POETRY SPOT

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Where the Dead Men Lie

By Barcroft Henry Boake

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By G Barron at:

https://www.storiesofoz.com/2017/09/22/where-the-dead-men-lie/

There have always been two schools of thought on the Australian bush: epitomised in the romantic writings of Banjo Patterson, and the harder, more brutal outback of Henry Lawson.

The poet who presented the bush in the harshest light of all was stockman and poet Barcroft Boake. That doesn’t, of course, mean that he loved it any less. Born in Balmain, in 1866, Barcroft was the son of a very early professional photographer. Having lost three of his siblings in their infancy, he was prone to bouts of melancholy, even as a child, but he loved sport and outdoor activities. He dreamed of living and working in the outback.

At the age of seventeen Barcroft applied for training as a surveyor. He spent years in the back blocks of New South Wales, connecting with the Western landscape. Before long he had quit the Survey Department and was off droving in Queensland. At the same time he devoured the poetry of Adam Lindsay Gordon, and developed the urge to express the tough love he felt for the bush. He started writing, and by 1890 his poems were appearing regularly in the Bulletin magazine.

His career as a poet was short-lived. When he was just twenty-four years of age he was called back to Sydney where his family was facing bankruptcy. Barcroft helped with what he could, but fruitlessly searched for work, battling depression and anxiety. His body was found under a tree on the shores of Sydney Harbour in May 1892, hanging from his own stockwhip.

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"Where the Dead Men Lie" has been described as Boake's "signature poem".

It was first published in The Bulletin magazine on 19 December 1891, and later in the poet's poetry collection Where the Dead Men Lie, and Other Poems (1897).

Some comments on the poem:

J. Larcombe in The Worker considered the poem "Boake's masterpiece...In it the young poet expressed his detestation of the cruel, selfish squatters, their inhuman conduct, and the tragedy for which they were responsible."

The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature states "In the poem Boake uses the contemptuous name 'Moneygrub' to denote the typical wealthy absentee landlord who lives in city luxury provided for him by the ordinary men and women of the outback..."

The Cambridge History of Australian Literature described the poem "as by far the bleakest poetic vision" of the Australian landscape as it evokes "a haunted frontier."

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Where the Dead Men Lie

Out on the wastes of the “Never Never,”

That’s where the dead men lie,

There where the heat-waves dance forever,

That’s where the dead men lie;

That’s where the Earth’s lov’d sons are keeping

endless tryst – not the west wind sweeping

feverish pinions, can wake their sleeping –

Out where the dead men lie!

Where brown Summer and Death have mated,

That’s where the dead men lie,

Loving with fiery lust unsated,

That’s where the dead men lie;

Out where the grinning skulls bleach whitely,

Under the saltbush sparkling brightly,

Out where the wild dogs chorus nightly,

That’s where the dead men lie.

Deep in the yellow, flowing river,

That’s where the dead men lie,

Under the banks where the shadows quiver,

That’s where the dead men lie;

Where the platypus twists and doubles,

leaving a trail of tiny bubbles;

Rid at last of their earthly troubles,

That’s where the dead men lie.

East and backward pale faces turning,

That’s how the dead men lie;

Gaunt arms stretched with a voiceless yearning,

That’s how the dead men lie;

Oft in the fragrant hush of nooning,

Hearing again their mother’s crooning,

Wrapt for aye in a dreadful swooning,

That’s how the dead men lie.

Nought but the hand of Night can free them;

That’s when the dead men fly;

Only the frightened cattle see them –

See the dead men go by;

Cloven hoofs beating out one measure,

Bidding the stockman know no leisure,

That’s when the dead men take their pleasure,

That’s when the dead men fly.

Ask, too, the never-sleeping drover,

He sees the dead pass by,

Hearing them call to their friends – the plover,

Hearing the dead men cry.

Seeing their faces stealing, stealing,

Hearing their laughter pealing, pealing,

Watching their grey forms wheeling, wheeling

Round where the cattle lie.

Strangled by thirst and fierce privation –

That’s how the dead men die

Out on “Moneygrub’s” furthest station,

That’s how the dead men die;

Hardfaced greybeards, youngsters callow,

Some mounds cared for, some left fallow,

Some deep down, yet others shallow,

Some having but the sky.

“Moneygrub” as he sips his claret

Looks with complacent eye

Down at his watch-chain, eighteen-carat,

There in his club hard by:

Recks not that every link is stamped with

Names of the men whose limbs are cramped with

Too long lying in grave-mould, camped with

Death where the dead men lie.

Barcroft Boake

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