Barcroft Boake (poet)

thumb| Barcroft Henry Thomas Boake (26 March 1866 – 2 May 1892) was an Australian stockman and poet who wrote primarily within the bush poetry tradition. He was active for only a few years before his suicide at the age of 26. Quotes Out on the wastes of the Never Never —  That's where the dead men lie!There where the heat-waves dance forever —  That's where the dead men lie! "Where the Dead Men Lie", st. 1, in The Bulletin (19 December 1891) The pick of the mountain mob, bays, greys, or roans,He proved in his death that the pace ’tis that kills;And a sun-shrunken hide o’er a few whitened bonesMarks the last resting-place of the Lord of the Hills. "On the Range", st. 11, in Where the Dead Men Lie, and Other Poems (1897) If I could only write it, there is a poem to be made out of the back-country. Some man will come yet who will be able to grasp the romance of Western Queensland ... For there is a romance, though a grim one—a story of drought and flood, fever and famine, murder and suicide, courage and endurance ... I wonder if a day will come when these men will rise up—when the wealthy man…shall see pass before him a band of men—all of whom died in his service, and whose unhallowed graves dot his run—the greater portion hollow, shrunken, burning with the pangs of thirst. Quoted in Cecil Hadgraft, "Boake, Barcroft Henry (1866–1892)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 3 (Melbourne University Press, 1969) External links Category:Poets from Australia Category:Suicides Category:1866 births Category:1892 deaths