Life poems
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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.
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 Old Stoic
© Emily Jane Brontë
Riches I hold in light esteem,
And love I laugh to scorn;
And lust of fame was but a dream
That vanish'd with the morn:
Flag of the Southern Cross
© Henry Lawson
Sons of Australia, be loyal and true to her -
Fling out the flag of the Southern Cross!
Sing a loud song to be joyous and new to her -
Fling out the flag of the Southern Cross!
Book1 Prologue
© Mewlana Jalaluddin Rumi
But all who are not fishes are soon tired of water;
And they who lack daily bread find the day very long;
So the "Raw" comprehend not the state of the "Ripe;" 3
Therefore it behoves me to shorten my discourse.
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.
After All
© Henry Lawson
The brooding ghosts of Australian night have gone from the bush and town;
My spirit revives in the morning breeze,
though it died when the sun went down;
The river is high and the stream is strong,
and the grass is green and tall,
And I fain would think that this world of ours is a good world after all.
The Things We Dare Not Tell
© Henry Lawson
The fields are fair in autumn yet, and the sun's still shining there,
But we bow our heads and we brood and fret, because of the masks we wear;
Or we nod and smile the social while, and we say we're doing well,
But we break our hearts, oh, we break our hearts! for the things we must not tell.
Red Riding-Hood
© James Whitcomb Riley
Sweet little myth of the nursery story--
Earliest love of mine infantile breast,
Be something tangible, bloom in thy glory
Into existence, as thou art addressed!
Hasten! appear to me, guileless and good--
Thou are so dear to me, Red Riding-Hood!
Farewell to Folly
© Robert Greene
Sweet are the thoughts that savour of content;
The quiet mind is richer than a crown;
Of The Wooing Of Halbiorn The Strong
© William Morris
A STORY FROM THE LAND-SETTLING BOOK OF ICELAND, CHAPTER XXX.
To Father Kronos
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Now once more
Up the toilsome ascent
Hasten, panting for breath!
Up, then, nor idle be,-
Striving and hoping, up, up!
The Spirit Wooed
© Philip Larkin
Once I believed in you,
And then you came,
Unquestionably new, as fame
Had said you were. But that was long ago.
Life
© Samuel Taylor Coleridge
As late I journey'd o'er the extensive plain
Where native Otter sports his scanty stream,
Musing in torpid woe a Sister's pain,
The glorious prospect woke me from the dream.
Arrival
© Philip Larkin
Morning, a glass door, flashes
Gold names off the new city,
Whose white shelves and domes travel
The slow sky all day.
To The Muse Of The North
© William Morris
O muse that swayest the sad Northern Song,
Thy right hand full of smiting & of wrong,
Send No Money
© Philip Larkin
Standing under the fobbed
Impendent belly of Time
Tell me the truth, I said,
Teach me the way things go.
The Two Highwaymen
© Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
I LONG have had a quarrel set with Time
Because he robb'd me. Every day of life
