WE boast no more of our bloodless flag, that rose from a nation’s slime;
Better a shred of a deep-dyed rag from the storms of the olden time.
In grander clouds in our peaceful skies than ever were there before
I tell you the star of the South shall rise—in the lurid clouds of war.
It ever must be while blood is warm, and the sons of man increase;
Forever the nations rose in storm, to rot in a deadly peace.
There comes a point that we will not yield, no matter if weak or strong,
And man will fight on the battle-field as long as the world goes wrong,
So long as he will not kiss the rod, and his stubborn spirit sours,
And the scorn of nature and curse of God are heavy on peace like ours.

There are boys out there by the western creeks, who hurry away from school
To climb the sides of the breezy peaks or dive in the shaded pool,
Who’ll stick to their guns when the mountains quake to the tread of a mighty war,
And fight for their right or a Grand Mistake as man never fought before,
When the peaks are scarred and the sea-walls crack till the furthest hills vibrate,
And the world for a while goes rolling back in a storm of love and hate.
There are boys today in the city slum and the home of wealth and pride
Who’ll have one home when the storm is come and fight for it side by side,
Who’ll hold the cliffs from the armoured hells that batter a coastal town,
Or grimly die in a hail of shells when the walls come crashing down.
And many a pink-white baby girl, the queen of her home today,
Shall see the wings of the tempest whirl the mist of our dawn away,
Shall live to shudder and stop her ears to the thud of the distant gun,
And know the sorrow that has no tears when a battle is lost and won,—
As a mother or wife in the years to come, will kneel, wild-eyed and white,
And pray to God in her darkened home for the “men in The Fort tonight”.

The big rough boys from the runs out back will fight where the balls fly free,
And yell in the slang of the outside track: “By God, it’s a Christmas spree!””
“It’s not too stinking”—and “Wool Away!—Stand clear of the blazing shutes!”—
“Sheep O! Sheep O!”— “We’ll cut out today.”— “Look out for the boss’s boots!”—
“What price the tally in camp tonight!”— “What price the boys out back!”—
“Go it you tigers for right or might and the pride of the outside track!”
“Needle and thread!”— “I have broke my comb!”— “Ride, you flour-bags, ride!”—
“Fight for your mates and the folk at home!” . . .  “Here’s for the Lachlan side!”
The men of the west they would sneer and scoff at the gates of Hell ajar,
And oft the sight of a head cut off will be hailed by a yell of “Tar!”
In the western camps you will hear them boast when it’s bad for the kangaroo
If the enemy’s forces take the coast, they must take the mountains too;
They might force their way by the western line or round by a northern track,
But they won’t run short of a decent spree with the men who are left out back.

And the voice of the push will be heard no doubt—for they’ll fight, as likely or not—
“Look out for the blooming shell, look out!”— “Gor’ bli’ me, but that’s red-hot!”—
“It’s Bill the Slogger, poor bloke, he’s done. A chunk of the shell was his;
I wish the beggar that fired that gun could get within reach of Liz.”—
“Those foreign gunners will give us rats, but I wish it was Bill they missed.”—
“I’d like to get at their bleeding hats with a rock in my something fist.”
“Hold up, Billy, I’ll stick to you; they’ve hit you under the belt;
When it gets too stinking, I’ll swag you through, if the blazing mountains melt;
You remember the night when the traps got me for stoushing a bleeding Chow,
And you went for them proper and laid out three, and I won’t forget it now.”

And Time might tell how the pug replied: “I’m done . . . . they’ve knocked me out!
I’d fight them all for a pound a side, from the boss to the rouseabout.
My nut is cracked and my legs are broke, and it gives me worse than Hell;
I trained for a scrap with a twelve-stone bloke and not with a bursting shell.
You needn’t talk, for I knowed, old chum, I knowed, old pal, you’d stick,
But you can’t hold out till the regulars come, and you’d best be nowhere quick.
They’ve got a force and a gun ashore, and both of our ‘wings’ is broke;
They’ll storm the ridge in a minute more, and the best you can do is ‘smoke’.”

And Jim exclaims: “You can smoke, you chaps, but me—Gor’ bli’ me, no!
The push that run from the George Street traps won’t run from a foreign foe.
I’ll stick to the gun while she makes them sick and I’ll stick to what’s left of Bill.”
And they hiss through their blackened teeth: “We’ll stick! by the blazing flame, we will.”
And long years after the war is past, they’ll tell in the town and bush
How the ridge of death to the bloody last was held by a city push;
How they fought to the end in a sheet of flame, how they fought with their rifle-stocks,
And earned in a nobler sense the name of their ancient weapons— “rocks”.

If they burst the enemy’s ironclads and win by a run of luck,
They’ll whoop as loudly as Nelson’s lads when a French three-decker struck,
And if the enemy’s troops prevail—but of course the ideas’s absurd—
Our sons will lie to the end of the tale, explaining how that occurred.

And many a ricketty son of a gun, on the tides of the future tossed,
Will tell how battles were really won that history says were lost,
Will trace the field with his pipe, and shirk the facts that are hard to explain,
As grey old mates of the diggings work the old ground over again,
How “this was our centre, and this a redoubt, and this was a scrub in the rear,
And this was the point where the push held out, and the enemy’s lines was here.
And there for the love of their native land a thousand heroes bled;
They stuck to their posts—they was full of sand—but they got too full of lead.”
You bushmen sneer in the old bush way at the new-chum jackeroo,
But “cuffs-’n’-collers” was out that day and they stuck to their posts like glue;
I never believed that a dude could fight till a Johnny led us then;
We buried his bits in the rear that night for the honour of city men.

They’ll tell the tales of the nights before and the tales of the ship and fort;
The sons of Australia will take to war as their fathers took to sport,
Their breath come deep and their eyes grow bright at the tales of our chivalry,
And every boy will want to fight, no matter what cause it be,
When the children run to the doors and cry: “O mother the troops are come!”
And every heart in the town leaps high at the first loud thud of the drum,
They’ll know, apart from its mystic charm, what music is at last,
When, proud as a boy with a broken arm, the regiment marches past.
And the veriest wreck in the drink-fiend’s clutch, no matter how low or mean,
Will feel, when he hears the march, a touch of the man that he might have been.
All creeds and trades will have soldiers there—give every class his due—
And there’ll be many a clerk to spare for the pride of the jackeroo.
They’ll fight for honour and fight for love, and a few will fight for gold,
For the Devil below and for God above, as our fathers fought of old;
And some half-blind with exultant tears, and some stiff-lipped, stern-eyed,
For the pride of a thousand after years and the old eternal pride;
The soul of the world they will feel and see in the chase and the grim retreat.
They’ll know the glory of victory and the grandeur of defeat.

And fools, when the fiends of war are out and the city skies aflame,
Will have something better to talk about than a sister’s or brother’s shame,
Will have something nobler to do by far than to jest at a friend’s expense,
Or to blacken a name in a public bar or over a back-yard fence.
And this you learn from the libelled past, though its methods were somewhat rude,
A nation’s born where the shells fall fast or its lease of life renewed.
We in part atone for the ghoulish strife, for the crimes of the peace we boast,
And the better part of a people’s life in the storm comes uppermost.
’Twill be while ever our blood is hot, while ever the world goes wrong,
The nations rise in a war to rot in a peace that lasts too long.
And Southern nation and Southern state will believe in things like these
When they’ve read in the book of eternal Fate their stormy histories.