Dame Mary Gilmore No Foes "shall sit on our stockyard rail"

[Buckshot Bear]

No Foe Shall Gather Our Harvest

No foe shall gather our harvest
Sons of the mountains of Scotland,
Clansmen from correi and kyle,
Bred of the moors of England,
Children of Erin’s green isle,
We stand four-square to the tempest,
Whatever the battering hail —
No foe shall gather our harvest,
Or sit on our stockyard rail.

Our women shall walk in honor,
Our children shall know no chain,
This land that is ours forever
The invader shall strike at in vain.
Anzac! . . . Bapaume! . . . and the Marne! . . .
Could ever the old blood fail?
No foe shall gather our harvest,
Or sit on our stockyard rail.

So hail-fellow-met we muster,
And hail-fellow-met fall in,
Wherever the guns may thunder,
Or the rocketing “air mail” spin!
Born of the soil and the whirlwind,
Though death itself be the gale —
No foe shall gather our harvest,
Or sit on our stockyard rail.

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.

By Dame Mary Gilmore

 

"At 75, Australian poet and writer Mary Gilmore, Dame of the British Empire, has written one of the finest Australian songs of the war. It appears above. “I’m too old to do many of the things I would like to do to win the war,” she said, “but I can still write. Here is a song for the men and women of Australia.” The inspiring note in the song is so vividly Australian that The Women’s Weekly is proud to present it to readers."
The Australian Women’s Weekly (Sydney, NSW), 29 June 1940

[twelve mile REB]

Dame Mary Gilmore  Hooray-Hooray-Hooray