scripture to music slightly less than desirable, unless you always want to sing your verses to remember them. Try reciting the National Anthem without the tune, and see if you have trouble preventing yourself at least rehearsing by singing it silently first, to see what I mean. (Shameful admission: I remember the books of the Old Testament by singing them under my breath. Shhh.)

To me this linkage of melody and lyrics to not nearly so important with poetry. I really don't mind if I need to sing to words of Clancy of the Overflow in order to remember them, really I don't. I also don't mind if Jemimah does. And so, as she goes around singing snatches of Clancy today merely from me playing the song a couple of times yesterday while learning about the band and another couple of times just now whilst writing this post, I feel really quite excited about the possibilities.

I now have a couple of Wallis and Matilda albums on my wish list. I reckon they'll be great.

Here's another tune to get you interested:



(Please don't be angry at me for the questionable theology contained therein.)

As an aside, during my wanders on the Wallis and Matilda site, I also learned about this reply to Clancy of the Overflow written by the real Clancy, Thomas Gerald Clancy in 1897:

Clancy's Reply

Neath the star-spangled dome
Of my Austral home,
When watching by the camp fire's ruddy glow,
Oft in the flickering blaze
Is presented to my gaze
The sun-drenched kindly faces
Of the men of Overflow.


Now, though years have passed forever
Since I used, with best endeavour
Clip the fleeces of the jumbucks
Down the Lachlan years ago,
Still in memory linger traces
Of many cheerful faces,
And the well-remembered visage
Of the Bulletin's "Banjo".


Tired of life upon the stations,
With their wretched, scanty rations,
I took a sudden notion
That a droving I would go;
Then a roving fancy took me,
Which has never since forsook me,
And decided me to travel,
And leave the Overflow.

So with maiden ewes from Tubbo,
I passed en route to Dubbo,
And across the Lig'num country
'where the Barwon waters flow;
Thence onward o'er the Narran,
By scrubby belts of Yarran,
To where the landscape changes
And the cotton bushes grow.

And my path I've often wended
Over drought-scourged plains extended,
where phantom lakes and forests
Forever come and go;
And the stock in hundreds dying,
Along the road are lying,
To count among the 'pleasures"
That townsfolk never know.

Over arid plains extended
My route has often tended,
Droving cattle to the Darling,
Or along the Warrego;
Oft with nightly rest impeded,
when the cattle had stampeded,
Save I sworn that droving pleasures
For the future I'd forego.

So of drinking liquid mire
I eventually did tire,
And gave droving up forever
As a life that was too slow.
Now, gold digging, in a measure,
Affords much greater pleasure
To your obedient servant,
"Clancy of the Overflow".

I did not know this before, and I think it is really cool. Do you?

Too many 'oo's

I happened to mention on FB yesterday that we were off to Wooroonook Lakes for a picnic.

Which we were.

Which lead my friend Sue to comment that there were an awful lot of 'oo's in Wooroonook.

Which there are.

Which leads me by necessity to C J Dennis and the following poem.

And so this, Sue dear, is for you:

WOOLLOOMOOLOO

Here's a ridiculous riddle for you:
How many o's are there in Woolloomooloo?
Two for the W, two for the m,
Four for the l's, and that's plenty for them.

I write about C J Dennis' excellent Aussie classic A Book for Kids 'written for children over four and under four and eighty' here. You can read it online at Gutenberg here. More than you'll ever want to know about Woolloomooloo is here.

Great Aussie Poets

It is likely that harm has been done to a proper appreciation of Australian poetry by the inclusion of poor Australian poems in school anthologies. Lawson's "Out Back" for example, is not a good poem, and it could be agreed that the inclusion of such poems in our anthologies has done a disservice to poetry in general, and Australian poetry in particular.

A K Thompson, Living Verse, 1954

There was clearly a time not so very long ago when Australian poetry had rather a poor reputation. A K Thompson, Chief Lecturer in English at the University of Queensland though so, anyhow, in the preface to his anthology, Living Verse.

Prominent Australian academic, Walter Murdoch, back in 1926 was only a little more forgiving. He says this in the preface to The Poets' Commonwealth:

To understand what poetry means, we must see it applied to the life we know. The poets of Australia do not include a Milton or a Shelley, but to us Australians they do give us something - and something valuable - which the very greatest of other lands cannot give us.

