A Bushman's Song

While reviewing the poet's collection The Man From Snowy Rover and Other Verses a reviewer in The Sydney Morning Herald noted: "In poems such as 'The Travelling Post-office,' 'Clancy of the Overflow,' 'On Kiley's Run,' 'Black Swans,' 'In the Droving Days,' 'A Bushman's Song,' 'The 'Wind's Message,' 'The Daylight is Dying,' and a few others, one finds the authentic transcript of the moods of inland Australia, the life of her people, and sometimes in their own words."[2]

The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature states: "In 'A Bushman's Song' [Paterson] is the radical, putting the case for the ordinary drover and shearer against the squatter and the absentee landlord."[3]

After the poem's initial publication in The Bulletin it was reprinted as follows:

• The Man from Snowy River and Other Verses, 1895
• The Collected Verse of A. B. Paterson : Containing 'The Man from Snowy River', 'Rio Grande' and 'Saltbush Bill, M.P.', 1921[4]
• The Oxford Book of Australasian Verse edited by Walter Murdoch, 1924 [Note: not included in 1918 edition.]
• New Song in an Old Land edited by Rex Ingamells, 1943[5]
• Spoils of Time : Some Poems of the English Speaking Peoples edited by Rex Ingamells, 1948[6]
• The Bulletin 11 May 1955, with the title "Travelling Down the Castlereagh"
• The Boomerang Book of Australian Poetry edited by Enid Moodie Heddle, 1956[7]
• Favourite Australian Poems edited by Ian Mudie, Rigby, 1963[8]
• The Penguin Australian Song Book edited by J. S. Manifold, 1964[9]
• From the Ballads to Brennan edited by T. Inglis Moore, Angus & Robertson, 1964[10]
• Folk Songs of Australia and the Men and Women Who Sang Them edited by John Meredith and Hugh Anderson, 1967[11]
• The Overlander Songbook edited by Ronald George Edwards, 1971[12]
• Australian Verse from 1805 : A Continuum edited by Geoffrey Dutton, 1976[13]
• Singer of the Bush, A. B. (Banjo) Paterson : Complete Works 1885-1900 edited by Rosamund Campbell and Philippa Harvie, 1983[14]
• Duke of the Outback : The Adventures of "A Shearer Named Tritton" by Duke Tritton and John Meredith[15]
• The Bushwackers Australian Song Book edited by Jan Wositzky and Dobe Newton, 1988[16]
• A Treasury of Bush Verse edited by G. A. Wilkes, 1991[17]
• Selected Poems : A. B. Paterson edited by Les Murray, 1992[18]
• A. B. (Banjo) Paterson : Bush Ballads, Poems, Stories and Journalism edited by Clement Semmler, 1992[19]
• The Penguin Book of Australian Ballads edited by Elizabeth Webby and Philip Butterss, Penguin, 1993[20]
• Banjo Paterson : His Poetry and Prose edited by Richard Hall, 1993[21]
• The Collected Verse of Banjo Paterson edited by Clement Semmler, 1993[22]
• Australian Verse : An Oxford Anthology edited by John Leonard, Melbourne University Press, 1998[23]
• Classic Australian Verse edited by Maggie Pinkney, Five Mile Press, 2001[24]

• 1892 in Australian literature
• 1892 in poetry