The Skyline Riders

Against the light of a dawning white     My Skyline Riders stand,     There is trouble ahead for a dark year dead     And the selfish wrongs of a land;     There are hurrying feet of fools to repeat     The follies of Nineteen Eight,     But darkly still on each distant hill     My riders watch and wait.     My Skyline Riders are down and gone     As far as the eye can see,     And the horses stand in the shades of dawn     Where a single man holds three.     We feel the flush and we feel the thrill     Of the coming of Nineteen Nine,     For my Skyline Riders are over the hill     And into the firing line.     The skyline lifts while a storm-cloud lowers,     Whats that? A shot! Alls well!     There is news out there for this land of ours     That the tattling rifles tell.     A thud and a thud and a flash like blood!     There is light on the land at last!     Australian guns on the nearer hills     Are talking about the past.     O, a lonely place in the days gone by     Was the long first firing line,     Where we fought as strangers, you and I,     For the land that was yours and mine.     There was time to dream in the firing line,     There was time to starve and die,     When the only things in that world of mine     Were my Native Land and I.     O, a lonely place was the firing line     When the gaps were wide between,     Hundreds of miles, in this land of mine     And never a soldier seen.     The dying must die and the dead were left     Unmarked by the deadly tired,     When struck to the heart in a firing line     Where never a shot was fired.     O, a lonely place was the firing line     In the days of the dearth of men,     But hundreds and hundreds of soldiers sons     Have flocked to the line since then     We left it weak in the hour of pride,     When our rule seemed firmly set,     But danger threatened the firing line,     And theres deadly danger yet.     Proud of virtue, and proud of sin,     Or proud neath a cruel wrong;     Proud in failure or proud to win,     Oh, the pride of man is strong!     Proud of gold or of being without     Or proud of women and wine,     But get you down from your horse of pride     And into the firing line.     Pride in poverty, all the same,     Theres work for all men to do,     With wrong to fight there is deathless fame     To win in a land so new.     Preacher and drunkard! and sportsman and bard!     In the dawning of Nineteen Nine,     Saints and sinners! ride hard! ride hard!     They are pressed in the Firing Line.