Poems by Henry LawsonIf you fancy that your people came of better stock than mine,
If you hint of higher breeding by a word or by a sign,
Man, is the Sea your master? Sea, and is man your slave? ?
This is the song of brave men who never know they are brave:
Sons of the South, awake! arise!
Sons of the South, and do.
Banish from under your bonny skies
There are scenes in the distance where beauty is not,
On the desolate flats where gaunt appletrees rot.
The brooding ghosts of Australian night have gone from the bush and town;
My spirit revives in the morning breeze,
Our Andy's gone to battle now
'Gainst Drought, the red marauder;
Our Andy's gone with cattle now
Across the Queensland border.
Do you think, you slaves of a thousand years to poverty, wealth and pride,
Fear ye not the stormy future, for the Battle Hymn is strong,
And the armies of Australia shall not march without a song;
We must suffer, husband and father, we must suffer, daughter and son,
While you use your best endeavour to immortalise in verse
The gambling and the drink which are your country's greatest curse,
Jack Denver died on Talbragar when Christmas Eve began,
And there was sorrow round the place, for Denver was a man;
A day of seeming innocence,
A glorious sun and sky,
And, just above my picket fence,
Black Bonnet passing by.
I am back from up the country -- very sorry that I went --
Seeking for the Southern poets' land whereon to pitch my tent;
The diggings were just in their glory when Alister Cameron came,
The rafters are open to sun, moon, and star,
Thistles and nettles grow high in the bar --
His old clay pipe stuck in his mouth,
His hat pushed from his brow,
His dress best fitted for the South --
Tall, and stout, and solid-looking,
Yet a wreck;
None would think Death's finger's hooking
Him from deck.
Roll up, Eureka's heroes, on that grand Old Rush afar,
For Lalor's gone to join you in the big camp where you are;
There are scenes in the distance where beauty is not,
On the desolate flats where gaunt appletrees rot.
So I sit and write and ponder, while the house is deaf and dumb,
Seeing visions "over yonder" of the war I know must come.
It is stuffy in the steerage where the second-classers sleep,
They lie, the men who tell us in a loud decisive tone
That want is here a stranger, and that misery's unknown;
The short hour's halt is ended,
The red gone from the west,
The broken wheel is mended,
And the dead men laid to rest.
Now, with the wars of the world begun, they'll listen to you and me,
It is stuffy in the steerage where the second-classers sleep,
Australia's a big country
An' Freedom's humping bluey,
An' Freedom's on the wallaby
Oh! don't you hear 'er cooey?
The Channel fog has lifted ?
And see where we have come!
Round all the world we've drifted,
A hundred years from "home".
There's many a schoolboy's bat and ball that are gathering dust at home,
The future was dark and the past was dead
As they gazed on the sea once more ?
But a nation was born when the immigrants said
I'll tell you what you wanderers, who drift from town to town;
Don't look into a good girl's eyes, until you've settled down.
The world is narrow and ways are short, and our lives are dull and slow,
By our place in the midst of the furthest seas we were fated to stand alone -
Where the needle-woman toils
Through the night with hand and brain,
It chanced upon the very day we'd got the shearing done,
A buggy brought a stranger to the West-o'-Sunday Run;
I'm lyin' on the barren ground that's baked and cracked with drought,
And dunno if my legs or back or heart is most wore out;
You almost heard the surface bake, and saw the gum-leaves turn --
Tall and freckled and sandy,
Face of a country lout;
This was the picture of Andy,
Middleton's Rouseabout.
Only one old post is standing --
Solid yet, but only one --
Where the milking, and the branding,
They have eaten their fill at your tables spread,
Like friends since the land was won;
So the time seems come at last,
And the drums go rolling past,
And above them in the sunlight Labour's banners float and flow;
Have you seen the bush by moonlight, from the train, go running by?
Now the tent poles are rotting, the camp fires are dead,
And the possums may gambol in trees overhead;
The old year went, and the new returned, in the withering weeks of drought,
The cheque was spent that the shearer earned,
The old year went, and the new returned, in the withering weeks of drought,
The cheque was spent that the shearer earned,
Now up and down the siding brown
The great black crows are flyin',
And down below the spur, I know,
Another `milker's' dyin';
He had offices in Sydney, not so many years ago,
And his shingle bore the legend `Peter Anderson and Co.',
PART I
Queen Hilda rode along the lines,
And she was young and fair;
And forward on her shoulders fell
Ten miles down Reedy River
A pool of water lies,
And all the year it mirrors
The changes in the skies,
We're marching along, we're gath'ring strong'
We place on our right reliance,
We fling in the air, for all who care,
When the heavy sand is yielding backward from your blistered feet,
And across the distant timber you can SEE the flowing heat;
Said Grenfell to my spirit, "You?ve been writing very free
Of the charms of other places, and you don?t remember me.
The boy cleared out to the city from his home at harvest time --
Now this is the creed from the Book of the Bush ?
Should be simple and plain to a dunce:
When the heavy sand is yielding backward from your blistered feet,
And across the distant timber you can SEE the flowing heat;
"Like clouds o'er the South are the nations who reign
On fair islands that we would command;
I met Jack Ellis in town to-day --
Jack Ellis -- my old mate, Jack --
Ten years ago, from the Castlereagh,
It was somewhere in September, and the sun was going down,
When I came, in search of `copy', to a Darling-River town;
They stood by the door of the Inn on the Rise;
May Carney looked up in the bushranger's eyes:
Across the stony ridges,
Across the rolling plain,
Young Harry Dale, the drover,
Comes riding home again.
Above the ashes straight and tall,
Through ferns with moisture dripping,
I climb beneath the sandstone wall,
So you rode from the range where your brothers ?select,?
Through the ghostly grey bush in the dawn---
So you're writing for a paper?Well, it's nothing very new
To be writing yards of drivel for a tidy little screw;
As the night was falling slowly down on city, town and bush,
From a slum in Jones's Alley sloped the Captain of the Push;
With eyes that are narrowed to pierce
To the awful horizons of land,
Through the blaze of hot days, and the fierce
It was pleasant up the country, City Bushman, where you went,
For you sought the greener patches and you travelled like a gent;
From Woolwich and Brentford and Stamford Hill, from Richmond into the Strand,
The Eagle screams at the beck of trade, so Spain, as the world goes round,
Oh, never let on to your own true love
That ever you drank a drop;
That ever you played in a two-up school
I am back from up the country -- very sorry that I went --
Seeking for the Southern poets' land whereon to pitch my tent;
The schools marched in procession in happiness and pride,
The city bands before them, the soldiers marched beside;
Though poor and in trouble I wander alone,
With rebel cockade in my hat,
Though friends may desert me, and kindred disown,
When the kindly hours of darkness, save for light of moon and star,
On a lonely selection far out in the West
An old woman works all the day without rest,
When you wear a cloudy collar and a shirt that isn't white,
And you cannot sleep for thinking how you'll reach to-morrow night,
On a lonely selection far out in the West
An old woman works all the day without rest,
Wide lies Australia! The seas that surround her
Flow for her unity ? all states in one.
When my last long-beer has vanished and the truth is left unsaid;
