Grandpa Pencil's
Australian colonial verse and song

Clancy Of The Overflow
A. B. Patterson

And an answer came directed in a writing unexpected
(And I think the same was written with a thumb-nail dipped in tar);
'Twas his shearing mate who wrote it, and verbatum I will quote it;
'Clancy's gone to Queensland droving, and we don't know where he are.'

'In my wild erratic fancy visions came to me of Clancy
Gone a-droving down the Cooper where the Western drovers go;
As the stock are slowly stringing, Clancy rides behind them singing,
For the drover's life has pleasures that the townfolk never know.

And the bush has friends to meet him, and their kindly faces greet him
In the murmer of the breezes and the river on its bars,
And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended,
And at night the wonderous glory of the everlasting stars.

And in place of lowing cattle, I can hear the fiendish rattle
Of the tramways and the busses making hurry down the street;
And the language uninviting of the gutter children fighting
Comes fitfully and faintly through the ceaseless tramp of feet.

And the hurrying people daunt me, and their palid faces haunt me
And they shoulder one another in their rush and nervous haste,
With their eager eyes and greedy, and their stunted forms and weedy,
For townfolk have no time to grow, they have no time to waste.

And I somehow rather fancy that I'd like to change with Clancy,
Like to take a turn at droving where the seasons come and go,
While he faced the round eternal of the cash-book and the journal-
But I doubt he'd suit the office, Clancy of The Overflow.

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