Walter Murdoch, The Poets' Commonwealth, 1926

It is difficult to discover much nowadays about the controversy that was raging in these early times over the value of Australian poetry. Personally, I wonder whether it raged more in the hallowed halls of the Universities rather than on the streets, where Henry Lawson was greatly loved as Australia's 'Poet of the People'. I wonder, also, whether it was due to the balladic metre favoured by Australia's early poetry rather than more the more classical approaches to verse of those great English poets enjoyed at the time.

Interestingly, Wikipedia's entry of Australian Literature lists amongst the very greatest of Australian poets, these three: Henry Lawson, Adam Lindsay Gordon and Christopher Brennan. Why is it that I have never heard of Brennan then, I wonder, despite many critics regarding him as Australia's most important scholar and poet?

Cyberspace gives me a few ideas. Firstly, he was unresponsive to the forces of nationalism that dominated Australian society at that time, and his poetry therefore lacks the Australian identity that was as widely popular then and it is now. In an interview back in 1909 Brennan said:

I'm afraid I'm very unpatriotic. I've written nothing about the horse or the swagman. As far as "national" traits go, I might have made my verse in China.

Christopher Brennan, quoted in Australian Classics by Jane Gleeson-White

Secondly, Brennan was not a balladist and wrote in what is variably described as an 'obscure' or 'individual' style. Even his most highly regarded collection, Poems (1913) was not highly popular at its publication, and between 1932 and the '60s, his works were difficult to obtain. Even even today it is not easy to find his works in bookstores. Only a few can be found online.

Regardless of the reason for Brennan's obscurity, it is the nationalistic balladic story type style of many of Australia's poets that make them so very ideal for children, and really, this is what I want to talk to you about. All this other stuff is really just a waffly prelude to the important bit, which is our Australianised version of Ambleside Online's Poetry Rotation.

For those of you who are interested.

If you're not, you may care to read Clive James on Christopher Brennan. It's fascinating.

For the rest of you, here is AO's poetry rotation as written:

Year 1Child's Garden of Verses Robert Louis Stevenson
Now We Are Six and When We Were Very Young A.A. Milne
Oxford Book of Children's Verse Iona and Peter Opie

Year 2
Walter De La Mare
Eugene Field and James Whitcombe Riley
Sing Song by Christina Rossetti

Year 3
William Blake
Sara Teasdale and Hilda Conkling
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Year 4
Alfred Tennyson
Emily Dickinson
William Wordsworth

Year 5Rudyard Kipling
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
John Greenleaf Whittier and Paul Laurence Dunbar

Year 6
Robert Frost
Carl Sandburg
Alfred Noyes

Here is our Aussie-ised version:

Year 0
Any of the fantastic poetry picture books of single poems. Short list here. More comprehensive list of titles coming.

Year 1Child's Garden of Verses Robert Louis Stevenson
Now We Are Six and When We Were Very Young A.A. Milne
A Book for Kids C J Dennis (online here)

Year 2
Walter De La Mare
The Animals Noah Forgot A B 'Banjo' Paterson (online here)
Sing Song by Christina Rossetti

Year 3
William Blake
60 Classic Australian Poems edited by Christopher Cheng (in print)
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Also The Magic Trumpet by Mary Durack for a comparison of a classic Aussie poem written in similar metre. (OOP - available here)

Year 4
Ted Hughes Collected Poems for Children ill Raymond Briggs (Not Australian but English, but how could you leave this out of a poetry study? There is plenty of time for Tennyson later on, IMHO) (in print)
Emily Dickinson
William Wordsworth

Year 5Rudyard Kipling
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Around the Boree Log "John O'Brien" (online here)

Year 6
Robert Frost
Carl Sandburg
Henry Lawson Stories & Poems ill Dee Huxley


In secondary school we'll probably study Brennan. We'll also study Adam Lindsay Gordon. There are so many great Aussie poets, some of whom need two time slots - Paterson and Dennis to name two. We'll need to fit in another anthology or two as well - maybe in Years 11 or 12, maybe.

In the mean time, AO6 is as high as my little brain carries me. That introductory stuff was just that - stuff. The contents of my over-worked and rather addled brain. Scary, really.

