Sad poems
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To An Aeolian Harp
© Sara Teasdale
The winds have grown articulate in thee,
And voiced again the wail of ancient woe
That smote upon the winds of long ago:
The cries of Trojan women as they flee,
Food In Travel
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
IF to her eyes' bright lustre I were blind,
No longer would they serve my life to gild.
The Right Honourable Edmund Burke
© William Lisle Bowles
Why mourns the ingenuous Moralist, whose mind
Science has stored, and Piety refined,
The Romance Of The Knight
© Thomas Chatterton
The pleasing sweets of spring and summer past,
The falling leaf flies in the sultry blast,
Song Written to a Hindoo Air
© Amelia Opie
Ask not, whence springs my ceaseless sadness,
But let me still the secret keep:
Ask not, why thus in restless madness
Pass the long hours once given to sleep:
Dream Land
© Christina Georgina Rossetti
Where sunless rivers weep
Their waves into the deep,
She sleeps a charmed sleep:
Awake her not.
Reynard the Fox - Part 1
© John Masefield
Poor Polly's dying struck him queer,
He was a darkened man thereafter,
Cowed, silent, he would wince at laughter
And be so gentle it was strange
Even to see. Life loves to change.
The Star of Australasia
© Henry Lawson
We boast no more of our bloodless flag, that rose from a nation's slime;
Better a shred of a deep-dyed rag from the storms of the olden time.
From grander clouds in our `peaceful skies' than ever were there before
I tell you the Star of the South shall rise -- in the lurid clouds of war.
The Song Of Old Joe Swallow
© Henry Lawson
When I was up the country in the rough and early days,
I used to work along ov Jimmy Nowlett's bullick-drays;
Then the reelroad wasn't heered on, an' the bush was wild an' strange,
An' we useter draw the timber from the saw-pits in the range --
Load provisions for the stations, an' we'd travel far and slow
Through the plains an' 'cross the ranges in the days of long ago.
Peter Anderson And Co.
© Henry Lawson
They tried everything and nothing 'twixt the shovel and the press,
And were more or less successful in their ventures -- mostly less.
Once they ran a country paper till the plant was seized for debt,
And the local sinners chuckle over dingy copies yet.
Autumn On Parade
© Millosh Gjergj Nikolla
An oak tree, reflected in the tears of heaven,
Tosses and bleeds in gigantic passion.
"To live! I want to live!" - it fights for breath,
Piercing the storm with cries of grief.
Dan, The Wreck
© Henry Lawson
Manner puts a man in mind of
Old club balls and evening dress,
Ugly with a handsome kind of
Ugliness.
Tom Moody
© William Henry Ogilvie
Death had beckoned with grisly hand
To the finest Whip in hunting-land.
The Squatter, Three Cornstalks, and the Well
© Henry Lawson
THERE WAS a Squatter in the land
So runs the truthful tale I tell
There also were three cornstalks, and
There also was the Squatters Well.
The City Bushman
© Henry Lawson
It was pleasant up the country, City Bushman, where you went,
For you sought the greener patches and you travelled like a gent;
And you curse the trams and buses and the turmoil and the push,
Though you know the squalid city needn't keep you from the bush;
But we lately heard you singing of the `plains where shade is not',
And you mentioned it was dusty -- `all was dry and all was hot'.
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.
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 Glass On The Bar
© Henry Lawson
Three bushmen one morning rode up to an inn,
And one of them called for the drinks with a grin;
They'd only returned from a trip to the North,
And, eager to greet them, the landlord came forth.
He absently poured out a glass of Three Star.
And set down that drink with the rest on the bar.
