Mary Gilmore
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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That would deny
The knotted hands
That set us high!
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.- "Sweathearts", sts, 1, 4, in Marri'd and Other Verses (1910), p. 73
- 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.- "Nationality", anthologised in A Book of Australian and New Zealand Verse (1918), p. 86
- 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.- "The Fairy Man", sts. 1, 2, 5, in The School Magazine (1 March 1925), p. 22
- Youth troubles over eternity; age grasps at a day and is satisfied to have even the day.
- Old Days, Old Ways: A Book of Recollections (1934); extract reprinted in The Penguin Book of Australian Autobiography (1987), pp. 35–6
- 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.- "No Foe Shall Gather Our Harvest", st. 4, in The Australian Women's Weekly (Sydney, 29 June 1940), p. 5, with the author's note: "I'm too old to do many of the things I would like to do to win the war, but I can still write. Here is a song for the men and women of Australia."
- Old Botany Bay
Taking the sun
From day to day. ...Shame on the mouth
That would deny
The knotted hands
That set us high!- "Old Botany Bay", quoted in E. Morris Miller, Australian Literature, 2nd ed. (1956), p. 194
- See also "Botany Bay" (1885)
- 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.- "The Waradgery Tribe", sts. 3, 4, anthologised in A Book of Australia, ed. T. Inglis Moore (1961), p. 88
External links
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- Anne-Marie Condé, "Afternoon tea with Mary Gilmore", Inside Story (18 June 2024)