Anyhow, this is our poetry plan. What about you? Are you altering AO's schedule to fit in your favourite poets? Who are you including? My favourite poet of all time is Rabbie Burns. We'll need to do a term of his poetry. A term of Robert Fergusson would be wonderful as well. Gotta love those Scots.

Isn't it good that we don't stop learning at Year 12?!!

A poem and some snow

This is my Princess in the snow. I've just been watching some videos of her skiing, and she's pretty good, I must say. Much better than me, that's for sure, but that's not saying much. More importantly, she had a ball. It was an absolute delight hearing her bubbling over with excitement as I spoke to her on the telephone each morning and night of her trip. It made me feel happy just listening to her.

Amongst the videos I discovered a delightful little gem. It's a poem, written/spoken by Jemimah the night she arrived when she was supposed to be asleep. There's no picture, so while you're listening, scroll down to see some photos of Falls Creek to put you in the mood.

Noises in the snow

Shhhh
Can you hear the noises the people are making
just because they are enjoying themselves in the snow?

Down there somewhere is my father
having a wonderful time.

Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip of the shower.

Chattering noises of people downstairs
Laughing away at jokes.

And the noises of people outside in the snow.
Going around.

It's wonderful being at the snow.

Here's a silly one to finish - a picture of the Princess Jemimah and her good friend the Princess Eye on Dress-up night. Clearly very silly and very fun. I like.

The Pedlar's Caravan

I wish I could show you the photo of my dear Dad driving the gypsy caravan, or the one of my Mum and Sister-in-law making the damper, or the one of my brother yabbying with the kids, but alas without their permission this is all I can show you of my brother and his family's holiday travelling around our 'neck of the woods' in a gypsy caravan.

Six days and nights meandering along the country roads of Victoria's goldfields, camping near a river or in a State Park or near a quaint country town. Yabbying in the dam. Baking damper on the fire. Drinking champagne with us (of course!!). Harnessing the huge Clydesdale draft horses - Penny and Murdoch, and learning how to drive the wagon.

By the time they arrived at our home on Thursday they were so laid back they were almost horizontal.

Sounds like the perfect holiday, don't you think?

The Pedlar's Caravan

I wish I lived in a caravan,
With a horse to drive, like the pedlar man!
Where he comes from nobody knows,
Or where he goes to, but on he goes!

His caravan has windows, two,
And a chimney of tin, that the smoke comes through;
He has a wife, with a baby brown,
And they go riding from town to town!

"Chairs to mend and delf to sell!"
He clashes the basins like a bell;
Tea-trays, baskets, ranged in order,
Plates with the alphabet round the border!

The roads are brown and the sea is green,
But his house is just like a bathing machine;
The world is round and he can ride,
Rumble and splash to the other side!

With the pedlar-man I should like to roam,
And write a book when I came home;
All the people would read my book,
Just like the Travels of Captain Cook!

William Brighty Rands

Anthologies for Aussie Kids

Oh yes! This is a new book that has me really excited - an anthology of classic Aussie poems written for children. I like it. I like it a lot.

Studying poetry the Charlotte Mason way generally means studying one poet at a time. The exploration of the works of individual poets allows the child to encounter a broad range of poetry, from the wonderful nonsense of T S Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats to the imaginative, mystical and subtle works of Walter de la Mare. (I wrote about our experiences with the enigmatic poet here.) This exploration helps our children to broaden their poetic horizons - their poetic 'taste' as it were. Just as we present our children with a variety of tasty but healthy dishes at table, not content with their choices of what is called in our home 'yellow food' - chippies, pastries, crumbed food, over-processed mush, so we must consciously introduce our children to the best of poets. As they become familiar with the best, so they become more discriminatory, able to distinguish fresh vegetables from packet; substance from twaddle; good verse from doggerel.

This process of studying poetry one poet at a time allows our children to encounter many different types of verse in a structured way, providing them with enough each poet's work that they can form an intimate link with the thoughts of the poet - with the way he thinks, feels and acts, as well as how he writes and what he believes. Hopefully some poets will become life-long friends.

Poetry anthologies, on the other hand, provide our children with a range of poets, introducing new styles, word patterns and rhythms, new subject matter, images and feelings. The same feeling occurs when we change from one term long poet to another - our change from Banjo Patterson to Christina Rossetti a few weeks ago is an example in point - but an anthology provides this change much more quickly - at the beginning of each new poem. To broaden our food analogy, anthologies are like a wonderful buffet table when we can wander along trying a little bit or this and a little bit of that until our plates are full. If we really like one dish we can toddle back for a larger portion next time.

