Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis - Christmas Scene lyrics

To this green place the tourists troop, By twos, by threes, and group by group, Lads in bright blazers, girls in slacks, Hikers with rucksack on their backs. And bush ways, till their advent stilled, With joyous shouting now is filled 'Cooee!' each gay town-dweller cries, And counts himself full forest wise. An old grey bushman lounging by Marks the sophisticated cry And smiles a little as he says, 'The city folk got real queer ways. What's this here 'cooee' mean at all? Seems like a kind of mating call. Childish they seem.' He smiles again, The wise one in his own domain. Here's his revenge for all he meets Of stares and smiles in city streets, For ridicule and laughing snubs By city paths and city pubs. He deems it now the crowning joke To 'pull the legs' of city folk. 'What? Snakes?' says he. 'By gosh, you're right. It's days like this they're apt to fight.' So moves the pageantry today By many a pleasant bushland way, And laughing crowds wake merriment Where once, mid silences there went Some wandering band of blacks, to seek, Their scanty fare by hill and creek, Less than ten score of years ago. And of the future? Who may know. Content amid this Christmas scene Of gleaming sky and glowing green And happy shouts, one well might pray For even yet some happier day When, growing saner, kindlier still, May devise, by wooded hill And shaded vale, some scene of mirth As yet unvisioned on our eath. Is it for this our feet are set, While war and folly men forget? Orm ust this land drift back again To primal silence, making vain All that our vaunted progress won? Who knows? Who cares? Here is the sun! Glad youth calls youth by hill and creek. . . . These are no thoughts for Christmas week.