Ballads of the track

Hunter, Edward, Co-Operative Publishing Board, Auckland, N.Z., 1919

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The original publication details are as follows:

Title: Ballads of the track

Author: Hunter, Edward

Edition: Library ed.

Published: Co-Operative Publishing Board, Auckland, N.Z., 1919

THE AUTHOR

BALLADS OF THE TRACK.

First Edition, December, 1918

Library Edition, June, 1919.

PUBLISHER’S NOTE.

This Edition includes songs not appearing in the earlier ones and several lyrics published in the other volumes are not printed in the present.

BALLADS OF THE TRACK

BY EDWARD HUNTER.

(“Billy Banjo”)

Published by

THE CO-OPERATIVE PUBLISHING BOARD

c/o, A. F. McDonnell. Stationer. 18 and 355 Queen Street,

Auckland.

1919.

J, Buelens k Co., Printers etc., 456 Queen Street, Auckland.

To write some earnest verse or line,

Which seeking not the praise of art,

Shall make a clearer faith ami manhood shine

In the untutored heart.

J. R. LOWELL.

TO

MARY

1883 - 1915.

PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION.

When the author of the following verses paid the writer the compliment of asking him to provide a preface for this, his first book, he consented to do so more from a sense of esteem for the man, than from his knowledge of him as a Poet. A number of Mr. Hunter’s essays in verse had passed through his hands ere they appeared in the columns of the paper on the staff of which he pushes a pen to provide for the needs of the pantry. From these he had formed the idea that “ Billy Banjo,” as Mr. E. Hunter then signed himself, had the root of the matter in him, and would one day add something material to the song literature of the working class That promise is still further emphasised in the examples of his muse which go to make up the present volume.

Edward Hunter, was born in Ponfeigh, Lanarkshire, Scotland, like many another Scot whose name is treasured among the song-smiths of Caledonia, “of working-class parents.” And. also like many another Scots laddie, his mind was early influenced by the sweet singers of that land of song. To him the thought must often have occurred, as it occurred to his great high-priest of Poetry, Robert Burns (and as to many before and since the Bard of Coila gave it expression), that he

for puir auld Scotland’s sak<

Some usefu' plan or book could maki

Or sing a sang at least.

And, so he, too, like Pope

Lisped in numbers for tire numbers came

There was a time when the critics and patrouisers of minor poets wrote and spoke of the “railwayman rhymer," the "navy bard,” the “painter poet.” the “workingman song writer.” etc., etc. That time is long past. Poets to-day, as ever (through the want of general education among the masses in the past and the absence of access to the printing press, made it less noticeable) spring up among all classes and ranks of society. The butcher and the baker, no less than the banker, may be given to the “sin of rhyme.” Dry-as-dust lawyers, accountants, police magistrates and persons following the most prosaic of employments, are every day showing their fellows that they have another and a more refined side to their individuality. Men who have spent most of their days struggling and striving after the "gold which perisheth,

in the quiet evening hours in the family circle, or in secret in their studies, have sung some song “that will live for ever,” because it has been wrung from the heart and passed straight to the hearts of all who heard. And many others, though themselves denied

That breath divine

Which breathes eternal life to some frail line

whose lips never have drunk inspiration from the fount of song, though earning their bread by most sordid of occupations, find pleasure in reading the poetry of others. The people of the United States are popularly supposed to he given up, body and soul, to the worship of the “almighty dollar,” yet it is in the United States that we find the greatest number of readers of all our leading British poets. The perfervid verse of Bryon still finds more readers in the United States than ever has been the case in Britain. Tennyson, too, received much of his early success from the reception given his verse by his cousins across the Atlantic. Men who go out into tinnew lands of the world, who with hard toil and much privation, hew out homes for themselves and their children in the wildernesses, and make the waste places of the earth to blossom and bring forth fruit for the good of man and beast, are in great measure men “on the make.” but even in these new lands we find a fuller and more sincere appreciation of our poets, both minor and major, than in the older countries from whence they and their fathers came. Thus, whether he sings or is silent, it would seem that the voice of song is inherent in every man, just a~ surely as it is in the fertile egg of the Linnet, the Skylark or the Thrush. Tennyson himself has told us that

In tbn sprinsr the younp man’s fancy

Lightly turns to thoughts of love

And, as a matter of course, he turns to poetry for relief. It was so with the author of this volume. His earliest verses are those in which he sines of love. By and by, as the hardness and bitterness of life to most of his class forced itself upon him, his song took on a newer note. As he wandered “furth o’ Scotland” in search of that fuller life, and more abundant, which the keen and anxious struggle for existence in that hive of industrial activity. Lanarkshire, had denied him, that note, while it grew in volume and strength, also grew, at times, more bitter and rebellious, as he realised that the same health-

destroying, heartbreaking conditions he had sought to free himself from, and put behind him, as he was early instructed to put the father of all evil, had followed him over many leagues of sea to the land of his adoption, nay, had been here before him, and were as potent as they had been in the old, to perform their evil purpose in the new land, which, as hills far off are green, had seemed to him a veritable land of promise.—He has “learned in suffering” that which now he would “teach in song.” But while his song is often bitter, as the heart-cry of one whose very soul has been scored with the red-hot iron of class opppression, it is not altogether without a measure of hope, as of one who sees “a gleam through the gloom, a light tar ahead.” And his latter songs have more of the “gleam” in them than of the “gloom,” This is as it should lie. All through his industrial career, as a tried and trusted spokesman for his fellows, “Billy Banjo” has ever “followed the gleam.” It has brought him, more than once, among troubled waters and dangerous eddies, but heedless of proffers of place and pelf, he has followed whither it led. The lure of popularity, the abuse of selfseeking working-class leaders, the revilement of his misunderstanding mates, and even the prison cell itself, each in turn has failed to bend him from his purpose—to help to free his fellows from the tyranny of wealth and the fear of want. He toiled on, and as he toiled he sang, for “song sweetens toil, however rude the sound.” And he is well fitted to sing just the sort of songs his fellow workers need at the present stage of their preparation for the coining conflict, to “nerve their faint endeavour” and win them to “screw their courage to the sticking place.”

It is not ray purpose here to appraise the literary standard attained by the writer of the following fugitive pieces. Few, if any, of the verses herein gathered together reach the higher flights of poetic fancy; but none of them make any pretention to such attainment. As Lowell says:

It may be glorious to write

Thoughts that shall glad the two or three

High Souls ....

Yet these are more. They are of the nature of “folk song”; the songs, “though rude the numbers and void of art,” which even the best historians of to-day must needs study if they would portray the lives, the hopes, the fear-, and the aspirations of the common people correctly, failing which they cannot expect to excel in their craft.

