Poems by J Le Gay Bereton

Poems by J Le Gay Bereton from "Sing With the Wind" Published by 'Envirobook" 1989
Song of The Warragambas (Tune: "The Sick Stockrider") In the thickly wooded valleys are a thousand merry calls, That echo in the Warragamba heart; The voices of the rushing winds and filmy waterfalls, Are louder than the hucksters of the mart We leave a drink untasted on the swell Australian bar, And dream of some sequestered wooden pub; We are pagans -- for the tolling chapel bells are fainter far, Than the singing of the bell-birds in the scrub. A thousand homes are waiting us by gully, plain and hill, A thousand fircless altars wait unseen; But tomorrow you may follow us on any track you will, By the little patch of black upon the green. For clad in love and sunlight goes the leader of the clan The trappings of modernity are shed While Tompkins bangs his brolly on his polished frying pan, Or waves his carpet slippers 'round his head. J Le Gay Brereton University of Sydney July 10, 1908		Wanderers I, Who am son of a star And brother of birds and trees, Have wandered fire-driven afar Through forests and under the seas. I have clad me in lowly attire And sojourned in many a den, But my heart could not rest for the fire, And I wandered and wandered again. And ages passed over my head As I curled on myself in the slime, And aeons I lay as one dead And sunk in the waters of Time. But the fire is not slaked by the flood Nor quenched by an ignorant breath; It glows like a gem in the mud It flares in the passage of death. And have I not found you at last By the light of the flame of unrest? You are the aim of the past; You are the soul of my quest We are one. Shall we end as we are While the planets are wheeling by? We wander fire-driven afar Through glimmering gulfs of the sky. J. Le Gay Brereton Ilermes Vol.3 No3 July 12, 1902