| "No Foe Shall Gather Our Harvest" | |
| Author: | Mary Gilmore |
| First: | The Australian Women's Weekly |
| Country: | Australia |
| Language: | English |
| Preceded By: | Battlefields (poetry collection) |
| Followed By: | "Notes" (column) |
"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]
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."
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]