‘ Let who will make the laws of the nation,” cried old Fletcher of Saltoun, “if I hut make her songs.” And “Billy Banjo” is well qualified to do that which even the great F letcher could not do. He can make the songs of his people. For this especial work his whole life's training has fittingly qualified him. It has brought him the knowledge, begat in him the sympathy, while heredity has provided him with the literary faculty needed to produce just such a volume of out-back verse as will appeal to all those who hunt the elusive crust plying the festive pick and gleaming shovel, or trudging along the lone tracks out-back with “Matilda up” in search of a “shop.” The field of modern English verse is indeed a richly varied one, spread as it is over the Motherlands, the Britains beyond the seas, and the Americas. True, the singers therein are not all Burnses. There are many stars in our firmament, but only one sun. Yet many of these stars are very bright. To change the metaphor, their poetic vintage- is of the best and never fails to prove an invigorating draught to the way-worn soul. Many, too many of our older bards fawned for favors upon those who tyrannised over the weak and poor. Our modern singer seeks not to emulate these unworthy sons of song who put so divine an art to such base use. Our modern singer has virility. To use a Scotticism, he is a Poet and a Man in “ae pair o’ breaks.” His pages are steeped in the bracing atmosphere of the broad hillsides; their "music that of rushing waters, and the call of wild birds; their fragrance that of the mountain bush and wild flowers. He takes a much broader outlook on the life and destiny of the race than did his laurelled fore-runners. Indeed there has taken possession of him the spirit of that coming time of which Burns sang.

Whan man to man the warl’ owre

S’all brithers be.

If the songs within this little volume help to hasten the coming of that time by awakening in the breast of its readers a sense of the injustice and cruelty of the present commercial system, if it inspires them to seek the way of escape and cheers them on in the long drawn hours of the industrial conflict that must come, then " Billy Banjo” will not have sung altogether in vain.

ROBERT HOGG

O Liberty! can man resign thee,

Once having felt thy generous flame.’

Rouget De Lisle.

FOREWORD.

I lie hour has come to lay aside my work and say farewell to this fair land. With my‘“ain folk”—the labouring men, women and children—l have toiled, laughed, sorrowed and struggled in The Long Campaign for Human Rights. The Cause of Liberty and Freedom is the best and most loved of all. The red blood coursethrough our veins strengthened by the urge of long centuries to win emancipation from" many forms of cruel oppression and tyranny. It may be, as my comrades have said, that the fire of Freedom rushes through those Sungs of Toil. Such expression of appreciation of my ain folk of those lilts of Liberty is cheering to the singer. Then the Rebels have hailed the contribution as “a valuable addition to the Song-literature of Labour.” Would that my rough-strung harp were more worthy their tribute.

Better than all those Songs is the surge of The Robe Bay.

You oppressors who have unsparingly dealt your knout-blows from all points of the Industrial and Social compass, should you at this moment give me the choice of living over again the past four years or spending twelve years in gaol, I should unhesitatingly accept. . . . the gaol. Now, as ever, away with your bribes, i would not exchange my manhood lor all your gear and wealth. And what ol those raw wouuds 1 those years were sunkist and love-laden! Yet would 1 live and re-live the Rebel Day!!

And when 1 look back to 1906, when I first struck the West Coast track, and re-live the days and years between, I can but say that 1 have given my best.

To the Old World i go—yet not 1, only what is loft of me; the bairns who first drew breath in Maorilaud—they alone truly go hack. () Huntly. the Calvary and Gathsemane of our brief day: O bairns who wore driven .from the cherished scenes of your birth-place, because your lather rebelled against Oppression and Tyranny, riut let the veil be drawn down with the setting, bloodred sun. On the dawn of the morrow this land of joy and sorrow shall fade away. In this new “Britain Beyond the Boas" we have re-lived the sorrow of far away Glencoe, and there have been many Industrial and Social Glencoes lived through on our way towards the sunkist Promised Lunds of Toil. O bairns, Lochaber, Lochabcr and Lochaber. Verily, our “Hope is the

Hope of the Ages,” our Cause is Universal, and our Homeland is a World unknown to Tyranny and Slavery, where the Human Race lives sweetly free.

Ere the anchor is weighed, I would again say that all victimising, gagging, bludgeoning and bribery that came my way never once silenced my voice in the Cause of Liberty and Freedom, and, labouring men and women, you have last heard that voice sending throughout this land the clarion call for The Rights of Childhood for the bairns. 1 was about to board the good ship when the cry of the bairns reached me. and 1 fervently hope that the Rebel sun that shone on their Cause will bring them brighter and happier days. Maybe we have seen the Bright Star shedding its guiding rays over the Bethlehem of Democracy.

But before 1 go. The illustrious Rebel, Poet, Comrade and Friend who wrote the preface to the first edition of this book has fought grandly for “The Cause That Never Dies,” and one day. when the veil shall be rent, all the heart of Man shall learn the service his songs has rendered oppressed Humanity, yea, “though the singer be with the dead.” I would write, but Robin forbids. In the preface he quotes:

“‘Let who will make the laws of the nation,’ cried old Fletcher of Saltoun, ‘if I but make her songs.’ ”

Robert Hogg lias done what the great Fletcher could not do. His songs are moulding the Destiny of Humanity in great measure, sung in all lands and languages known to the Race of Men. Rebel Robin’s Celtic light will fire finely when his eyes read this —I shall be away over many dark leagues of sea, walking the ways he knew in the glow of Life’s young day, cheered by his splendid comradeship and warmth of generous spirit—even as you.

The ship “rocks at the pier,” and the surging seas roll before me, and with deeper surging in my heart 1 go. 1 leave the green and early grave in far away Wairarapa and those Folk Songs to you, comrades of the Proletariat, the Great Dispossessed and Disinherited legions of Toil —and in your struggles dinna forget the weans.

Lochaber, Lochaber and Lochaber,

EDWARD HUNTER.

INDEX.

The Author (illustration) 2

Preface to first Edition 8

What Boundaries will be Changed (Full Plate Illustration) 13

Forword 14

The Toiler (illustration) 16

Index 17

Sketch 18

The Rebel Day 19

A Song of Childhood 20

Behind the Bars 21

The Cause that Never Dies 22

A Song of Freedom 24

The Ballad of Hell’s Fire Bill 28

Expelled 32

The Slut 34

In Erin’s Isle 35

Full Plate Illustration 36

Make Way for the Dawn and the Sun 37

March of the Minions 39

Fair Freedom’s Morn 40

Photograph of Denniston 44

At the Brake 45

In Memoriam (illustrated) 48

A Lay of Liberty 50

Got Beat by One 52

Getting in on God 54

Ballad of Toil (illustrated) 56

Toil’s Coming Day 58

Fighting for Peace 60

Let Us Pray 62

Bairnhood Days 64

Medals of Jim 65

Rest 66

THE REBEL DAY.

Yet would I breathe the Rebel air

And live the Rebel Day,

And feel the red blood in my veins,

That only Manhood may ;

Than live one hour in careless ease,

While Tyrants hold their sway

Yet would I dare the striking lash,

And bear the raw wound’s pain,

Than rest in peace while fellow-lives

Are bought and sold for gain ;

Those raw, red wounds I’d rather bear

To end the Despot’s reign

So grip your lash and strike your blow,

And ope’ your prison cell,

A purer air and richer day

(For this I know full well)

Is flowing there than you can know

Howe’er enthroned you dwell.

Though in the depths of Doom I live, ;

And trail the loaded chains

I would not leave the Rebel life

For all your lustred gains,

While one of all the countless hoards

In misery remains.

