While The Billy BoilsSearchThe tugging railway engines pantPast Karrakatta’s marbled mile;Their pistons pulse, their whistles chantAlong the steel and sleepered aisle.Their fierce exhaust the gums bedewBeside the lonely graveyard lane,The scattered sparks the bank bestrew,A rich and phosphorescent rain.From city unto seaport town,From seaport town to city grey,Uncaring crowds go up and downTo work and worship, pain and play.Yet while the hammered flanges flingTheir song of steel from curve and grade,We hear a roaring requiem ringFor them within God’s Garden laid,An In Memoriam gloria grandFor those who sleep within the sand!
From dawn to dark, from dark to dawn,The goods and passengers go by;The idle rich who idle yawn,The pinched and suffering poor who sigh,The smug suburbanite and theyWho travel by luxurious Trans.,The men who Mammon’s beck obey,The men of projects and of plans.By speedy steam go by all these,Unthinking as the space is spanned,There lie beside the cypress treesThe shrouded souls of Shadowland.And O, how ghostly white ariseThe monuments beneath the moon,When half the world has veiled its eyesAnd sweet caressing zephyrs croon.Closer, dear God, we seem to standTo those who sleep within the sand!
When it shall come that you and IShall slumber in the sacred soil,When overhead no sunny skyShall smile upon our daily toil;Still there shall roar along the railThe panting monster strong with steam,In rosy dawn and moonlight pale,In glad high-noon and gloaming gleam.The flow’rs will be as fair as whenWe watched the world alert, alive!Strong rhyming hands will hold the penSweethearts will woo and sweethearts wive;Gay crowds will saunter by the shore,The lips will laugh the song arise;Youth and the youthful as of yore,Will pluck the self-apportioned prize.Light hearts will listen to the bandWhen we are sleeping in the sand!
Picture yourself to one grown coldYou’d treasured in your sweetheart’s hours,And that one gathered to the foldOf mossy mounds and faded flow’rs.The whirring wheels to you would singThe tender notes you uttered not,That mournful mile to you would bringThe radiant phrase by you forgot.You still would hear the bush-bird call,You still would smell the wattle sweet,About the eucalyptus tallThe grass would glisten at your feet.But as you walked the scenes alone,Where you had sauntered side by side,Ten thousand sighs could not atoneFor one caress to her denied.Mem’ry would lay an icy handOn one not sleeping in the sand!
Yet where is better resting placeThan near the sound of steam and steelThough flame and force that by them raceThey do not hear, they do not feel?They sleep beneath God’s splendid skies,A league from His eternal waves;The ocean sends a thousand sighs,The gum-trees whisper o’er their graves.The fire-box burning clinker-clean,With pressure growling at the gauge;Illumes the gradients brown and greenWithout a wilt, without a wage.And so from city to the sea,And from the seaport back again,In crashing compound harmony,The loco. lifts its loud refrain,Speeding at steam’s supreme commandPast those who sleep within the sand.