No Foe Shall Gather Our Harvest
"No Foe Shall Gather Our Harvest" is a poem by Australian poet Mary Gilmore.[1] It was first published in The Australian Women's Weekly on 29 June 1940,[2] and later in the poet's collection Fourteen Men. The final two stanzas from the poem appear as microtext on the Australian ten-dollar note.[3]
| by Mary Gilmore | |
| First published in | The Australian Women's Weekly |
|---|---|
| Country | Australia |
| Language | English |
| Publication date | 29 June 1940 |
| Preceded by | Battlefields (poetry collection) |
| Followed by | "Notes" (column) |
Outline
The poem is a "call to arms" to Australians, not in the sense of taking up weapons but more as a call to stand firm in the face of foreign aggression. Each stanza ends with the same two lines (italicised in the original publication): "No foe shall gather our harvest/Or sit on our stockyard rail."
Analysis
The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature notes that at the time of publication, the poem "proved a remarkable morale booster in the tense days of the Japanese threat to Australia in 1942." They also note that it "was at the time considered as a possible battle hymn, even national anthem."[4]
Further publications
- Fourteen Men by Mary Gilmore (1954)
- The Bulletin, 22 July 1980, p79
- Two Centuries of Australian Poetry edited by Kathrine Bell (2007)
- The Book of Australian Popular Rhymed Verse : A Classic Collection of Entertaining and Recitable Poems and Verse : From Henry Lawson to Barry Humphries edited by Jim Haynes (2013)
References
- Austlit - "No Foe Shall Gather Our Harvest" by Mary Gilmore
- "No Foe Shall Gather Our Harvest", The Australian Women's Weekly, 29 June 1940, p5
- Reserve Bank of Australia, $10 Banknote
- The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature, 2nd edition, p581