If toil and pain must be the price

Dragged from the Rebel clan,

I’d breathe their air and live their day,

And sing of Nature’s plan ;

And plod each reddened measured inch

To free my fellow-man.

—l9

A SONG OF CHILDHOOD.

Of all the songs wherever sung

Along life’s winding ways,

The sweetest, dearest songs are those

That tell of Childhood days.

Those days, long past, a glamour cast

On all we’ve seen since then ;

What would we give could we but live

Those Childhood days again !

Sweet Childhood days.

Had we but known, had we but known,

How far the world was wide,

Could we have seen the trackless way

Across the Great Divide,

Would we’ve thus grown, had we but

known

The reckless ways of Man ?

Could we but be as Nature Free —

Part of some happy plan !

Sweet Freedom’s day

How sweet to see the children play

And hear their tender Dreams,

The little souls that come and go

Like merry mountain streams.

And shall they go the ways we know

And see what we have seen ?

Come, rise and say yea, even they

Shall be what we’d have been-

Had we but known.

23

BEHIND THE BARS.

You’re in the bleak grey prison where the bars are dank and cold,

And I am in the stoke-hold where the bars are hot as hell;

But both of us are prisoners of those who worship Gold ;

But our hearts are where the flowerets bloom sweetly adown the dell.

A fluff of thistledown came floating softly on the breeze,

And I look up and see the evening sleep beneath the stars :

Oh, why are there such lives as ours, such helots cells as these ?

I ask here in the stoke-hold as I stand besides the bars.

How sweetly in the evening breeze the corn and thistles toss,

What thoughts of better days to come my heart warms to a flame;

I take the sweat rag and the rake, and count each other’s loss;

And I know that there behind those bars you count each gain the same.

Oh, in this life of toil-drugged days (and waiting days are long !)

We’ve fought together in the war to set all mankind free;

Aye there the fight, aye there the hope that wakes fair Freedom’s song,

Though bars are there before us and our weird is hard to dree.

—■2l—

THE CAUSE THAT NEVER DIES.

The starlight needles through the spires

That rise round Auckland hills,

And o’er the track to far camp-fires,

Beyond the old bush mills,

My soul, with hope that never tires,

Turns where life ever thrills.

Fain aye to front the rising morn.

The leading spur to take,

Far o’er the yellow fields of corn

That skirt the sleepy lake ;

Where camp-fires hold the night in scorn

There sweetest memories wake.

I dream again among the flax

The dream of other days ;

I hear the bushman’s swinging axe

Wake Toil’s rude roundelays ;

Oh, give to me the bushland tracks,

And eke the bushland ways !

For than the way-back bushland breed,

There is no finer race ;

There mateship is the pagan creed,

There lives the primal grace ;

There earth and air their worth concede,

While they life’s annals trace.

—22-

When last I passed the papa slopes,

Sad was the tale I read

The men who rose with growing hopes,.

Another trail had sped ;

Some on the hostile coastal copes

Of Suvla Bay lay dead.

Some, from a far off shell-torn field,

Send o’er the watery track

A line to say: “Our hopes are steeled.

And one day we’ll be back ;

In Freedom’s fight we’ll never yield—

Dinkum, we’ll do our whack !”

Beyond the slip-rails on the rise

Where rests the bullock team.

No smoke drift seeks the sunny skies.

And wakes the poet’s theme ;

Only the mopoke’s mournful cries,

Fill in the fretful dream,

Fair speeds the light o’er Auckland spires

And where the sea tides rise ;

But, oh, for me the bush camp-fires

On papa slopes suffice

To wake once more Toil’s stirring lyres

To the Cause that never dies.

26

A SONG OF FREEDOM.

Dedicated to the men, women and children who have toiled and sacrificed; who have been imprisoned and have bled for Freedom’s mra^es in a ii countries who have remained immovable in their loyalty and determination to win the economic freedom of humanity.

When man set out to seek to know that Man was only Man,

He rose from out the mysteries of cosmic germ and cell

Then came a mind that moved to trace upon the sands a plan,

Upon the plain, upon the sands and caves where Man should dwell.

And when the tribal germ-dream grew beside the far camp-fire,

The nerve of progress quickened ; knowledge blazed the tangled way

And rose the needs of Man to fan each new and strong desire,

And hearts beat warm when man set out to greet the Dawn of Day.

And in that Morn, that Dawn of Life, when living Man met Man,

The earth spread out her virgin green where’er their footsteps bent,

And systems bred the primal right along each newer span,

And songs were sung as purple veils before Man’s march were rent.

—24—

The brain-storms urged the long campaign, and burst the helot’s cells,

The slave-pens nursed the nerve of right and peasants broke their chains ;

And o’er some Roman green there glared the mass of living hells,

While Might stalked earth in luxury though bloody were its gains.

Each toiler’s hut now tells the tale deep traced on human brows,

And human hearts yearn for the morn when Man shall step forth free,

And lives are staked again when men embrace historic vows,

And continents envision clear the glories yet to be.

The spawn of Bread-kings barter with the lives and souls of men :

Mother and babe are played with till their lives are worse than hell;

And weeping eyes and broken hearts inhabit misery’s den,

For earth is but a market place, and lives the wares that sell.

The rich man in his motor, and Lazarus seeking bread

There are pearls cast before the breed that bears the brand of Cain:

And Liberty in chains comes on with weary, weary tread

It’s footprints leave on Freedom’s way a dark and crimsoned stain.

25-

And on the march to Freedom through the long and bitter years,

Toil’s martyrs on the scaffold or behind theprison bars;

Our women, children, struggling through their days and nights in tears

And, countered, Progress bleeds life out beneath sun moon and stars.

See Spartacus and Jesus —many thousands other —yea

The spirit of the poor cries loud, the outcasts call for right;

A dripping scaffold waves the banner of the Dawn of Day,

And Liberty still presses on, ’nearth shackles forged by might.

Each age has had oppressors ; each race has had its wrongs;

In all lands men have vowed a vow our purpose to attain;

And grief and hope co-mingled in the chorus of their songs,

But stronger yet their hearts leaped forth to break the tyrant’s chain.

Remember, oh, my comrades, in the long and hard campaign,

Our comrades’ toil, our comrades’ fight, our comrades’ watching graves

And barter not our living Right, but burst the tyrant’s chain,

And let our songs of Victory ring o’er the friendly waves.

—2fi—

Yet on the sands our fingers trace the primal needs of Man,

And yet the primal right demands the light of Freedom’s Day ;

And struggling man now forges on the last long throbbing span,

While songs of Hope resound adown the red, red blossomed way.

30

THE BALLAD OF HELL’S-FIRE BILL.

That’s Hell’s-fire Bill a-smokin’ there beside the old . gumtree,

His swag is lyin’ at his feet as if it were at rest: r 1 .• _ ... , . . ’

I bet his soul is out there where the sunbeams gambol free —■

Gorstrewth, just like a nipper now, he’s looking for the nest

Of that there bird that just flew out with blue and speckled wing!

’Bout Hell’s-fire Bill, his song an’ birds, someone some day will sing.

