Hope poems
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My Land and I
© Henry Lawson
They have eaten their fill at your tables spread,
Like friends since the land was won;
And they rise with a cry of "Australia's dead!"
With the wheeze of "Australia's done!"
Sonnet 95: Yet Sighs, dear Sighs
© Sir Philip Sidney
Yet Sighs, dear Sighs, indeed true friends you are,
That do not leave your least friend at the worst,
But as you with my breast I oft have nurs'd,
So grateful now you wait upon my care.
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:
Matthew Arnold On Hearing Him Read His Poems In Boston
© Katharine Lee Bates
A stranger, schooled to gentle arts,
He stept before the curious throng;
Victory
© Henry Lawson
The schools marched in procession in happiness and pride,
The city bands before them, the soldiers marched beside;
Oh, starched white frocks and sashes and suits that high schools wear,
The boy scout and the boy lout and all the rest were there,
And all flags save Australia's flag waved high in sun and air!
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.
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.
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;
Olney Hymn 17: The House of Prayer
© William Cowper
Thy mansion is the Christian's heart,
O Lord, Thy dwelling place secure!
Bid the unruly throng depart,
And leave the consecrated door.
The Iron Wedding Rings
© Henry Lawson
In these days of peace and money, free to all the Commonweal,
There are ancient dames in Buckland wearing wedding rings of steel;
Wedding rings of steel and iron, worn on wrinkled hands and old,
And the wearers would not give them, not for youth nor wealth untold.
The Ballad Of The Drover
© Henry Lawson
Across the stony ridges,
Across the rolling plain,
Young Harry Dale, the drover,
Comes riding home again.
Out Back
© Henry Lawson
The old year went, and the new returned, in the withering weeks of drought,
The cheque was spent that the shearer earned,
and the sheds were all cut out;
The publican's words were short and few,
and the publican's looks were black --
And the time had come, as the shearer knew, to carry his swag Out Back.
Verses Addressed To Amanda
© James Thomson
Ah, urged too late! from beauty's bondage free,
Why did I trust my liberty with thee?
A Foretaste
© Dante Gabriel Rossetti
AT length the then of my long hope was now;
Yet had my spirit an extreme unrest:
To The Muse Of The North
© William Morris
O muse that swayest the sad Northern Song,
Thy right hand full of smiting & of wrong,
Granta: A Medley
© George Gordon Byron
Oh! could Le Sage's demon's gift
Be realized at my desire,
This night my trembling form he'd lift
To place it on St. Mary's spire.
