Come, Sing Australian Songs To Me!

Words:  John O'Brien (Patrick Joseph Hartigan)

Tune:  John Thompson

Come, Little One, and sing to me
  A song our big wide land to bless,
Around whose gentle parent-knee
  We've twined the flowers of kindliness.

Your eyes are clear Australian blue,
  Your voice like soft bush breezes blown;
Her sunshine steeps the heart of you,
  Your tresses are the wattle's own.

What, no Australian song, my child,
  No lay of love, no hymn of praise?
And yet no mother ever smiled
  With our dear country's winsome ways:

You sing the songs of all the earth,
  Of bower and bloom and bird and bee;
And has the land that gave you birth
  No haunting, native melody?

Your poets' eager pens awake
  The world-old themes of love and youth.
The pulse of life, the joy, the ache,
  The pregnant line of earnest truth;

They dress you these in native guise,
  And interweave with loving hand
The freshness of your rain-washed skies,
  The colours of your sunlit land.

What, no Australian song, my dear?
  And yet I've heard the cottage ring
With notes the world would pause to hear,
  When at their work your sisters sing.

They sing the songs of all the earth,
  Of tender sky, and dimpling sea,
But all their strains have not the worth
  Of one Australian song, for me.

I've heard the harp the breezes play
  Among the wilding wilga-trees;
I've swept my world of care away
  When bush birds lift their melodies;

I've seen the paddocks all ablaze
  When spring in golden glory comes,
The purple hills of summer days,
  The autumn ochres through the gums;

I've seen the bright folk riding in
  O'er blooms that deck the clovered plain,
And neath the trees, when moonbeams spin
  Their silver-dappled counterpane.

What, no Australian song, my pet?
  No patriot note on native horn,
To bind the hearts in kindness met,
  And link the leal Australian-born?

Yet every exile, wandering lone
  Our happy careless homes among,
May live the best his heart has known
  Whene'er his country's songs are sung.

You sing the songs of all the earth,
  Of alien flower and alien tree:
But no one, in my grief or mirth,
  Will sing Australian songs to me.

You sing of every land but mine,
  Where life is lifting neath the sun.
Still all its spirit seems ashine
  In you, my little laughing one.

Your eyes are clear Australian blue,
  Your face is towards the future set:
The bounding, gladsome heart of you
  Is hers-and only hers, my pet.

Ah, Little One, what dreams would rise
  If, nestled here upon my knee,
You'd flash those soft Australian eyes,
  And sing your country's songs to me!

From John O'Brien's Around the Boree Log.

The Overlanders set this poem to music on their album, Songs of the Great 
Australian Balladists.  I used the first line of their melody as a starting 

point.

Tangmalangaloo

Words:  John O'Brien
Tune:  Traditional/Arranged John Thompson

Right-click to download

The bishop sat in lordly state and purple cap sublime,
And galvanized the old bush church at Confirmation time.
And all the kids were mustered up from fifty miles around,
With Sunday clothes, and staring eyes, and ignorance profound.
Now was it fate, or was it grace, whereby they yarded too
An overgrown two-storey lad from Tangmalangaloo?


A hefty son of virgin soil, where nature has her fling,
And grows the trefoil three feet high and mats it in the spring;
Where mighty hills uplift their heads to pierce the welkin's rim,
And trees sprout up a hundred feet before they shoot a limb;
There everything is big and grand, and men are giants too -
But Christian Knowledge wilts, alas, at Tangmalangaloo.


The bishop summed the youngsters up, as bishops only can;
He cast a searching glance around, then fixed upon his man.
But glum and dumb and undismayed through every bout he sat;
He seemed to think that he was there, but wasn't sure of that.
The bishop gave a scornful look, as bishops sometimes do,
And glared right through the pagan in from Tangmalangaloo.


"Come, tell me, boy," his lordship said in crushing tones severe,
"Come, tell me why is Christmas Day the greatest of the year?
"How is it that around the world we celebrate that day
"And send a name upon a card to those who're far away?
"Why is it wandering ones return with smiles and greetings, too?"
A squall of knowledge hit the lad from Tangmalangaloo.


He gave a lurch which set a-shake the vases on the shelf,
He knocked the benches all askew, up-ending of himself.
And so, how pleased his lordship was, and how he smiled to say,
"That's good, my boy.  Come, tell me now; and what is Christmas Day?"
The ready answer bared a fact no bishop ever knew -
"It's the day before the races out at Tangmalangaloo.

John O'Brien was the pen-name of Patrick Joseph Hartigan, most famously the author of Said Hanrahan.