I've written about Australian anthologies before. It's quite a good post actually. Humbly, I think most of my early posts were. Then I realised that they took too much time, and I had to settle for writing scholarly posts less often. Sometimes I write twaddle now. Thanks for putting up with that.

In that old post I write the following line:

Modern anthologies often include far too many twaddly poems for my liking, and I prefer older books. Never-the-less good modern anthologies are available.

You'll notice, though that I don't give you any examples of good modern Australian poetry anthologies, mainly because at that time I couldn't actually find any!!

Fortunately, during the past year 100 Australian Poems You Need to Know, edited by Jamie Grant and with a foreword from Phillip Adams, was published by Hardie Grant Books. This is a great anthology for adults and for older children. It is a beautifully presented book, and in it Grant has arranged a collection that ranges from the early 19th century work of Francis Macnamara and Adam Lindsay Gordon, through the nationalistic years of C J Dennis, Dorothea Mackellar and Henry Lawson, and then finally to the modern era of Clive James, David Malouf, Stephen McInerney and Kathleen Stewart. Now the latter group are names I've never heard of, most of them. They're the creators of free verse. There is no iambic pentametre here; no ballad metres. There is humour though, and that is not surprising, because editor James Grant says that a large proportion of the poems he chose are distinctly funny. We Aussies have a great sense of humour - a wonderful ability to laugh at ourselves, at our delicious eccentricities.

I like this poem of Kathleen Stewart's:

Life

The boys get together and do what makes them feel good.
The girls drift along the street writing.
The boys get successful.
The boys leave the girls for the other girls.
The girls drift along the street writing.
They have more to write about now.

Story of my teen years really...

I like this poem too. It's by Les Murray:

The Quality of Sprawl

Sprawl is the quality
of the man who cut down his Rolls-Royce
into a farm utility truck, and sprawl
is what the company lacked when it made repeated efforts
to buy the vehicle back and repair its image.

Sprawl is doing your farm work by aeroplane, roughly,
or driving a hitchhiker that extra hundred miles home.
It is the rococo of being your own still centre.
It is never lighting cigars with ten dollar notes:
that's idiot ostentation and murder of starving people.
Nor can it be bought with the ash of million dollar deeds.

Sprawl lengthens the legs; it trains greyhounds on liver and beer.
Sprawl almost never says, Why not?, with palms comically raised
nor can it be dressed for, not even in running shoes worn
with mink and a nose ring. That is Society. That's Style.
Sprawl is more like the thirteenth banana in a dozen
or anyway the fourteenth.

Sprawl is Hank Stamper in Never Give an Inch
bisecting an obstructive official's desk with a chain saw.
Not harming the official. Sprawl is never brutal,
though it's often intransigent. Sprawl is never Simon de Montfort
at a town-storming: Kill them all! God will know His own.
Knowing the man's name this was said to might be sprawl.

Sprawl occurs in art. The fifteenth to twenty-first
lines in a sonnet, for example. And in certain paintings.
I have sprawl enough to have forgotten which paintings.
Turner's glorious Burning of the Houses of Parliament
comes to mind, a doubling bannered triumph of sprawl -
except he didn't fire them.

Sprawl gets up the noses of many kinds of people
(every kind that comes in kinds) whose futures don't include it.
Some decry it as criminal presumption, silken-robed Pope Alexander
dividing the new world between Spain and Portugal.
If he smiled in petto afterwards, perhaps the thing did have sprawl.

Sprawl is really classless, though. It is John Christopher Frederick Murray
asleep in his neighbours' best bed in spurs and oilskins,
but not having thrown up:
sprawl is never Calum, who, in the loud hallway of our house
reinvented the Festoon. Rather
it's Beatrice Miles going twelve hundred ditto in a taxi,
No Lewd Advances, no Hitting Animals, no Speeding,
on the proceeds of her two-bob-a-sonnet Shakespeare readings.
An image of my country. And would that it were more so.

No, sprawl is full gloss murals on a council-house wall.
Sprawl leans on things. It is loose-limbed in its mind.
Reprimanded and dismissed,
it listens with a grin and one boot up on the rail
of possibility. It may have to leave the Earth.
Being roughly Christian, it scratches the other cheek
And thinks it unlikely. Though people have been shot for sprawl.

