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.

Gilmore in 1948

Quotes

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.
  • "Sweathearts", sts, 1, 4, in Marri'd and Other Verses (1910), p. 73

• 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.
  • "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."

• Never admit the pain,
  Bury it deep;
  Only the weak complain.
  Complaint is cheap.
  • "Never Admit the Pain", st. 1, in An Anthology of Australian Verse, ed. George Mackaness (1946), p. 111

• 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. ...
  • "Swans at Night", in H. M. Green, Modern Australian Poetry, 2nd ed. (1952), p. 53

• 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.
  • "The Lesser Grail", sts. 1, 2, in Fourteen Men (1954)

• "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!
  • "Old Botany Bay", quoted in E. Morris Miller, Australian Literature, 2nd ed. (1956), p. 194
  • See also "Botany Bay" (1885)

• Never allow the thoughtless to delcare
  That we have no tradition here!
  • "The Ringer", in T. Inglis Moore, A Book of Australia (1961), p. 280

• 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.
  • "The Tenancy", in A Book of Australian Verse, ed. Judith Wright (1962), p. 64

• 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.
  • "The Waradgery Tribe", sts. 3, 4, anthologised in A Book of Australia, ed. T. Inglis Moore (1961), p. 88

• 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!
  • "The Woman", quoted in H. M. Green, A History of Australian Literature (1966), p. 525

• 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.
  
  • "Our Lost Field", quoted in Clive Turnbull, A Concise History of Australia (1965), p. 69

External links

• Anne-Marie Condé, "Afternoon tea with Mary Gilmore", Inside Story (18 June 2024)