Click in the field, then press CTRL+C to copy the HTML code
<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=343940" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>An answer to Various Bards</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=343940" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Well, I've waited mighty patient while they all came rolling in, <br>Mister Lawson, Mister Dyson, and the others of their kin, <br>With their dreadful, dismal stories of the Overlander's camp, <br>How his fire is always smoky, and his boots are always damp; <br>And they paint it so terrific it would fill one's soul with gloom -- <br>But you know they're fond of writing about "corpses" and "the tomb". <br>So, before they curse the bushland, they should let their fancy range, <br>And take something for their livers, and be cheerful for a change. <br>Now, for instance, Mr Lawson -- well, of course, we almost cried <br>At the sorrowful description how his "little 'Arvie" died, <br>And we lachrymosed in silence when "His Father's mate" was slain; <br>Then he went and killed the father, and we had to weep again. <br>Ben Duggan and Jack Denver, too, he caused them to expire, <br>After which he cooked the gander of Jack Dunn, of Nevertire; <br>And, no doubt, the bush is wretched if you judge it by the groan <br>Of the sad and soulful poet with a graveyard of his own. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=343940" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And he spoke in terms prophetic of a revolution's heat, <br>When the world should hear the clamour of those people in the street; <br>But the shearer chaps who start it -- why, he rounds on them the blame, <br>And he calls 'em "agitators who are living on the game". <br>Bur I "over-write" the bushmen! Well, I own without a doubt <br>That I always see the hero in the "man from furthest out". <br>I could never contemplate him through an atmosphere of gloom, <br>And a bushman never struck me as a subject for "the tomb". </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=343940" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">If it ain't all "golden sunshine" where the "wattle branches wave", <br>Well, it ain't all damp and dismal, and it ain't all "lonely grave". <br>And, of course, there's no denying that the bushman's life is rough, <br>But a man can easy stand it if he's built of sterling stuff; <br>Though it's seldom that the drover gets a bed of eiderdown, <br>Yet the man who's born a bushman, he gets mighty sick of town, <br>For he's jotting down the figures, and he's adding up the bills <br>While his heart is simply aching for a sight of Southern hills. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=343940" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Then he hears a wool-team passing with a rumble and a lurch, <br>And, although the work is pressing, yet it brings him off his perch, <br>For it stirs him like a message from his station friends afar <br>And he seems to sniff the ranges in the scent of wool and tar; <br>And it takes him back in fancy, half in laughter, half in tears, <br>to a sound of other voices and a thought of other years, <br>When the woolshed rang with bustle from the dawning of the day, <br>And the shear-blades were a-clicking to the cry of "Wool away!" </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=343940" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Then his face was somewhat browner, and his frame was firmer set -- <br>And he feels his flabby muscles with a feeling of regret. <br>But the wool-team slowly passes, and his eyes go slowly back <br>To the dusty little table and the papers in the rack, <br>And his thoughts go to the terrace where his sickly children squall, <br>And he thinks there's something healthy in the bush-life after all. <br>But we'll go no more a-droving in the wind or in the sun, <br>For out fathers' hearts have failed us, and the droving days are done. </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=343940" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">There's a nasty dash of danger where the long-horned bullock wheels, <br>And we like to live in comfort and to get our reg'lar meals. <br>For to hang around the township suits us better, you'll agree, <br>And a job at washing bottles is the job for such as we. <br>Let us herd into the cities, let us crush and crowd and push <br>Till we lose the love of roving, and we learn to hate the bush; <br>And we'll turn our aspirations to a city life and beer, <br>And we'll slip across to England -- it's a nicer place than here; </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=343940" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">For there's not much risk of hardship where all comforts are in store, <br>And the theatres are in plenty, and the pubs are more and more. <br>But that ends it, Mr Lawson, and it's time to say good-bye, <br>So we must agree to differ in all friendship, you and I. <br>Yes, we'll work our own salvation with the stoutest hearts we may, <br>And if fortune only favours we will take the road some day, <br>And go droving down the river 'neath the sunshine and the stars, <br>And then return to Sydney and vermilionize the bars.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><a href="http://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="http://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Andrew+Barton+Paterson">Andrew Barton Paterson</a></strong></div>