This is a beautiful collection, and I thoroughly recommend it...however it comes from a moral world view different from my own, and therefore I recommend it only for children old enough to discern.

Which brings us back to the new book. the one I mentioned right at the beginning of the post. 60 Classic Australian Poems edited by Christopher Cheng and illustrated by Gregory Rogers is perfect for young children. It's great for everyone really.

In it you'll find the best of the best of Australian poetry: C J Dennis, P J Hartigan, Banjo Patterson and Thomas E Spencer. This is clichéd Australia, one full of swagmen, dusty plains, drought, sheep and horses. It is kangaroos, cockatoos, dingos and koalas. Wattle and waratah. It is my Australia, the Australia I love.

How could you raise a true blue Aussie without them knowing this gem for example:

How M'Dougal Topped the Score by Thomas E. Spencer

A peaceful spot is Piper's Flat. The folk that live around -
They keep themselves by keeping sheep and turning up the ground;
But the climate is erratic, and the consequences are
The struggle with the elements is everlasting war.
We plough, and sow, and harrow - then sit down and pray for rain;
And then we get all flooded out and have to start again.
But the folk are now rejoicing as they ne'er rejoiced before,
For we've played Molongo cricket, and M'Dougal topped the score!

Molongo had a head on it, and challenged us to play
A single-innings match for lunch - the losing team to pay.
We were not great guns at cricket, but we couldn't well say, "No!"
So we all began to practise, and we let the reaping go.
We scoured the Flat for ten miles round to muster up our
men, But when the list was totalled we could only number ten.
Then up spoke big Tim Brady: he was always slow to speak,
And he said - "What price M'Dougal, who lives down at Cooper's Creek?"

So we sent for old M'Dougal, and he stated in reply
That he'd never played at cricket, but he'd half a mind to try.
He couldn't come to practise - he was getting in his hay,
But he guessed he'd show the beggars from Molongo how to play.
Now, M'Dougal was a Scotchman, and a canny one at that,
So he started in to practise with a pailing for a bat.
He got Mrs Mac. to bowl him, but she couldn't run at all,
So he trained is sheep-dog, Pincher, how to scout and fetch the ball.

Now, Pincher was no puppy; he was old, and worn, and grey;
But he understood M'Dougal, and - accustomed to obey -
When M'Dougal cried out "Fetch it!" he would fetch it in a trice,
But, until the word was "Drop it!" he would grip it like a vice.
And each succeeding night they played until the light grew dim:
Sometimes M'Dougal struck the ball - and sometimes the ball struck him!
Each time he struck, the ball would plough a furrow in the ground,
And when he missed the impetus would turn him three times round.

The fatal day at length arrived - the day that was to see
Molongo bite the dust, or Piper's Flat knocked up a tree!
Molongo's captain won the toss, and sent his men to bat,
And they gave some leather-hunting to the men from Piper's Flat.
When the ball sped where M'Dougal stood, firm planted in his track,
He shut his eyes, and turned him round, and stopped it - with his back!
The highest score was twenty-two, the total sixty-six,
When Brady sent a yorker down which scattered Johnson's sticks.

Then Piper's Flat went in to bat, for glory and renown,
But, like the grass before the scythe, our wickets tumbled down.
"Nine wickets down for seventeen, with fifty more to win!"
Our captain heaved a heavy sigh, and sent M'Dougal in.
"Ten pounds to one you'll lose it!" cried a barracker from town;
But M'Dougal said "I'll tak' it mon!" and planked the money down.
Then he girded up his moleskins in a self-reliant style,
Threw off his hat and boots, and faced the bowler with a smile.

He held the bat the wrong side out, and Johnson with a grin
Stepped lightly to the bowling crease, and sent a "wobbler" in;
M'Dougal spooned it softly back, and Johnson waited there,
But M'Dougal, crying "Fetch it!" started running like a hare.
Molongo shouted "Victory! He's out as sure as eggs,"
When Pincher started through the crowd, and ran through Johnson's legs.
He seized the ball like lightning; then he ran behind a log,
An M'Dougal kept on running, while Molongo chased the dog!

