“You’ve been writing very free

Of the charms of other places, and you don’t remember me.

You have claimed another native place

and think it’s Nature’s law,

Since you never paid a visit to a town you never saw:

So you sing of Mudgee Mountains,

willowed stream and grassy flat:

But I put a charm upon you and you won’t get over that.”

O said Grenfell to my spirit,

“Though you write of breezy peaks,

Golden gullies, wattle sidings,

and the pools in she-oak creeks,

Of the place your kin were born in

and the childhood that you knew,

And your father’s distant Norway

(though it has some claim on you),

Though you sing of dear old Mudgee

and the home on Pipeclay Flat,

You were born on Grenfell goldfield -

and you can’t get over that.”