Bill uster sport his horse-power speed on every bally job^

For bullockin’ and rootin’, sure his fame went far and wide:

The Boss drank to his ringin’, while his mates said, “Bill’s no blob.

’Twere hard to find his equal from the Buller to the Clyde.”

While Bill his square an’ medalled chest stuck out with pride and zest,

Was proud his name and fame had spread throughout the sun-flecked west.

But one day Billy jerried to the jokin’ in the game,

So Bill now oft says to his mates when paintin’ his new creed :

new liecu . While bosses curse the beggar, an’ his mates oft do the same,

An’ Billy only smiles an’ says he’s built no more for speed. . t • « .... it . .

“That sloggin’ game, me mates," he says, “ain’t wot it’s cracked to be;

I only made the pace too hot for those who’ll follow me." - -

■23

The bosses now are narked because Bill never makes the ring,

He’s lost his reputation an’ the goodwill of the Boss ;

But Billy, somehow, doesn’t look a sorrowin’ uncrowned king,

But smiles an’ says, “Now, you galloots, don’t jab to me of loss.

Gorldamn me reputation an’ the boss-thing called goodwill ;

Just give me peace an’ freedom with the winds out on the hill.”

An’ up he slings his swag an’ sings of days that are to be,

“The old machine I’ve beat, dead sure, to make the big job pay

But since I saw that same machine knock out that cove Macghie,

An’ heard its wheels a-hummin’ while we laid him in the clay,

I’ve jerried to the game,” says Bill, “the Bosses an’ their ways ;

Now if they want old Hell’s-fire Bill, he’s not for beer or praise.”

When Bill drifts out along the coast, by camp-fire and by mine,

He takes with him his golden rule, that squares his rounded life:

Life’s short.” says Bill, “an’ medals are, just medals, an’ the wine,

An’ all the beer an’ smoodge will never buy me hand in strife.

If I can’t ease the runnin’, sure, I’ll never key it hard,

Though’t bring but red damnation from me boss, an’ from me pard.”

32

By shearing shed, an’ harvest field, an’ freezer, an’ by mill.

I’ve swagged along with Billy an’ the day ne’er was too long ;

Just how I loved the biuegum shade with pipe, the breeze an’ Bill,

Some day, perhaps I’ll try to weave in strains of simple song.

He’s geein’ aye for Liberty, when Freedom’s sun will shine —

For that is Bill’s “God Save the King,” an’ Bill’s “Watch on the Rhine!”

The last I struck with Hell’s-fire Bill for cobber an’ for male,

Was in the freezing chamber where the cold fair nips you blue;

What cared he for your Empires, or your Gov’ments or your States ?

He yarned about the daisies and the meadows wet with dew ;

The days beneath the biuegum, an’ the sound of tea-time bell, ■XT 1 t . 1 • 1 »TI 1 C . . . _

Next day he took his swag an’ said, “I’d see them freeze in he'd !”

“Wot ? talk ter me of war ?” says Bill, “Thedyin’ an’ the dead ?

I tells yer wot, there’s thousands sure just like that cove Macghie,

In times of wot some blokes call ‘peace,’ earnin’ our ‘daily bread’,

An’ no one calls ’em ’eroes ; notone gets a V.C,

Yet they were ’eroes true !” says Bill. An’ when a wife and kid

Are near to Bill I always twig just how he lifts his lid.

33

Some say that Bill’s a slacker an’ a shirker in Life’s game

(An’ one should have the right to say whatever one may think),

But let them say if that’s their mind, an’ I’ll say just the same,

Those duties of the hero, which Empire and Gov’ment shrink,

I’ve seen Bill stand four-square to them as Gov’ment ought to do

An’ then he’d swing his swag again, an’ no one ever knew.

There’s Hell’s-fire Bill arisin’ straight beside the old gumtree,

His swag’s across his shoulder, for with it there is no rest:

I’ll bet his soul is out there where the sunbeams gambol free :

He talks of Sis an’ nippers, as he hits the track out West . . .

See that there bird come flying back, with blue an’ speckled wing,

To find Bill’s grub upon the twig to urge the young to sing!

34

32

EXPELLED.

Far as the winds of heaven have blown the the petals of the flowers,

Deep as the long, last slave-pen fashioned in the depth of doom,

FFigh as the scaffold pinnioned red when drip dawn’s rosey hours,

I hear the call of exile-souls speak through those days of gloom.

What though the tyrants grind and crush, and crush and grind again,

Each day is urge of protest, lived in chains round thigh and mind ;

Each hour a ringing challenge till we see the race of men

Rise strong and free as Men should be, “by Nature’s law designed.”

Those craven souls, the spawn of pelf, run riot in their power,

Decree to rob and plunder in the name of God and Right;

But fearless still, before their goads I stand and ne’er will cower ;

Though blood sweats from my every pore, I rise to dare their Might.

Sweet as the breath of flowers shall be the dream of man and maid,

The children’s days be sweeter far than all the gold-kings know,

When not one soul in all the world shall faint or be afraid,

And in men’s minds the flame of Right shall warmer glow and grow.

Far as the winds of heaven have blown the petals of the flowers,

Above the jargon of the slave deep fettered in his doom,

And tyrant with his scaffold red when drips dawn’s rosey hours,

I hear the call of exile-souls speak through the days of gloom.

Oh, exile-souls, speak of the days, the hallowed days of peace,

When all the hated, scorned and sorrowed hours of dread have passed,

And every one shall hail the days when joys shall aye increase,

And Brotherhood and Sisterhood shall bless the land at last.

-33-

THE SLUT.

Out gathering flow’rs

In evergreen hours

A winsome and beautiful maiden was she;

Yet on yester-night,

By the city light

I heard her cal! for the day of the Free.

Life’s brief sunny morn,

As sweet’s waving corn,

Had passed like a dream, like the down on the wind,

’Way deep in Death’s rut

Men call her the “Slut”

Toy for their play by hell-fetters entwined

The sweet song mid flow’rs

In evergreen hours,

In Mem’ry is all that is life to that maid ;

But I’ll see her there,

Slut in hope of despair,

When for Freedom I go to the Barricade,

To the Barricade

For Free Man and Maid,

For dream of the flow’rs and evergreen bowers:

Will you take the vow

To come with us now,

For the sake of “The Slut” and the Day that is ours ?

—34-

IN ERIN’S ISLE

Oft have I stood upon the shore at Ayr,

And looked across the surging breakers’foam

With vaster surging in my heart to dare

To fight with those who ever fight for Home

In Erin’s Isle.

Oh, sweet the breath of Liberty and Hope,

That mingles with the far-off peat-fire reek ;

Oft have I watched the fading western slope,

And vainly traced the Freedom strong men seek

In itrin’s Isle.

Oh, blessings on that bog-land far away !

Strong as the sweetness of the saddest songs

Be that good spirit till it clears for aye

The wretchedness and misery and wrongs

Of Erin’s Isle.

-35

39

MAKE WAY FOR THE DAWN AND THE SUN

Open wide fling the way to the future, draw the bolts and the bars of the gate,

For the woman and man of to-morrow in fond, passionate childhood await:

Let them out from a dull, sordid world ere the gifts that a kind nature gave

Are by those that should nurse them deflowered and exchanged for the mind of the slave.

