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Mary Gilmore

From Wikiquote
Gilmore in 1948

Dame Mary Jean Gilmore DBE (née Cameron; 16 August 1865 – 3 December 1962) was an Australian writer and journalist known for her prolific contributions to Australian literature and the broader national discourse. She wrote both prose and poetry.

Quotes

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Shame on the mouth
That would deny
The knotted hands
That set us high!
No foe shall gather our harvest,
Or sit on our stockyard rail.
  • It’s gettin’ bits o’ posies,
      ’N’ feelin’ mighty good;
    A-thrillin’ ’cause she loves you,
      An’ wond’rin’ why she should;
    [...]
    As if there’s nothin’ mattered,
      As if the world was good,
    As if the Lord was lookin’,
      An’ sort o’ understood.
  • It's us two when it's morning,
      And us two when it's night;
    And us two when it's troubled,
      And us two when it's bright;
    And us two don't want nothing
      To make life good and true,
    And lovin'-sweet, and happy,
      While us two's got us two.
    • "Us Two", in Marri'd and Other Verses (1910), p. 23
  • I have grown past hate and bitterness,
      I see the world as one;
    But though I can no longer hate,
      My son is still my son.
    All men at God's round table sit,
      And all men must be fed;
    But this loaf in my hand,
      This loaf is my son's bread.
  • It was, it was a fairy man
      Who came to town today.
    "I'll make a cake for sixpence,
      If you will pay, will pay."
    I paid him with a sixpence,
      And with a penny, too;
    He made a cake of rainbows,
      And baked it in the dew.
    [...]
    He iced it with a moonbeam,
      He patterned it with play,
    And sprinkled it with star-dust
      From off the Milky Way.
  • Youth troubles over eternity; age grasps at a day and is satisfied to have even the day.
  • We are the sons of Australia,
    Of the men who fashioned the land,
    We are the sons of the women
    Who walked with them, hand in hand;
    And we swear by the dead who bore us,
    By the heroes who blazed the trail,
    No foe shall gather our harvest,
    Or sit on our stockyard rail.
  • Never admit the pain,
    Bury it deep;
    Only the weak complain.
    Complaint is cheap.
  • I never knew how wide the dark,
    I never knew the depth of space,
    I never knew how frail a bark,
    How small is man within his place,
    Not till I heard the swans go by,
    Not till I marked their haunting cry,
    Not till, within the vague on high,
    I watched them pass across the sky. ...
  • I span and Eve span,
    A thread to bind the heart of man!
    • "Eve-song", in H. M. Green, Modern Australian Poetry, 2nd ed. (1952), p. 127
  • I have no thunder in my words,
      Thunder is much too high;
    But I can see as far as birds,
      And feel the wind go by.
    And I can follow through the grass
      The darling-breasted quail;
    For, though things great in splendour mass,
      I choose the lesser grail.
  • "I'm old
    Botany Bay;
    Stiff in the joints,
    Little to say.
    I am he
    Who paved the way,
    That you might walk
    At your ease to-day;
    [...]
    I split the rock;
    I felled the tree:
    The nation was —
    Because of me!"
    Old Botany Bay
    Taking the sun
    From day to day. ...
    Shame on the mouth
    That would deny
    The knotted hands
    That set us high!
  • I shall go as my father went,
    A thousand plans in his mind,
    With something still held unspent
    When death lets fall the blind.
    I shall go as my mother went,
    The ink still wet on the line:
    I shall pay no rust as rent
    For the house that is mine.
  • Nurse no long grief,
    Lest the heart flower no more;
    Grief builds no barns; its plough
    Rusts at the door.
    • "Nurse No Long Grief", st. 3, in Mary Gilmore, ed. R. D. Fitzgerald (1963), p. 23
  • Emptied of us the land,
      Ghostly our going,
    Fallen, like spears the hand
      Dropped in the throwing.
    We are the lost who went,
      Like the cranes, crying;
    Hunted, lonely, and spent,
      Broken and dying.
  • I am not very patient,
      Yet patient I must be
    With him beside my pillow
      And the babe upon my knee.
    [...]
    Strange that I was given
    Thoughts that soar to heaven,
    Yet must I sit and keep
    Children in their sleep!
  • Moorangoo, the dove, in her high place mourned,
    And Mulloka, the Water Spirit, turned
    In his shade as he heard her weep,
    Sad as the lone Koala that cries in his sleep
    At the sound of the gun,
    Asking for pity where pity was none.
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