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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=408816" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Fight at Eureka Stockade</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=408816" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Was I at Eureka?" His figure was drawn to a youthful height,<br>And a flood of proud recollections made the fire in his grey eyes bright;<br>With pleasure they lighted and glisten'd, tho' the digger was grizzled and old,<br>And we gathered about him and listen'd while the tale of Eureka he told.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=408816" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Ah, those were the days," said the digger, "twas a glorious life that we led,<br>When fortunes were dug up and lost in a day in the whirl of the years that are dead.<br>But there's many a veteran now in the land - old knights of the pick and the spade,<br>Who could tell you in language far stronger than mine 'bout the fight at Eureka Stockade.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=408816" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"We were all of us young on the diggings in days when the nation had birth -<br>Light-hearted, and careless, and happy, and the flower of all nations on earth;<br>But we would have been peaceful an' quiet if the law had but let us alone;<br>And the fight - let them call it a riot - was due to no fault of our own.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=408816" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"The creed of our rulers was narrow - they ruled with a merciless hand,<br>For the mark of the cursed broad arrow was deep in the heart of the land.<br>They treated us worse than the negroes were treated in slavery's day -<br>And justice was not for the diggers, as shown by the Bently affray.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=408816" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"P'r'aps Bently was wrong. If he wasn't the bloodthirsty villain they said,<br>He was one of the jackals that gather where the carcass of labour is laid.<br>'Twas b'lieved that he murdered a digger, and they let him off scot-free as well,<br>And the beacon o' battle was lighted on the night that we burnt his hotel.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=408816" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"You may talk as you like, but the facts are the same (as you've often been told),<br>And how could we pay when the license cost more than the worth of the gold?<br>We heard in the sunlight the clanking o' chains in the hillocks of clay,<br>And our mates, they were rounded like cattle an' handcuffed an' driven away.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=408816" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"The troopers were most of them new-chums, with many a gentleman's son;<br>And ridin' on horseback was easy, and hunting the diggers was fun.<br>Why, many poor devils who came from the vessel in rags and down-heeled,<br>Were copped, if they hadn't their license, before they set foot on the field.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=408816" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"But they roused the hot blood that was in us, and the cry came to roll up at last;<br>And I tell you that something had got to be done when the diggers rolled up in the past.<br>Yet they say that in spite o' the talkin' it all might have ended in smoke,<br>But just at the point o' the crisis, the voice of a quiet man spoke.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=408816" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">" `We have said all our say and it's useless, you must fight or be slaves!' said the voice;<br>" `If it's fight, and you're wanting a leader, I will lead to the end - take your choice!'<br>I looked, it was Pete! Peter Lalor! who stood with his face to the skies,<br>But his figure seemed nobler and taller, and brighter the light of his eyes.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=408816" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"The blood to his forehead was rushin' as hot as the words from his mouth;<br>He had come from the wrongs of the old land to see those same wrongs in the South;<br>The wrongs that had followed our flight from the land where the life of the worker was spoiled.<br>Still tyranny followed! no wonder the blood of the Irishman boiled.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=408816" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"And true to his promise, they found him - the mates who are vanished or dead,<br>Who gathered for justice around him with the flag of the diggers o'erhead.<br>When the people are cold and unb'lieving, when the hands of the tyrants are strong,<br>You must sacrifice life for the people before they'll come down on the wrong.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=408816" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"I'd a mate on the diggings, a lad, curly-headed, an' blue-eyed, an' white,<br>And the diggers said I was his father, an', well, p'r'aps the diggers were right.<br>I forbade him to stir from the tent, made him swear on the book he'd obey,<br>But he followed me in, in the darkness, and - was - shot - on Eureka that day.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=408816" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">" `Down, down with the tyrant an' bully,' these were the last words from his mouth<br>As he caught up a broken pick-handle and struck for the Flag of the South<br>An' let it in sorrow be written - the worst of this terrible strife,<br>'Twas under the `Banner of Britain' came the bullet that ended his life.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=408816" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"I struck then! I struck then for vengeance! When I saw him lie dead in the dirt,<br>And the blood that came oozing like water had darkened the red of his shirt,<br>I caught up the weapon he dropped an' I struck with the strength of my hate,<br>Until I fell wounded an' senseless, half-dead by the side of `my mate'.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=408816" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Surprised in the grey o' the morning half-armed, and the Barricade bad,<br>A battle o' twenty-five minutes was long 'gainst the odds that they had,<br>But the light o' the morning was deadened an' the smoke drifted far o'er the town<br>An' the clay o' Eureka was reddened ere the flag o' the diggers came down.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=408816" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"But it rose in the hands of the people an' high in the breezes it tost,<br>And our mates only died for a cause that was won by the battle they lost.<br>When the people are selfish and narrow, when the hands of the tyrants are strong,<br>You must sacrifice life for the public before they come down on a wrong.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=408816" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"It is thirty-six years this December - (December the first*) since we made<br>The first stand 'gainst the wrongs of old countries that day in Eureka Stockade,<br>But the lies and the follies and shams of the North have all landed since then<br>An' it's pretty near time that you lifted the flag of Eureka again.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=408816" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"You boast of your progress an' thump empty thunder from out of your drums,<br>While two of your `marvellous cities' are reeking with alleys an' slums.<br>An' the landsharks, an' robbers, an' idlers an' -! Yes, I had best draw it mild<br>But whenever I think o' Eureka my talking is apt to run wild.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=408816" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">"Even now in my tent when I'm dreaming I'll spring from my bunk, strike a light,<br>And feel for my boots an' revolver, for the diggers' march past in the night.<br>An' the faces an' forms of old mates an' old comrades go driftin' along,<br>With a band in the front of 'em playing the tune of an old battle song."</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=Henry+Lawson">Henry Lawson</a></strong></div>