Oh, strong men of the long blood-red ages, must our children live as we have done ?

Let wrongs die with our deeds in the darkness, and make way for the Dawn and the Sun :

Let their ways be of song and of laughter, far away from the track we have trod,

Let their days be of peace and its fullness —some call it the kingdom of God.

We have thought in the long days of waiting, with the red blood nigh bursting our veins,

How to-morrow they too will be mating, how they too will be slaves on the plains :

Shall they grow as we’ve sown in our sorrow, shall they say as we aye have said ;

j j _ - 7 Shall their lives be written as ours are —poor dull slaves to the age and the dead.

40

Oh, my sisters and brothers, my comrades, the cause and the day is yet ours,

Though dull-brained and sad blunted our vision, we

may tend these sweet, fair human flowers . t

So fling open the way to the future, draw the bolts and the bars of the gate,

The woman and man of the morrow, in fond, passionate childhood await.

Shall the dead rule from a thousand graveyards ?

Must we follow the way they have trod ?

Need we worship a soulless creation, a dull stone or sharp sword for our God ?

Oh, strong men of the long blood-red ages, must our children live as we have done ?

Let wrongs die with our deeds in the darkness, and make way for the Dawn and the Sun.

-38-

MARCH OF THE MINIONS.

What is life while vie, the minions, cribbed are ’neath a cross of woe ?

'When each toiler’s humble home-cot breathes pains ev’ry bittter throe ?

Souls that yet might reach the love-joys, fadeless ’neath hope’s rising morn ;

Happy souls, whose birthright treasures would the passing days adorn.

This the tragedy of toilers!

Let us end the travail drear.

This the destiny before as

Fills our throbbing hearts with cheer!

Red the fields of blood behind us, hopes betrayed in clotted steel;

Yet is ours a vision clearer than the stinging blades we feel.

Onward, ever onward, comrades, ’neath the scarlet banner’s wave;

This the Toilers’ trusted mission—Earth to free from every slave!

This no mystic song or legend; heart-born words are never vain

Children, Mothers, Fathers bear them deep engraved on soul and brain;

Human rights for man and woman ! Perish chanted, blinding creeds !

This no legend, this no story ; Children’s rights and children’s needs !

This were Life ! And we the minions, cribbed beneath the cross of woe.

We are marching on our mission, ours to stem life’s tragic flow.

Now we toil, while others reaping, leave us death and misery;

Then, oh men ! be ours the treasures we create on land and sea.

-39-

FAIR FREEDOM’S MORN.

Dedicated to the Women, Children and Men of Blackball, in commemoration of their self-sacrificing effort to abolish the “Dogwatch” from the Coal-hells of the Coast.

Oh, Freedom, sung in many a rousing lay !

Oh, songs of Life, of Love, of Hope, of Right!

Sweet clarion notes that greet the Coming Day

Through blood-red scenes Love’s roses blossom bright;

Fair Freedom’s Morn!

Fair Freedom’s Morn ! Behold the bygone years

The rebel spirit in the drab slave pen

Calls through the Roman air ’mid blood and tears,

There woke the Soul of Progress. In his den

He called for Life !

He called for Life ! Call that hath ever sped

From hour to hour upon the wings of Hope ;

The dripping scaffold marked its onward tread

And bayonet and ball have strewn the slope

With those who fought.

43

With those who fought that Man should stand forth free;

That slavery should darken not the sun ;

That Tyranny should pass from land and sea ;

And Freedom for the Race at last be won. For this they fell!

For this they fell, and Burns waked Freedom’s lyre j

And Shelley, Swinburne —all the singers true !

For this they snatch from Heaven the magic fire

With words that burn to sing their songs anew

That bid us Hope.

That bid us Hope ! Alas, here Hope seems lost!

In sorrow and in shame I bow my head ;

XU DV_»I 1 *_/ VV U1IU 111 O 1104 111 V- i uu » 111J ) I who had sworn my Comrades of the Coast

Were Honor’s Knights. Alas, all Honor’s dead,

Oh, Blackball Men !

Oh, Blackball Men, the knife is in my heart;

We Buller men have failed you in the strife ;

We Buller men have played the palterer’s part—

There is no salve for conscience. Wrong is rife .

Truth need must out!

■4l

Truth needs must out! It speaks from every tree ;

It calls from every track, and every shack —

“The Blackball men fought ever to be free,

And never turned a fighting comrade back

Oh, Blackball Men !’

Oh, Blackball men it makes the true rejoice

To see you scorn the scorners biting Hell;

Buller betrayed ! Oh bitter was our choice ;

Had we but fought, though we together fell,

Hope still had lived !

Hope still had lived. Arouse ye, Buller Men

Though late it be, come greet our Blackball mates;

And offer them our help to fight, and ther

Forever crush those internecine hates

Which brand us Scabs !

Which brand us Scabs. Adown the long red line

That links us with the Rebels of the past;

On Buller hills fair Freedom’s sun may shine,

But, ah, my mates, Blackball shall ever cast

A shadow there !

45

Barnett’s Face section of the Miners’ Camp on Denniston Hill, “The Working Man’s Paradise : God’s Own Country.

AT "THE BRAKE."

(Denniston, West Coast).

In commemoration of Sunday evening, March 31st,

1912, when the Workers of Denniston unfurled the People’s Flag.

There are days and nights with years between

That come in a chequered train ;

A tale retold, a remembered scene,

A fight that was fought —or might have been.

Or the swing of a loved refrain.

There’s a hill that soars on the wild West Coast —

A desolate hill, yet a hive—

Where “the best is worst” and the least is most.

Where dollars are won and souls are lost,

Where the dead can teach the live.

The social life, through industry’s sieve—

No truth is truer men tell —

Has a chorus of joy that doth deceive.

All hail to the spirits who shout “Reprieve !”

With Heaven to offer for Hell.

“Life shall be life,” shout the rising band ;

Their words swell far and wide,

And their comrades speak out in every land.

Of a day that shall dawn on every strand,

When joy shall for ever abide.

48

Full often we hear of the days that have been,

Dark days that will ne’er come again

For this red centuries rolled between,

For this our father’s blood dyed the green,

For this were our martyrs slain.

And to-night the Workers once more have met

To raise high the Banner of Red ;

There are days and nights that I may forget,

But not till memory’s sun has set

Shall this night pass with the dead.

A hundred and fifty of us all told,

Of women, and children and men ;

All had been given and all had been sold

Twas human lives for a sight of gold,

And life in a dull slave-pen.

Our hearts were attune as we rose to sing

“The Red Flag’s” rousing lines ;

Though our voices rose but faltering,

The thought of that eve will ever bring

Glad joy around the mines.

I have heard a song long years ago

As it rose on the village calm ,

I have heard the inspiring measure flow,

Thrilled as it welled now high now low,

Like the chords of a plaintive psalm.

-46-

I love to linger upon the “Red,”

As it rose on the wild West Coast;

Twas rugged and broken, as on it sped ;

Like the toiler’s returning homeward tread.

Yet grander than all the host.