They chased him up, they chased him down, they chased him round, and then
He darted through a slip-rail as the scorer shouted "Ten!"
M'Dougal puffed; Molongo swore; excitement was intense;
As the scorer marked down twenty, Pincher cleared a barbed-wire fence.
"Let us head him!" shrieked Molongo. "Brain the mongrel with a bat!"
"Run it out! Good old M'Dougal!" yelled the men of Piper's Flat.
And M'Dougal kept on jogging, and then Pincher doubled back,
And the scorer counted "Forty" as they raced across the track.

M'Dougal's legs were going fast, Molongo's breath was gone -
But still Molongo chased the dog - M'Dougal struggled on.
When the scorer shouted "Fifty" then they knew the chase would cease;
And M'Dougal gasped out "Drop it!" as he dropped within his crease.
Then Pincher dropped the ball, and as instinctively he knew
Discretion was the wiser plan, he disappeared from view;
And as Molongo's beaten men exhausted lay around
We raised M'Dougal shoulder high, and bore him from the ground.

We bore him to M'Ginniss's, where lunch was ready laid,
And filled him up with whisky-punch, for which Molongo paid.
We drank his health in bumpers, and we cheered him three times three,
And when Molongo got its breath, Molongo joined the spree.
And the critics say they never saw a cricket match like that,
When M'Dougal broke the record in the game at Piper's Flat;
And the folks were jubilating as they never did before;
For we played Molongo cricket - and M'Dougal topped the score!

I thoroughly and whole heartedly recommend this book. I love the poem too.

In fact, I love this book so much that instead of buying one copy when I was in Readings at the weekend I bought two. One for me, and one for one of you. Yes, 60 Classic Australian Poems is The Great Aussie Living Book Give Away #3.

I'll give away a brand new copy of the book valued at AU$19.95 to one lucky reader. All you have to do to enter the draw is leave a comment on this post telling why you would like to win this book. That's all. I'll draw a winner at the end of Tuesday next week - that is, when it is no longer Tuesday anywhere in the world. Be sure to enter before then. As before, you get a second entry for following my blog - be sure to leave a separate comment telling me you've done so - and another for advertising this give-away on your own blog.

And so, to end this post I'll quote Christopher Cheng. In the forward to 60 Classic Australian Poems he writes:

Read the poems and laugh.
Read the poems and be moved.
Read the poems to recite.
Read the poems to enjoy.
Read the poems, and then why not write your own!

Indeed.

Winter

Winter garden,
the moon thinned to a thread,
insects singing

The winter storm
hid in the bamboo grove
and quieted away

A peaceful post as a balm to my busy week - a peek at the winter obi on our hall table and three of Basho's winter haiku.

Enjoy

Now then, let's go out
to enjoy the snow... until
I slip and fall!

Memorisation and The Man

I don't know about you, but this section on memorisation in Charlotte Mason's first book, Home Education, has always intrigued me. It is long, but do take the time for a quick skim:

Recitation and committing to memory are not necessarily the same thing, and it is well to store a child's memory with a good deal of poetry, learnt without labour. Some years ago I chanced to visit a house, the mistress of which had educational notions of her own, upon which she was bringing up a niece. She presented me with a large foolscap sheet written all over with the titles of poems, some of them long and difficult: Tintern Abbey, for example. She told me that her niece could repeat to me any of those poems that I liked to ask for, and that she had never learnt a single verse by heart in her life. The girl did repeat several of the poems on the list, quite beautifully and without hesitation; and then the lady unfolded her secret. She thought she had made a discovery, and I thought so too. She read a poem through to E.; then the next day, while the little girl was making a doll's frock, perhaps, she read it again; once again the next day, while E.'s hair was being brushed. She got in about six or more readings, according to the length of the poem, at odd and unexpected times, and in the end E. could say the poem which she had not learned.

I have tried the plan often since, and found it effectual. The child must not try to recollect or to say the verse over to himself, but, as far as may be, present an open mind to receive an impression of interest. Half a dozen repetitions should give children possession of such poems as 'Dolly and Dick,' 'Do you ask what the birds say?' Little lamb, who made thee?' and the like. The gains of such a method of learning are, that the edge of the child's enjoyment is not taken off by weariful verse by verse repetitions, and, also, that the habit of making mental images is unconsciously formed.

