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Mary Gilmore Quotes

1865–1962 Australia

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.

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Random Mary Gilmore quote

12 quotes

Never allow the thoughtless to delcare
That we have no tradition here!

I span and Eve span,
A thread to bind the heart of man!

Youth troubles over eternity; age grasps at a day and is satisfied to have even the day.

Nurse no long grief,
Lest the heart flower no more;
Grief builds no barns; its plough
Rusts at the door.

Never admit the pain,
Bury it deep;
Only the weak complain.
Complaint is cheap.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Mary Gilmore (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.