The Volokh Conspiracy
Mostly law professors | Sometimes contrarian | Often libertarian | Always independent
Poetry Monday!: "The Man from Snowy River" by A.B. "Banjo" Paterson
"There was movement at the station, for the word had passed around / That the colt from Old Regret had got away, / And had joined the wild bush horses — he was worth a thousand pound, / So all the cracks had gathered to the fray...."
Here's "The Man from Snowy River" (1890) by A.B. "Banjo" Paterson (1864-1941). (This is on my YouTube channel, which mostly consists of my Sasha Reads playlist, plus a smattering of law-related songs.) See also a previous Paterson poem I posted, "Clancy of the Overflow".
There was movement at the station, for the word had passed around
That the colt from Old Regret had got away,
And had joined the wild bush horses — he was worth a thousand pound,
So all the cracks had gathered to the fray.
All the tried and noted riders from the stations near and far
Had mustered at the homestead overnight,
For the bushmen love hard riding where the wild bush horses are,
And the stock-horse snuffs the battle with delight….
For the rest of my "Sasha Reads" playlist, click here. Past poems are:
- "Ulysses" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
- "The Pulley" by George Herbert
- "Harmonie du soir" ("Evening Harmony") by Charles Baudelaire (French)
- "Dirge Without Music" by Edna St. Vincent Millay
- "Clancy of the Overflow" by A.B. "Banjo" Paterson
- "Лотова жена" ("Lotova zhena", "Lot's wife") by Anna Akhmatova (Russian)
- "The Jumblies" by Edward Lear
- "The Conqueror Worm" by Edgar Allan Poe
- "Les Djinns" ("The Jinns") by Victor Hugo (French)
- "I Have a Rendezvous with Death" by Alan Seeger
- "When I Was One-and-Twenty" by A.E. Housman
- "Узник" ("Uznik", "The Prisoner" or "The Captive") by Aleksandr Pushkin (Russian)
- "God's Grandeur" by Gerard Manley Hopkins
- "The Song of Wandering Aengus" by William Butler Yeats
- "Je crains pas ça tellment" ("I'm not that scard about") by Raymond Queneau (French)
- "The Naming of Cats" by T.S. Eliot
- "The reticent volcano keeps…" by Emily Dickinson
- "Она" ("Ona", "She") by Zinaida Gippius (Russian)
- "Would I Be Shrived?" by John D. Swain
- "Evolution" by Langdon Smith
- "Chanson d'automne" ("Autumn Song") by Oscar Milosz (French)
- "love is more thicker than forget" by e.e. cummings
- "My Three Loves" by Henry S. Leigh
- "Я мечтою ловил уходящие тени" ("Ia mechtoiu lovil ukhodiashchie teni", "With my dreams I caught the departing shadows") by Konstantin Balmont (Russian)
- "Dane-geld" by Rudyard Kipling
- "Rules and Regulations" by Lewis Carroll
- "Vers dorés" ("Golden Lines") by Gérard de Nerval (French)
- "So That's Who I Remind Me Of" by Ogden Nash
- "The Epic" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
- "La chambre double" ("The Double Room") by Charles Baudelaire (French)
- "Медный всадник" ("The Bronze Horseman") by Aleksandr Pushkin (Russian)
- "Herbst" ("Autumn") by Rainer Maria Rilke (German)
- "Romance de la luna, luna" ("Ballad of the Moon Moon") by Federico García Lorca (Spanish)
- "The Four Friends" by A.A. Milne
- "anyone lived in a pretty how town" by e.e. cummings
- "Листья" ("Leaves") by Fyodor Tyutchev (Russian)
- "The Pobble Who Has No Toes" by Edward Lear
- "The Persian Version" by Robert Graves
- "Les deux voix" ("The Two Voices") by Victor Hugo (French)
- "Lines Written in Dejection" by William Butler Yeats
- "Loveliest of Trees" by A.E. Housman
- "Akh, chto-to mne ne veritsia…" ("Oh, somehow I can't believe…") by Bulat Okudzhava (Russian)
- "Alone" by Edgar Allan Poe
Editor's Note: We invite comments and request that they be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of Reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason at any time. Comments may only be edited within 5 minutes of posting. Report abuses.
Please
to post comments
Inspiration for a movie that is unmemorable other than one of the great all-time movie themes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKYHvpr5TIo (the score won the Australian Film Institute award for best score and as Australia's nominee for best foreign film at the Golden Globes)
Cowboy baby
With the top let back and the sunshine shining
Cowboy baby
West Coast chilling with the Boone's wine
I wanna be a Cowboy baby
Riding at night 'cause I sleep all day
Cowboy baby
I can smell a pig from a mile away
/Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Only 2 comments? For shame...
Sasha - please keep these readings coming. They are a welcome bit of poetic literature and you're a good reader who clearly enjoys doing this.
Do you double in the English Department at Emory occasionally? Perhaps you should.