I remember once discussing this subject with the late Miss Anna Swanwick in some connection with Browning of which I do not recall, but in the course of talk an extremely curious incident transpired. A lady, a niece of Miss Swanwick's, said that after a long illness, during which she had not been allowed to do anything, she read 'Lycidas' through, by way of a first treat to herself as a convalescent. She was surprised to find herself then next day repeating to herself long passages. Then she tried the whole poem and found she could say it off, the result of this single reading, for she had not learned the poem before her illness, nor read it with particular attention. She was much elated by the treasure-trove she had chanced upon, and to test her powers, she read the whole of 'Paradise Lost,' book by book, and with the same result, - she could repeat it book by book after a single reading! She enriched herself by acquiring other treasures during her convalescence; but as health returned, and her mind became preoccupied with many interests, she found she no longer had this astonishing power. It is possible that the disengaged mind of a child is as free to take and as strong to hold beautiful images clothed in beautiful words as was that of this lady during her convalescence. But, let me again say, every effort of the kind, however unconscious, means wear and tear of brain substance. Let the child lie fallow till he is six, and then, in this matter of memorising, as in others,
attempt only a little, and let the poems the child learns be simple and within the range of his own thought and imagination. At the same time, when there is so much noble poetry within a child's compass, the pity of it, that he should be allowed to learn twaddle!

Charlotte Mason Home Education pp 224-226

I find this ability compelling.

Now I have often spoken of Jemimah's ability to memorise. She is easily able to learn long passages of Scripture of a chapter or more, and, more amusingly, can recite ad verbatim much of the Classical Kids CDs that we listen to for composer study, funny Canadian accents and all. But these are not Tintern Abbey. Tintern Abbey is L..O..N..G . (If you don't know Wordsworth's poem, here it is - look at the length.)

Well, her theories on health and evolution aside, I have rarely found Miss Mason to be wrong. Certainly not on her area of expertise - education.

Just over two weeks ago, I decided to put Miss Mason's experience to the test. I am aware that our ability to memorise diminishes as we grow older - the Grammar Stage of the Classical Educationalists - that time when they cram their kids full of facts - only lasts until the age of 8 or 9 because that is when they do it best. At seven, I decided that for Jemimah the time was ripe.

Instead of Tintern Abbey we chose an Australian classic poem, Banjo Paterson's The Man from Snowy River.

The Man From Snowy River, by A.B. (Banjo) Paterson

There was movement at the station, for the word had passed around
That the colt from old Regret had got away,
And had joined the wild bush horses - he was worth a thousand pound,
So all the cracks had gathered to the fray.
All the tried and noted riders from the stations near and far
Had mustered at the homestead overnight,
For the bushmen love hard riding where the wild bush horses are,
And the stock-horse snuffs the battle with delight.

There was Harrison, who made his pile when Pardon won the cup,
The old man with his hair as white as snow;
But few could ride beside him when his blood was fairly up -
He would go wherever horse and man could go.
And Clancy of the Overflow came down to lend a hand,
No better horseman ever held the reins;
For never horse could throw him while the saddle-girths would stand -
He learnt to ride while droving on the plains.

And one was there, a stripling on a small and weedy beast;
He was something like a racehorse undersized,
With a touch of Timor pony - three parts thoroughbred at least -
And such as are by mountain horsemen prized.
He was hard and tough and wiry - just the sort that won't say die -
There was courage in his quick impatient tread;
And he bore the badge of gameness in his quick and fiery eye,
And the proud and lofty carriage of his head.

But still so slight and weedy, one would doubt his power to stay,
And the old man said, "That horse will never do
For a long and tiring gallop - lad, you'd better stop away,
These hills are far too rough for such as you."
So he waited, sad and wistful - only Clancy stood his friend -
"I think we ought to let him come," he said;
"I warrant he'll be with us when he's wanted at the end,
For both his horse and he are mountain bred.

"He hails from Snowy River, up by Kosciusko's side,
Where the hills are twice as steep and twice as rough;
Where a horse's hooves strike firelight from the flintstones every stride,
The man that holds his own is good enough.
And the Snowy river riders on the mountains make their home,
Where the river runs those giant hills between;
I have seen full many horsemen since I first commenced to roam,
But nowhere yet such horsemen have I seen."

So he went: they found the horses by the big mimosa clump,
They raced away towards the mountain's brow,
And the old man gave his orders, "Boys, go at them from the jump,
No use to try for fancy riding now.
And, Clancy, you must wheel them, try and wheel them to the right.
Ride boldly lad, and never fear the spills,
For never yet was rider that could keep the mob in sight,
If once they gain the shelter of those hills."

