Bernard O'Dowd

Bernard Patrick O'Dowd (11 April 1866 – 1 September 1953) was an Australian poet, activist, lawyer, and journalist. He worked for the Victorian colonial and state governments for almost 50 years, first as an assistant librarian at the Supreme Court in Melbourne, and later as a parliamentary draughtsman.

Bernard O'Dowd in 1904

Quotes

Mammon or millennial Eden.

The still, arrogant stare of an Australian cow.

• Are you for Light, and trimmed, with oil in place,
  Or but a Will o’ Wisp on marshy quest?
  A new demesne for Mammon to infest?
  Or lurks millennial Eden ’neath your face?
  • "Australia", ll. 5–8, in A Southern Garland (Sydney, 1904), n.p.
  • Paraphrased in Manning Clark, A History of Australia, vol. 6 (1987)

• And our reward? In this wan land,
    In clientage of Greed,
  Despised, polluted, maimed and banned,
    To wander and—to breed.
  • "Proletaria", st. 23, in A Southern Garland (Sydney, 1904), n.p.

• They teach and live the Golden Rule
    Of Young Democracy:—
  ‘That culture, joy and goodliness
    Be th’ equal right of all:
  That Greed no more shall those oppress
    Who by the wayside fall:
  ‘That each shall share what all men sow:
    That colour, caste’s a lie:
  That man is God, however low—
    Is man, however high.’
  • "Young Democracy", sts. 22–4, in A Southern Garland (Sydney, 1904), n.p.

• Ah, Love, the earth is woe’s
    And sadly helpers needs:
  And, till its burden goes,
    Our work is—where it bleeds.
  • "Love and Sacrifice", in The Silent Land and Other Verses (Melbourne, 1909), p. 44

• When, comrades, we thrill to the message of speaker in highway or hall,
  The voice of the poet is reaching the silenter poet in all:
  And again, as of old, when the flames are to leap up the turrets of Wrong,
  Shall the torch of the New Revolution be lit from the words of a Song!
  • "The Poet", st. 6, in An Austral Garden of Verse (1913), p. 91

• This is a rune I ravelled in the still,
    Arrogant stare of an Australian cow.
  • "The Cow", ll. 1–2, in The Oxford Book of Australasian Verse (1918), p. 133

• ‘Be true, be brave, be merciful, be free!’
  • "True America's Message", l. 3, in The Oxford Book of Australasian Verse (1918), p. 134

• All that we love in olden lands and lore
    Was signal of her coming long ago!
  Bacon foresaw her, Campanella, More,
    And Plato’s eyes were with her star aglow!
  • "The Bush", in The Oxford Book of Australasian Verse (1918), p. 136