The Graves Out West

Words:  Will Ogilvie
Tune:  Graham Jenkin












If the lonely graves are scattered in that fenceless vast God's Acre,
If no church bells chime across them, and no mourners tread between —
Yet the souls of those sound sleepers go as swiftly to their Maker,
And the ground is just as sacred, and the graves are just as green.




If we chant no solemn dirges to the virtue of their living.
If we sing no hymn words o'er them in the glory of the stars
They can hear a grander music than was ever ours for giving,
God's choristers invisible - the winds in the belars.




If we set them up no marble, it is none the less we love them:
If we carved a million columns would it bring them better rest
If no gentle hands have fashioned snow-white wreaths to lay above them,
God has laid His own wild flowers on the lonely graves out West.






From the Overlander's 1979 album, Tribute to Western Australia.  Written by Graham Jenkin.


Words from Will H. Ogilvie's Fair Girls and Gray Horses With Other Verses(1907). (Full text linked here).


The illustration to this post is a photograph of miners' graves near Chillagoe.

Northwards to the Sheds

Words: Will H Ogilvie
Tune: Unknown



There's a whisper from the regions out beyond the Barwon banks,
There's a gathering of the legions and a forming of the ranks,
There's a murmur coming nearer with the signs that never fail,
And it's time for every shearer to be out upon the trail;
They must leave their girls behind them and their empty glasses, too,
For there's plenty left to mind them when they cross the dry Barooo:
There'll be kissing, there'll be sorrow much as only sweethearts know,
But before the noon to-morrow they'll be singing as they go;
For the Western creeks are calling,
And the idle days are done,
With the snowy fleeces falling,
And the Queensland sheds begun.

There is shortening of the bridle, there is tightening of the girth,
There is fondling of the idol that they love the best on earth,
Northward from the Lachlan River and the sun-dried Castlereagh,
Outward to the Never-Never ride the "ringers" on their way.
From the green bends of the Murray they have run their horses in,
For there's haste and there is hurry when the Queensland sheds begin;
On the Bogan they are bridling, they are saddling on the Bland,
There is plunging and there's sidling -- for the colts don't understand
That the Western creeks are calling,
And the idle days are done,
With the snowy fleeces falling,
And the Queensland sheds begun.

They will camp below the station, they'll be outting peg and pole,
Rearing tents for occupation till the "calling of the roll,"
And it's time the nags were driven, and it's time to strap the pack,
For there's never license given to the laggards on the track.
Hark! The music of the battle: it in time to bare our swords!
Do you hear the rush and rattle as they tramp along the boards?
They are past the pen-doors picking light-wooled weeners one by one;
I can hear the shear-blades clicking, and I know the fight's begun!


First published in The Bulletin, 8 June 1895, and again in the same magazine on 26 August 1959;
and then later in Fair Girls and Gray Horses by Will H. Ogilvie, 1958.

Another gem from Alan Musgrove's Songs They Used To Sing.

The Black Sheep

Words: Will H Ogilvie
Tune: The Overlanders (?)



They shepherd their Black Sheep down to the ships,
Society's banned and cursed ;
And the boys look back as the old land dips —
Some with a reckless laugh on their lips,
And some with a prayer reversed.


CHORUS:
And it's Goodbye, England! and farewell, Love
And maybe it's just as well
When a man falls short of his Heaven above
That he drops to the uttermost Hell.


And the anchor lifts and the sails are set :
Now God to your help. Black Sheep !
For the gay world laughs " They will soon forget !"
But fired in the embers of old regret
The brand of the world bites deep.


They turn their Black Sheep over the side
To land on a stranger's shores ;
To drift with the cities' human tide,
Or wander away where the rovers ride
And the flagless legion wars.


And Hope for some is a broken staff
And for others a golden stair,
Who live for the echo of Love's low laugh
Or Somebody's face in a photograph.
Or a coil of Somebody's hair.


And some that have carried a parting gift
May kiss it and fling it away
Far over the clouds that no winds lift
To follow where our dead hopes drift
And rest where dead hopes may.


They bury the Black Sheep out in the Bush,
And buiy them none too deep
On the cattle camps and the last gold rush,
And the grasses grow over them green and lush
And the bush- winds sing them to sleep.


Aiid it's goodbye struggle and farewell strife
And maybe it's just as well
When a man goes down in the Battle of Life
That he shorten his road to Hell


From the Overlanders 1978 double album, Songs of the Great Australian Balladists.

Words from Will H. Ogilvie's Fair Girls and Gray Horses With Other Verses (1907). (Full text linked here).