When I Was King

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an excerpt from the poem:


WHEN I WAS KING


THE SECOND time I lived on earth
Was several hundred years ago;
And--royal by my second birth--
I know as much as most men know.
I was a king who held the reins
As never modern monarch can;
I was a king, and I had brains,
And, what was more, I was a man!

Called to the throne in stormy times,
When things were at their very worst,
I had to fight--and not with rhymes--
My own self and my kindred first;
And after that my friends and foes,
And great abuses born of greed;
And when I'd fairly conquered those,
I ruled the land a king indeed.

I found a deal of rottenness,
Such as in modern towns we find;
I camped my poor in palaces
And tents upon the plain behind.
I marked the hovels, dens and drums
In that fair city by the sea.
And burnt the miles of wretched slums
And built the homes as they should be.

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Contents:

The Cross-Roads
When I Was King
The Author's Farewell to the Bushmen
From the Bush
Heed Not
The Bush Girl
'G.S.,' or the Fourth Cook
Jack Cornstalk
The Men Who Made Australia
The Bulletin Hotel
Sacred to the Memory of "Unknown"
The Shearers
'Knocking Around'
The Shearer's Dream
The Never-Never Country.
With Dickens
The Things We Dare Not Tell
The Drums of Battersea
As Far As Your Rifles Cover
Gipsy Too
The Wander-Light
Genoa
The Tracks That Lie by India
Say Good-Bye When Your Chum Is Married
The Separation
Ruth
The Cliffs
Bourke
The Stringy-Bark Tree
The Bush Fire
The Bill of the Ages
Waratah and Wattle
My Land and I
The Men Who Live It Down
When Your Pants Begin Yo Go
Robbie's Statue