Departure Platform by Thomas Hardy

We kissed at the barrier ; and passing through

She left me, and moment by moment got

Smaller and smaller, until to my view

She was but a spot ;

A wee white spot of muslin fluff

That down the diminishing platform bore

Through hustling crowds of gentle and rough

To the carriage door.

Under the lamplight’s fitful glowers,

Behind dark groups from far and near,

Whose interests were apart from ours,

She would disappear,

Then show again, till I ceased to see

That flexible form, that nebulous white ;

And she who was more than my life to me

Had vanished quite.

We have penned new plans since that fair fond day,

And in season she will appear again—

Perhaps in the same soft white array—

But never as then !

—‘And why, young man, must eternally fly

A joy you’ll repeat, if you love her well ?’

—O friend, nought happens twice thus ; why,

I cannot tell !

Walking Alone by Elma Mitchell

Our houses stand apart, and so

The time had come I had to go

Out from the fire, into the snow

-He would have come, but I said No.

I walk beyond the lights I know,

The busy poet's harmless glow,

The lovers curtained from the snow

-He would have come, but I said No.

No voices on the winds that blow,

No light house in the swiveling snow,

No flare, no flame, the way I go

-But heel and toe, and heel and toe.

The Chemical Worker's Song

And it’s go boys go

They'll time your every breath

And every day in this place your two days near to death

But you go

Well a process man am I and I'm tellin' you no lie

I work and breathe among the fumes that tread across the sky

There's thunder all around me and there's poison in the air

There's a lousy smell that smacks of hell and dust all in me hair

Well I've worked among the spitters and I breathe the oily smoke

I've shovelled up the gypsum and it neigh 'on makes you choke

I've stood knee deep cyanide, got sick with a caustic burn

Been working rough, I've seen enough, to make your stomach turn

There's overtime and bonus opportunities galore

The young men like their money and they all come back for more

But soon your knocking on and you look older than you should

For every bob made on the job, you pay with flesh and blood

Well a process man am I and I'm telling you no lie

I work and breathe among the fumes that tread across the sky

There's thunder all around me and there's poison in the air

There's a lousy smell that smacks of hell and dust all in me hair

Clancy of the Overflow by A B Banjo Paterson

I had written him a letter which I had, for want of better

Knowledge, sent to where I met him down the Lachlan, years ago,

He was shearing when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him,

Just "on spec", addressed as follows, "Clancy, of The Overflow".

And an answer came directed in a writing unexpected,

(And I think the same was written with a thumb-nail dipped in tar)

Twas his shearing mate who wrote it, and verbatim I will quote it:

"Clancy's gone to Queensland droving, and we don't know where he are."

In my wild erratic fancy visions come to me of Clancy

Gone a-droving "down the Cooper" where the Western drovers go;

As the stock are slowly stringing, Clancy rides behind them singing,

For the drover's life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know.

And the bush hath friends to meet him, and their kindly voices greet him

In the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars,

And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended,

And at night the wond'rous glory of the everlasting stars.

I am sitting in my dingy little office, where a stingy

Ray of sunlight struggles feebly down between the houses tall,

And the foetid air and gritty of the dusty, dirty city

Through the open window floating, spreads its foulness over all

And in place of lowing cattle, I can hear the fiendish rattle

Of the tramways and the buses making hurry down the street,

And the language uninviting of the gutter children fighting,

Comes fitfully and faintly through the ceaseless tramp of feet.

And the hurrying people daunt me, and their pallid faces haunt me

As they shoulder one another in their rush and nervous haste,

With their eager eyes and greedy, and their stunted forms and weedy,

For townsfolk have no time to grow, they have no time to waste.

And I somehow rather fancy that I'd like to change with Clancy,

Like to take a turn at droving where the seasons come and go,

While he faced the round eternal of the cash-book and the journal —

But I doubt he'd suit the office, Clancy, of "The Overflow".

My Mistress' Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun by William Shakespeare

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red than her lips' red ;

If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

I have seen roses damask, red and white,

But no such roses see I in her cheeks;

And in some perfumes is there more delight

Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know

That music hath a far more pleasing sound;

I grant I never saw a goddess go;

My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:

And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare

As any she belied with false compare.

Anthem for Doomed Youth By Wilfred Owen

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons.

No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells,

Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,—

The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;

And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?

Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes

Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.

The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;

Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,

And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Strange Meeting by Wilfred Owen

It seemed that out of the battle I escaped

Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped

Through granites which Titanic wars had groined.

Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,

Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.

Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared

With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,

Lifting distressful hands as if to bless.

And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall,—

By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.

With a thousand fears that vision's face was grained;

Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,

And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.

"Strange, friend," I said, "Here is no cause to mourn."

"None," said the other, "Save the undone years,

The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,

Was my life also; I went hunting wild

After the wildest beauty in the world,

Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,

But mocks the steady running of the hour,

And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.

For by my glee might many men have laughed,

And of my weeping something has been left,

Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,

The pity of war, the pity war distilled.

Now men will go content with what we spoiled.

Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.

They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress,

None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.

Courage was mine, and I had mystery;

Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery;

To miss the march of this retreating world

Into vain citadels that are not walled.

Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot—wheels

I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,

Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.

I would have poured my spirit without stint

But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.

Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.

I am the enemy you killed, my friend.

I knew you in this dark; for so you frowned

Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.

I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.

Let us sleep now . . ."

Icarus by Valentin Iremonger

As, even to-day, the airman, feeling the plane sweat

Suddenly, seeing the horizon tilt up gravely, the wings shiver,

Knows that, for once, Daedalus has slipped up badly,

Drunk on the job, perhaps, more likely dreaming, high-flier Icarus,

Head butting down skidding along the light-shafts

Back,over the tones of the sea-waves and the slip-stream, heard

The gravel-voiced, stuttering trumpets of his heart

Sennet among the crumbling court-yards of his brain the mistake

Of trusting somebody else on an important affair like this;

And while the flat sea, approaching, buckled into oh! avenues

Of acclamation, he saw the wrong story fan out into history.

Truth, undefined, lost in his own neglect On the hills,

The summer-shackled hills, the sun spanged all day;

Love and the world were young and there was no ending:

But star-chaser, bit-time-going, chancer Icarus

Like a dog on the sea lay and the girls forgot him

And Daedalus, too busy hammering another job,

Remembered him only in pubs. No bugler at all

Sobbed taps for the young fool then, reported missing,

Presumed drowned, wing-bones and feathers on the tide

Drifting in casually, one by one.