Two Voices, Two Histories: Coloniser and Colonised in Poetry The poems “Aboriginal Australian” by Jack Davis and “The White Man’s Burden” by Rudyard Kipling present two sharply contrasting perspective
📋 Exam Question
Below, you will find two poems. Read the poems and answer the task.
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Write a text in which you analyse and compare the two poems below in light of their historical contexts.
- ‘Aboriginal Australian’ by Jack Davis (1978)*
- To the Others
- You once smiled a friendly smile,
- Said we were kin to one another,
- Thus with guile for a short while
- Became to me a brother.
- Then you swamped my way of gladness,
- Took my children from my side,
- Snapped shut the law book, oh my sadness
- At Yirrakalas’ plea denied.
- So, I remember Lake George hills,
- The thin stick bones of people.
- Sudden death, and greed that kills,
- That gave you church and steeple.
- I cry again for Warrarra men,
- Gone from kith and kind,
- And I wondered when I would find a pen
- To probe your freckled mind.
- I mourned again for the Murray tribe,
- Gone too without a trace.
- I thought of the soldier’s diatribe,
- The smile on the governor’s face.
- You murdered me with rope, with gun
- The massacre of my enclave,
- You buried me deep on McLarty’s run
- Flung into a common grave.
- You propped me up with Christ, red tape,
- Tobacco, grog and fears,
- Then disease and lordly rape
- Through the brutish years.
- Now you primly say you’re justified,
- And sing of a nation’s glory,
- But I think of a people crucified -
- The real Australian story.
- *Jack Davis (1917–2000) was an Aboriginal Australian activist and poet.
- Excerpt from ‘The White Man's Burden’ by Rudyard Kipling (1899)
- Take up the White Man's burden –
- Send forth the best ye breed –
- Go bind your sons to exile
- To serve your captives' need;
- To wait in heavy harness
- On fluttered folk and wild –
- Your new-caught sullen peoples,
- Half devil and half child.
- Take up the White Man's burden –
- In patience to abide
- To veil the threat of terror
- And check the show of pride;
- By open speech and simple,
- An hundred times made plain,
- To seek another's profit,
- And work another's gain.
- Take up the White Man's burden –
- The savage wars of peace –
- Fill full the mouth of famine
- And bid the sickness cease;
- And when your goal is nearest
- The end for others sought,
- Watch Sloth and heathen Folly
- Bring all your hopes to nought.
✏️ Model Answer
Two Voices, Two Histories: Coloniser and Colonised in Poetry
The poems “Aboriginal Australian” by Jack Davis and “The White Man’s Burden” by Rudyard Kipling present two sharply contrasting perspectives on colonialism and its legacy. While Kipling's poem reflects the voice and ideology of the coloniser in the late 19th century, Davis gives voice to the pain and resistance of the colonised in postcolonial Australia. Reading these poems side by side reveals not only the power of poetry as political expression, but also the deep wounds and justifications of imperial history. …