Where the Dead Men Lie

Out on the wastes of the Never Never     Thats where the dead men lie!     There where the heat-waves dance forever     Thats where the dead men lie!     Thats where the Earths loved 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     Thats where the dead men lie!     Loving with fiery lust unsated     Thats where the dead men lie!     Out where the grinning skulls bleach whitely     Under the saltbush sparkling brightly;     Out where the wild dogs chorus nightly     Thats where the dead men lie!     Deep in the yellow, flowing river     Thats where the dead men lie!     Under the banks where the shadows quiver     Thats where the dead men he!     Where the platypus twists and doubles,     Leaving a train of tiny bubbles.     Rid at last of their earthly troubles     Thats where the dead men lie!     East and backward pale faces turning     Thats how the dead men lie!     Gaunt arms stretched with a voiceless yearning     Thats how the dead men lie!     Oft in the fragrant hush of nooning     Hearing again their mothers crooning,     Wrapt for aye in a dreamful swooning     Thats how the dead men lie!     Only the hand of Night can free them     Thats 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 stockmen know no leisure     Thats when the dead men take their pleasure!     Thats 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     Thats how the dead men die!     Out on Moneygrubs farthest station     Thats how the dead men die!     Hard-faced greybeards, youngsters caflow;     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, cramped with     Death where the dead men lie.