There s a promise sweet in that rousing lay.

There is hope in the rebel “Red”;

It proclaims the end of the tyrant’s sway

When Freedom shall come, and come to stay.

Though the singer be with the dead.

’Tis coming ! ’Tis coming ! A scarlet wave

Spreads over the hill and the plain ;

Oh, brothers who died the race to save,

Oh, mothers that never bore a slave,

Do you hear the glad refrain ?

-47

IN MEMORIAM.

FELLOW-WORKER EVANS.

(Killed in the struggle for Working-class Rights at Waihi, Nov., 1912)

Oh, living theme! Deep from Life’s quivering lyre,

A call sweeps o’er the struggling toiler’s heart;

Stern Toil, whose reddened brow such strains inspire—

Oh, martyred Evans, well we know thy part,

March on, the Red !

The gold-kings’ spawn hear not the signs we hear —

Relentless despots, out on all the breed!

On Evans falls the worker’s heart-wrung tear —-

He shed his blood for toilers yet unfreed.

March on, the Red !

Strike for the lives crushed ’neath the cruel sway

Of wanton greed. This his one fatal crime:

His soul cried out for Justice and the Day

That yet will have its dawn in every clime.

March on, the Red !

Oh, weeping widow, hear our comrades tread

March on with us and set the minions free ;

Our Hope is vaster than the tyrants’ dread,

Ten thousands comrades weep to-night with thee.

March on, the Red !

■4B

Dear bairnies, of thy father now bereft,

Ten thousands bairnies link their lives with thine;

And in the crimsoned running of life’s weft,

Thy father’s name forever will entwine.

March on, the Red !

Proud Evans ! Name that steels our nerves for Right:

Our throbbing hearts shall bear thy memory,

When toilers rise to match their Right ’gainst Might

The “Internationale” shall breathe Waihi.

March on, the Red !

52

A LAY OF LIBERTY.

At Wellington, in July, 1917, delegates from the N.Z. Trades’ Union “Open” Congress, representing 50,000 organised workers, met the Hon. W. F. Massey, Prime Minister, and Sir Joseph Ward, Bart., Finance Minister, in the Cabinet Room, and endeavoured to secure the release of certain Trades Unionists who were imprisoned, in our opinion, on political grounds. Mr. E. J. Howard, (“The Vag” of the “Maoriland Worker”), Mr. W. E. Richards, Trades Union Secretary, Auckland, and the Author, acted as Spokesmen for the delegation. Next day Cabinet announced its decision —“No Release.”

Though you did scorn us in that hour

When through the purple veil we met

You in your robes of place and power,

We in our fustian soil beset.

We journeyed o’er the tortuous track

Where, ’mong the primal green, there grew

A Race that knew no turning back,

Though Fate should bring them rose or rue.

In many a bitter hour that Race ;

Bore scorn and scoffing, pine and pain

Yet other days their memory trace

At many a hearth on hill and plain

Like blooms upon the sward of life,

That bloom despite the tyrant wind ;

* -J • Though chilled and blighted in the strife,

They flower to cheer all humankind

53

-■5l-

We come like minions of the past,

With no mock homage, fair to you;

We legions of the Great Outcast,

With greater power than e’en we knew.

We beared our breasts before you then,

As in your courtly room we met;

Our pleadings for our brother men,

You answered how ? Can we forget ?

The jangling of your prison keys

Still echo with a note of scorn,

But spite of dungeons we can see

The Coming Life, the brighter Morn,

For Demos will awaken yet

To greater power than ye then knew,

When for our comrades’ sakes we met

Receiving nought but scorn from you !

Welcome, glad Morn ! Thy strains of peace

Shall cheer us o’er the rough-hewn way,

Till hate, and scorn, and war shall cease,

And men shall live in Love’s New Day

And so, we sing sweet Freedom’s strains.

Beyond the dungeon’s deepest shade ;

Till through the world our glad refrains

Tell of a Joy that ne’er shall fade !

GOT BEAT BY ONE.

During 1917, while the author was residing at Taihape, the Town Council prohibited him from lecturing on a secular subject on a Sunday evening. He carried on a campaign against the action of the Council. The fight lasted nine weeks, and in the end the action of the Council was endorsed by a marjority of one.

There is many an hour in the lives of men

That tells of a Cause won or lost;

We rejoice in the day when we count o’er again

Just who was greatest and most;

Far over the hard, reddened pioneer track —

As red as the set o’ the sun—

But what can you say, when the call comes back

“Got beat last night by one !”

Did you feel in the throb of the issuing hour,

How the beat of the pulse eame and went ?

Did you know that you, ay, just you, held the power

To win with those weary and spent ?

Of course, you felt strong; even joined in the cheer

On the day that the fight was begun ;

But, somehow, the verdict came straight out and clear —

“Got beat last night by one !”

—s2

Mayhap you thought ; “Well, it’s no hotter in Hell,

And the struggle can’t be much worse.”

Yet you prayed to the Gods for a short breathing spell.

Yea, prayed with a hope and a curse.

And mayhap, you thought: “The fight’s doomed from the start.

Doomed and dammed, you son of a gun —”

And now you read this, with a throb of the heart

“Got beat last night by one !”

So to-morrow we must waken again to our task

For toils bitter wierd we must dree ;

And but for that one in sweet sunshine we’d bask,

And our homes be happy and free.

But for one we all must now follow the trail,

For liberty can be for none ;

All because of one —one —one —one who did fail —

“Got beat last night by one 1”

There are monuments built to the great living dead,

To keep their loved names ever green,

For what they have done, and for what they have said —

But who can tell just what might have been ?

Only for one that our fetters yet bruise —

Let the shame of it darken the sun ;

That one who could, but who would not choose —-

“Got beat last night by one!”

56

Armed states can ne’er defeat us,

Nor prison, no, nor gun ;

We march toward fair freedom,

Cheered by Hope’s rising sun ;

Cheered by Hope’s rising sun ;

Our Cause grows ’neath its ray;

Nor arm’d states can fright us —

We march to Freedom’s day.

They told us in their scorning ;

“The poor are crushed again.’’

But, 10, as broke the morning,

The march of sterner men —

’Twas Toil’s Democracy,

Beneath the crimsoned banner

For Right and Liberty !

59

Over forest, mine and field

He plumed himself as Master ;

Though baffled oft, he vyould not yield

Despite each dread disaster.

When God spread the virgin sheet,

Its shade and shine designing;

Seems now He made the coat so neat

There’s no room for the lining.

Length of days can not fit in

With man’s needs in the freezing

Yea, man wants for his modem spin,

Eternity in leasing.

Now he’ll freeze the summer air,

Can thaw ’mid frosts and snowing;

Can make ice by the cube or square

When Summer suns are glowing.

‘Sweat of his brow !” Sure, ’tis odd,

The primal plan upsetting,

How man is getting in on God,

And round him weaves a netting.

God could wind His sunbeams up,

Twould never fash the freezers ;

Though rose ne’er bloomed, nor buttercup,

They’d never feel the squeezers.

Aye they toil ’mid snow and ice,

God’s seasons badly banging ;

The best laid schemes o’ Gods and mice

Still sair agley are ganging !