So Clancy rode to wheel them - he was racing on the wing
Where the best and boldest riders take their place,
And he raced his stock-horse past them and he made the ranges ring
With the stockwhip, as he met them face to face.
Then they halted for a moment, while he swung the dreaded lash,
But they saw their well-loved mountain full in view,
And they charged beneath the stockwhip with a sharp and sudden dash,
And off into the mountain scrub they flew.

Then fast the horsemen followed, where the gorges deep and black,
Resounded to the thunder of their tread,
And the stockwhips woke the echoes, and they fiercely answered back
From cliffs and crags that beetled overhead.
And upward, ever upward, the wild horses held their way,
Where mountain ash and kurrajong grew wide;
And the old man muttered fiercely, "We may bid the mob good day,
NO man can hold them down the other side."

When they reached the mountain's summit, even Clancy took a pull -
It well might make the boldest hold their breath;
The wild hop scrub grew thickly, and the hidden ground was full
Of wombat holes, and any slip was death.
But the man from Snowy River let the pony have his head,
And he swung his stockwhip round and gave a cheer,
And he raced him down the mountain like a torrent down its bed,
While the others stood and watched in very fear.

He sent the flint-stones flying, but the pony kept his feet,
He cleared the fallen timber in his stride,
And the man from Snowy River never shifted in his seat -
It was grand to see that mountain horseman ride.
Through the stringybarks and saplings, on the rough and broken ground,
Down the hillside at a racing pace he went;
And he never drew the bridle till he landed safe and sound
At the bottom of that terrible descent.

He was right among the horses as they climbed the farther hill,
And the watchers on the mountain, standing mute,
Saw him ply the stockwhip fiercely; he was right among them still,
As he raced across the clearing in pursuit.
Then they lost him for a moment, where two mountain gullies met
In the ranges - but a final glimpse reveals
On a dim and distant hillside the wild horses racing yet,
With the man from Snowy River at their heels.

And he ran them single-handed till their sides were white with foam;
He followed like a bloodhound on their track,
Till they halted, cowed and beaten; then he turned their heads for home,
And alone and unassisted brought them back.
But his hardy mountain pony he could scarcely raise a trot,
He was blood from hip to shoulder from the spur;
But his pluck was still undaunted, and his courage fiery hot,
For never yet was mountain horse a cur.

And down by Kosciusko, where the pine-clad ridges raise
Their torn and rugged battlements on high,
Where the air is clear as crystal, and the white stars fairly blaze
At midnight in the cold and frosty sky,
And where around the Overflow the reed-beds sweep and sway
To the breezes, and the rolling plains are wide,
The Man from Snowy River is a household word today,
And the stockmen tell the story of his ride.

A.B. "Banjo" Paterson

If anything, The Man from Snowy River is longer than Tintern Abbey, but there is more of a story. We decided to give it a try.

Every day I've been reading her the poem while she plays. Sometimes it doesn't even look like she's listening. Some afternoons I've put our iPod recording of the poem read by David Tredinnick on while she follows along through the pages of this book illustrated by Freya Blackwood.


And the verdict thus far? After 2 1/2 weeks - 13 school days - Jemimah knows to 'So he went'. That's 5/13 verses. I'm pretty impressed. Well, to tell you the truth, I'm gobsmacked. Miss Mason was right again. We'll keep going with the poem until the end of term or so, another threeish weeks. I'll report back with our progress then, if you're interested.

The opening lines of this poem are amongst the best known words in Australian literature, and The Man gained popularity for another generation of Aussies when it was used in the Opening Ceremony of the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000. Who will forget that solitary horserider galloping into the arena and cracking his stockwhip to 'Let the Games begin'?



This is an ideal poem for memorising. Its grippingly exciting story coupled with a wonderful galloping rhythm make it wonderful to read out loud, and easier to remember. It is also a bit of Australiana that is oft quoted and oftener talked about. The opening lines are part of our family's vernacular - when somebody rises late after the rest of us are up and about they will often be greeted with "Ah, there was movement at the station"!

If Miss Mason's method of memorisation really works - as indeed it appears to - then this poem will be a wonderful one to know... It is a true blue Aussie Classic.