Bill the Bullock-Driver
The Leaders of millions, the lords of the lands,
Who sway the wide world with their will
And shake the great globe with the strength of their hands,
Flash past us—unnoticed by Bill.
The elders of science who measure the spheres
And weigh the vast bulk of the sun—
Who see the grand lights beyond aeons of years,
Are less than a bullock to one.
The singers that sweeten all time with their song—
Pure voices that make us forget
Humanity’s drama of marvellous wrong—
To Bill are as mysteries yet.
By thunders of battle and nations uphurled,
Bill’s sympathies never were stirred:
The helmsmen who stand at the wheel of the world
By him are unknown and unheard.
What trouble has Bill for the ruin of lands,
Or the quarrels of temple and throne,
So long as the whip that he holds in his hands
And the team that he drives are his own?
As straight and as sound as a slab without crack,
Our Bill is a king in his way;
Though he camps by the side of a shingle track,
And sleeps on the bed of his dray.
A whip-lash to him is as dear as a rose
Would be to a delicate maid;
He carries his darlings wherever he goes,
In a pocket-book tattered and frayed.
The joy of a bard when he happens to write
A song like the song of his dream
Is nothing at all to our hero’s delight
In the pluck and the strength of his team.
For the kings of the earth, for the faces august
Of princes, the millions may shout;
To Bill, as he lumbers along in the dust,
A bullock’s the grandest thing out.
His four-footed friends are the friends of his choice—
No lover is Bill of your dames;
But the cattle that turn at the sound of his voice
Have the sweetest of features and names.
A father’s chief joy is a favourite son,
[...] Read more
poem by Henry Kendall
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