55

BALLAD OF TOIL.

O sweet little love-bud

Put your garlands away.

Though fair are the flowers ;

In the long summer day

Good-bye to the daisies,

And good-bye to your play.

Your chains from the meadows

Are all broken and dead,

And now cold chains of Toil

They have given instead

For they bought you last night,

While you dreamt in your bed.

You dreamt of the Dawn-hour ;

Away down by the stream

You’d sport with the lyre-bird—

vu u ojjui i nun uiv Fields with laughter would teem :

But they sold you last night—

Only left you your Dream.

—56

They say you must toil, dear,

And go bring home the bread There is gold to be made,

1C 13 IVJ IV uv muuv, Though your heart turns to lead —

You who should he out there

In the meadows instead.

Tears will not save you, love

J Cdlb win nui aavt jyu, From the tread-mill and mart,

And though you will shed them

You will learn this your part :

Tis gold you must give, dear,

Though it’s drawn from your heart.

Your heart will be there, love,

For my own is there still, Fln V»xr t rto enmet woterc

Down by the sweet waters

And far over the hill:

Our garlands are gone, dear,

But those days will aye thrill.

Fair and fond are the hours

rail ami iuuu me me iiuuis Where the long grasses wave,

And sweet are the morn-songs

Where the clear waters lave —

Child we should love —O Child,

So you too, sweet, must slave.

When long years have gone, dear,

Dare I ask what you’ll be ?

Will you care for those chains?

Will you sing, love, with me:

The Child to the flow’r-ring, Man and Maid to be FREE?

—s7

TOIL'S COMING DAY.

Oh, comrades, hail the banner

That crimsoned greets the morn,

And sing a song of triumph

To cheer our mates forlorn ;

To cheer our mates forlorn,

Who sigh for liberty ;

A. song, a song of triumph.

Of freedom and the free.

Our past has been a campaign

Of bitterness and tears,

Our fathers bore toil’s burden

The scorners’ jeers and sneers ;

But heedless of their sneers,

Hope bloomed despite their scorn ;

Strong hearts were ever marching

Towards fair Freedom’s morn.

We people nurse the nations,

Create the world’s wealth ;

Our lot —a blood-red pathos,

Dull shacks and broken health ;

Dull shacks and broken health

Heart-longings to be free —

Oh, my comrades sing of triumph,

Of right and liberty

5S

GETTING IN ON GOD.

(Chant of the Freezing Chamber Men)

God made the earth in six days,

And on the seventh rested

He measured out the sun’s warm rays,

And day and evening nested,

Sixty minutes to the hour

In rural stitching lacing ;

Those days and years brought man much power,

As he life’s path went pacing.

Centuries like ribbons ran

Around the young earth’s axis ;

And knowledge ’gan to grow in man,

From fig-leaves up to taxes

Man sought high and long and low,

Far o’er fair Eden’s reaches ;

His way around began to know,

Explored earth’s many beaches.

Far from Eden’s glowing tints,

Beyond the last old paling,

Remembering only random hints

Of Eve’s and Adam’s failing.

He built ships here, Empires there,

He kept on colonising ;

With rum jar, gun-boat, and with prayer,

He grew in gear and wising.

62

FIGHTING FOR PEACE.

And must we fight for Peace ?

Make red the greening field and tranquil streams ?

Tear down the homes; Love’s lullaby must cease,

A.nd beauty, nestling in her glade of dreams

Must now be raped.

Since we must fight for Peace,

Make cities roar with screams of tortured men,

And maids and mothers. Death’s harvest must increase,

For, lo, we fight for Peace —beyond that ken

All else is lies.

Yet let the truth be told :

Had we not peace before the bayonet gleamed

And drained the hearts that matter less than gold ?

Had we not peace ? Yea at our toil we dreamed

Of love and right!

Then over Earth there came

The call of war-dogs through our dreams of peace.

And hearts and homes were sccrched in one red flame.

And now we wonder when the fight will cease

For our lost Peace.

•60-

They lied to us again.

Can we but dream and let the war-dogs rule?

Come, workers, we must prove that we are men,

And end the fight, where Masters only soole

And hound us on.

Yea, peace can ne’er be ours

Until we toilers will the Newer Day,

When Peace will reign in everlasting bowers ;

For wars will cease when toilers cease to slay

Their toil-worn mates.

When toilers cease to fight,

Cease waging war for masters but for scorn ;

Theirs is the power to stay, theirs is the might,

Theirs is the wand—to waft the happy morn Of endless Peace.

Are we not Mankind all,

Wherever on God’s earth we’re called to dwell ?

Brothers in toil and tears, come, let us call

To each of Love, until the anthem swell Of lasting Peace!

61

LET US PRAY.

When the writer was in Taihape he was refused permission to lecture on Sunday evening, his subject being: “From the Dawn of Human Progress to the Coming of Democracy.” A petition was largely signed by the ratepayers demanding that the Council grant the permit for the meeting. On the petition being presented the Mayor ruled that it could not be received, on the ground that it was a “demand” and not a “prayer.”

Come let us pray (the savage said),

Or down the club comes on your head,

V.1U1/ VU111V.J Ull _JUU1 1 To gods of slab, come let us pray,

To gods of gold, and gods of clay

To gods of sun, and wind, and fire,

Come let us pray and never tire.

And so the humble song goes on

Of gods of wood, and flesh, and stone ;

Yet though they prayed, and prayed, and prayed.

Their hearts’ desires were long delayed.

No matter what its style or brand,

Their prayers seemed hard to understand —

They got their rights—but only when

They rose four-square and spoke as men.

In old Taihape town to-day

We people for our rights must pray;

For plain ’tis to the wisest fools

Our lives are plumbed and squared by rules.

So let us tabulate our prayer

In script with sanctimonious care,

Nor speak in terms of grave command

Which even Mayors can't understand.

65

E’en so His Worship in this town,

Who wears our civic robes and crown,

Says: “Sirs, you call—you even dare

Us to command! This is no prayer.

Above all else just understand

That you must pray, and not command.

Such is the law—though says the Rhymes,

‘Law’s oft a club in stirring times.’ ”

Some Gods of old were heartless, cold,

Yea, though the prayers be mild or bold,

Commanded as we are to pray

We live within a newer day;

We pray to one with various charms,

Hands, feet, and legs, ears, eyes, and arms;

Here we can e’en our last wills sign,

On common script or superfine.

Here justice is put in the scales

When every other measure fails;

If but to make us wiser look,

We e’en can buy full many a book.

we e en can uuy iuu maujr a Though oft we’ve read, “the law’s an ass"—

Just for to-day we’ll let that pass;

But merely state, so real’s our god,

We e’en can get our asses shod.

So real’s the god we know about,

He e’en can patch a water-spout.

For know our god is one grand whole,

To guide each frail unsteady soul

Far greater than tree, sun or stone,

Our One in Seven, Our Seven in On(

I would not speak of Hell or Heaven

(It only rhymes with One in Seven)

By sign, and scale, and book, and pen

Come let us pray—we are but men

—G3

BAIRNHOOD DAYS.

