I had written him a letter which I had, for want of better
Knowledge, sent to where I met him down the Lachlan, years ago,
He was shearing when I knew him, so I sent the letter to him,
Just 'on spec', addressed as follows: 'Clancy, of The Overflow'.

And an answer came directed in a writing unexpected,
(And I think the same was written with a thumbnail dipped in tar)
'Twas his shearing mate who wrote it, and verbatim I will quote it:
'Clancy's gone to Queensland droving, and we don't know where he are.'

In my wild erratic fancy visions come to me of Clancy
Gone a-droving 'down the Cooper' where the western drovers go;
As the stock are slowly stringing, Clancy rides behind them singing,
For the drover's life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know.

And the bush hath friends to meet him, and their kindly voices greet him
In the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars,
And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended,
And at night the wondrous glory of the everlasting stars.

I am sitting in my dingy little office, where a stingy
Ray of sunlight struggles feebly down between the houses tall,
And the foetid air and gritty of the dusty, dirty city
Through the open window floating, spreads its foulness over all.

And in place of lowing cattle, I can hear the fiendish rattle
Of the tramways and the buses making hurry down the street,
And the language uninviting of the gutter children fighting,
Comes fitfully and faintly through the ceaseless tramp of feet.

And the hurrying people daunt me, and their pallid faces haunt me
As they shoulder one another in their rush and nervous haste,
With their eager eyes and greedy, and their stunted forms and weedy,
For townsfolk have no time to grow, they have no time to waste.

And I somehow rather fancy that I'd like to change with Clancy,
Like to take a turn at droving where the seasons come and go,
While he faced the round eternal of the cashbook and the journal —
But I doubt he'd suit the office, Clancy, of 'The Overflow'.

To follow the fox at the hounds’ tails
And at their baying move a tailor’s inch
To follow, wild as the chicken stealer,
Scent through the clutches of the heather,
Leads to fool’s paradise where the redcoated killer
Deserves no brush, but a fool’s ambush.
Following the nose down dell, up rise
Into the map-backed hills where paths
Cross all directions, bracken points to the skies,
Leads, too, to a lead pit, whinny and fall,
No fox, no good, fool’s, not a fox’s, hole,
And that is the reward of labour
Through heath and heather at the mind’s will.
To follow the nose if the nose goes
Wisely at the dogs’ tails, leads
Through easier heather to the foul lair
Over a road thick with the bones of words.
If hunting means anything more than the chase
On a mare’s back of a mare’s nest or a goose,
Then only over corpses shall the feet tread,
Crunching the already broken,
And this way leads to good and bad,
Where more than snails are friends.