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The Drover's Sweetheart
© Henry Lawson
An hour before the sun goes down
Behind the ragged boughs,
I go across the little run
And bring the dusty cows;
The Loveable Characters
© Henry Lawson
I long for the streets but the Lord knoweth best,
For there I am never a saint;
There are lovable characters out in the West,
With humour heroic and quaint;
Ben Duggan
© Henry Lawson
Jack Denver died on Talbragar when Christmas Eve began,
And there was sorrow round the place, for Denver was a man;
Jack Denver's wife bowed down her head -- her daughter's grief was wild,
And big Ben Duggan by the bed stood sobbing like a child.
But big Ben Duggan saddled up, and galloped fast and far,
To raise the longest funeral ever seen on Talbragar.
The Shame of Going Back
© Henry Lawson
The Shame of Going Back And the reason of your failure isn't anybody's fault --
When you haven't got a billet, and the times are very slack,
There is nothing that can spur you like the shame of going back;
Crawling home with empty pockets,
Going back hard-up;
Oh! it's then you learn the meaning of humiliation's cup.
January
© Edith Nesbit
WHILE yet the air is keen, and no bird sings,
Nor any vaguest thrills of heart declare
The Cockney Soul
© Henry Lawson
From Woolwich and Brentford and Stamford Hill, from Richmond into the Strand,
Oh, the Cockney soul is a silent soul as it is in every land!
But out on the sand with a broken band it's sarcasm spurs them through;
And, with never a laugh, in a gale and a half, 'tis the Cockney cheers the crew.
Taking His Chance
© Henry Lawson
They stood by the door of the Inn on the Rise;
May Carney looked up in the bushranger's eyes:
`Oh! why did you come? -- it was mad of you, Jack;
You know that the troopers are out on your track.'
A laugh and a shake of his obstinate head --
`I wanted a dance, and I'll chance it,' he said.
The Shearers Dream
© Henry Lawson
O I dreamt I shore in a shearing shed and it was a dream of joy
For every one of the rouseabouts was a girl dressed up as a boy
Dressed up like a page in a pantomime the prettiest ever seen
They had flaxen hair they had coal black hair and every shade between
Eureka
© Henry Lawson
'Twas of such stuff the men were made who saw our nation born,
And such as Lalor were the men who led the vanguard on;
And like such men may we be found, with leaders such as they,
In the roll-up of Australians on our darkest, grandest day!
How Jack Found That Beans May Go Back On A Chap
© Guy Wetmore Carryl
Without the slightest basis
For hypochondriasis
The Shearers
© Henry Lawson
No church-bell rings them from the Track,
No pulpit lights theirblindness--
'Tis hardship, drought, and homelessness
That teach those Bushmen kindness:
The Four Bridges
© Jean Ingelow
I love this gray old church, the low, long nave,
The ivied chancel and the slender spire;
No less its shadow on each heaving grave,
With growing osier bound, or living brier;
I love those yew-tree trunks, where stand arrayed
So many deep-cut names of youth and maid.
Up The Country
© Henry Lawson
Dreary land in rainy weather, with the endless clouds that drift
O'er the bushman like a blanket that the Lord will never lift --
Dismal land when it is raining -- growl of floods, and, oh! the woosh
Of the rain and wind together on the dark bed of the bush --
Ghastly fires in lonely humpies where the granite rocks are piled
In the rain-swept wildernesses that are wildest of the wild.
How the Land was Won
© Henry Lawson
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
"Good-bye!" as they stepped ashore!
May-Day
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
The world rolls round,--mistrust it not,--
Befalls again what once befell;
All things return, both sphere and mote,
And I shall hear my bluebird's note,
And dream the dream of Auburn dell.
Freedom on the Wallaby
© Henry Lawson
Australia's a big country
An' Freedom's humping bluey,
An' Freedom's on the wallaby
Oh! don't you hear 'er cooey?
A Song of Brave Men
© Henry Lawson
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:
Ceaselessly watching to save you, stranger from foreign lands,
Soundly asleep in your state room, full sail for the Goodwin Sands!
Life is a dream, they tell us, but life seems very real,
When the lifeboat puts out from Ramsgate, and the buggers put out from Deal!
The Fire At Ross's Farm
© Henry Lawson
The squatter saw his pastures wide
Decrease, as one by one
The farmers moving to the west
Selected on his run;