Bonnie simmer day an’ a’ i’ the Northland faur awa’, ;

O there amang the heather wad I be

Hear the laverock sing again owre the boskie greenin’ glen,

Sweet memories that set my spirit free,

Owre the bonnie broom and birk, ere pain danged its dirlin’ dirk

Gled bairnhood days ayont the breengin’ sea.

On the fair straths wad I lie, wi’ the bnrnie tremblin’ by; :

Wad leeve again the dreams abune the bent

Snawy clud-banks were new strands,braesandbents were fremmitlands

Thae gowden lands i’ bairnhood days we kent,

Let me sail thae simmer seas singin’ wi’ the scented breeze,

Till a’ the sands i’ gleamin’ dew are spent.

Bonnie simmer day an’ a’ wi’ the Hame-folk faur awa’,

Whaur grandly rests the lang day owre the glen,

I wad gang an’ ne’er return to the heather an’ the burn,

An’ leave the weary, fekless mart o’ Men

Sweet thae days noo faur apairt, deid an’ dowie is my he’rt

O gie to me my bairnie days again.

Threedin’ daisies on the lea, whaur the peeweeps circle free;

We threedit Dreams an’ Memories thae days.

Ilka merry he’rt was leal as thae gowany braes we’d speel,

The best o’ a’ kent Kingdoms rose thae braes;

We were a’ kings an’ queens there, a’ the hours were grand an’ rare

A’laney noo I lilt my dowie lays.

O thae days, thae days are gane, an’ my he’rt is like a stane,

The he’rt that aft wi’ joy ran lippin’ fou,

Och, but little did we ken o’ the days we’ve seen sin’ then,

Nor a’ the weary trauchle we’ve been through ;

For thae days o’ lang, lang syne, wad we no a’ ither tine—

O baimhood days I’d be the morn wi* you.

67

MEDALS OF JIM.

His medals are now growing dank and dim,

Medals of Jim.

Not with the rankness of the wastes of years

But with the tears and dreams that strong men keeP

When long nights creep

Across the tangled path of Liberty!

Deep from the coldest waters of the Tyne,

Days of Langsyne,

Jim sought for Fritz and brought him to the bank,

And all the heart of man just cheered for him,

Medals of Jim—

His medals are now growing dim and dank.

Out where the mists of War are deepest red,

Way of the Dead,

Could we but see the shadows in those kits,

The little shades that come and will not go—

How could Jim know !

Shades of the Tyne—Dead at his feet lay Fritz.

His medals are now growing dank and dim,

Medals of Jim,

Not with the rankness of the wastes of years.

But with the tears and dreams that strong men keep

When long nights creep

Across the tangled path of Liberty!

65

REST.

Rest!

This would be rest

To know that away in the dying day

The hates of man had sped,

And for evermore with the piled-up store

Of Yesterdays lie dead ;

With Yesterdays lie dead.

Rest !

This would be rest

To hear the glad beat of triumphant feet

March toward Freedom’s Day ;

When Life’s surcease will be peace, sweet peace—

Oh, gladsome melody!

Oh, fondest melody!

Rest!

This would be rest:

± ms WUUIU UC leal.- - Just to know that Greed, and each craven creed

That curse the race of men,

With the Tyrant’s power would die in the hour,

Never to crush again

Never to grind again !

69

Rest

This would be rest:-

To wake in the night, while the moon’s soft light

Traced memories on the wall

To find with me there my sweet bairnies fair,

And with no fear at all

And with no dread at all!

Rest!

This would be rest:—

To stand by the grave where the grasses wave,

And know the way she went;

Just to hear again in the ways of men

That voice that now is spent!

Her voice forever spent!

Rest

That would be rest

Yea, then I could lie while the waters went by

The track where all men must

Sink to rest some day, near the wind and the spray.

When dust returns to dust;

And dust returns to dust!

—67

Rest!

That would be rest:—

Where the plovers call at the gloamin fall,

Out on the heather and moss

Where the peeweep cries and the wild lark hies

The moorland lone across;

The lonely moor across!

Rest!

That would be rest:—

’Neath the tall gumtree, where the winds blow free,

Anear a lonely grave;

Where summer sounds fill with music the hill

Whose shade alone I crave;

Whose kindly shade I crave!

Rest!

That would be rest!

For the passing hours with the breath of flowers

Would hallow every home

To-day hear the cry as the winds go by—

So on the Track I roam ;

Out on the Track I roam !

71

BALLADS OF THE TRACK:

Lyrics Of Liberty And Love. By Edward Hunter.

SOME OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.

Like many of his countrymen Edward Hunter has a lyrical gift; love of song is native to him as it is to that race which blends in its character so much that is stern and forbidding, with the love of poetry and tender sentiment. He has produced a book of verses entitled “Ballads of the Track; Lyrics of Liberty and Love." Some of these have appeared in “ The Worker,” and they breathe the spirit of passionate revolt, deep loyalty to the workers’ cause, and a love for all things beautiful and fair.—“ The Maoriland Worker.”

A collection of poems, more than democratic in their tendency, where they treat of the workers’ rights. In his condemnation of the commercial tone of to-day’s world, he is at times too bitter, and his judgments are too sweeping. His lyrical love poems show a more gentle side. His work is at least an endeavour to secure better conditions for his fellow-workers, and he is thus a typical writer of the age.—“ New Zealand Herald.”

A very readable and stimulating volume of verse. Songs of Liberty are rare these days, which fact should give an added value to this well-turned-out book. The author hails from the land of “ Bobbie ” Burns. . . ’ . he preaches Burns’ gospel in a more modern light, but in a manner just as sincere as the old “ singer of sweet songs.” . . . Apart from the strong militant note against Authority, the Australian love of the bush and the track is strongly evidenced in his verse. There is a true poetic feeling permeating the volume that arouses in the reader an appreciation of the writer’s ideals —which are also the Ideals of Socialism and Humanity. Truly that which he has “ learnt in suffering ” does he “ teach in song."—“ The Melbourne Socialist.”

A Laureate of Labour. A valuable addition to the Song Literature of Labour. A Singer to the Cause that never dies. During thirty years of active journalistic life, it has been the esteemed privilege of the present writer to deal with the “ firstlings ” of many minor bards, but amongst them all we fail to recall any one which at first reading appeared to strike a more confident note than that which rings through every page of “ Ballads Of The Track.’ And ever : the note is robust, rebellious and sincere. . . . The Labour movei ment could not have a more stalwart singer of its hopes and aspirat tions that Edward Hunter proves himself to be. . . . This is well exemplified in the piece entitled “A Song Of Freedom,” a song that i like a blast of a trumpet dirls the blood. . . . With the ringing u notes of that grand rebel song throbbing in the sympathetic readers’ /very souls, we must take leave of “Billy Banjo.”—“New Zealand r Truth.”

These are lyrics of liberty and love, written by a workingman to workingmen, and they breathe the passionate fire of freedom from I the soul of the author. —“The Commonwealth.”

First Edition 2/6, post free. Library Edition 5/-.

Second Edition, illustrated, 3/-, post free. Library Edition 5/6

A. F. McDONNELL, Stationer. 18 and 355. Queen Street, Auckland.