Where the Dead Men Lie

Barcroft Henry Boake (1866-1892)

Australian writer

Out on the wastes the Never Never –
That's where the dead men lie!
There where the heat-waves dance forever –
That's where the dead men lie!
That's where the Earth's loved sons are keeping
Endless tryst: not the west wind sweeping
Feverish pinions can wake their sleeping –
Out where the dead men lie!

Where brown Summer and Death have mated –
That's where the dead men lie!
Loving with fiery lust unsated –
That's where the dead men lie!
Out where the grinning skulls bleach whitely
Under the saltbush sparkling brightly;
Out where the wild dogs chorus nightly –
That's where the dead men lie!

Deep in the yellow, flowing river –
That's where the dead men lie!
Under the banks where the shadows quiver –
That's where the dead men he!
Where the platypus twists and doubles,
Leaving a train of tiny bubbles.
Rid at last of their earthly troubles –
That's where the dead men lie!

East and backward pale faces turning –
That's how the dead men lie!
Gaunt arms stretched with a voiceless yearning –
That's how the dead men lie!
Oft in the fragrant hush of nooning
Hearing again their mother's crooning,
Wrapt for aye in a dreamful swooning –
That's how the dead men lie!

Only the hand of Night can free them –
That's when the dead men fly!
Only the frightened cattle see them –
See the dead men go by!
Cloven hoofs beating out one measure,
Bidding the stockmen know no leisure –
That's when the dead men take their pleasure!
That's when the dead men fly!

Ask, too, the never-sleeping drover:
He sees the dead pass by;
Hearing them call to their friends - the plover,
Hearing the dead men cry;
Seeing their faces stealing, stealing,
Hearing their laughter, pealing, pealing,
Watching their grey forms wheeling, wheeling
Round where the cattle lie!

Strangled by thirst and fierce privation –
That's how the dead men die!
Out on Moncygrub's farthest station –
That's how the dead men die!
Hard-faced greybeards, youngsters caflow;
Some mounds cared for, some left fallow;
Some deep down, yet others shallow.
Some having but the sky.

Moncygrub, as he sips his claret,
Looks with complacent eye
Down at his watch-chain, eighteen carat –
There, in his club, hard by:
Recks not that every link is stamped with
Names of the men whose limbs are cramped with
Too long lying in grave-mould, cramped with
Death where the dead men lie.

About the Author

See our page on Barcroft Henry Boake. Includes a linked list of all his writing available on our website.

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