Time poems
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Since Then
© Henry Lawson
I met Jack Ellis in town to-day --
Jack Ellis -- my old mate, Jack --
Ten years ago, from the Castlereagh,
We carried our swags together away
To the Never-Again, Out Back.
A Vision of Poesy - Part 02
© Henry Timrod
It is not winter yet, but that sweet time
In autumn when the first cool days are past;
A week ago, the leaves were hoar with rime,
And some have dropped before the North wind's blast;
But the mild hours are back, and at mid-noon,
The day hath all the genial warmth of June.
I'll tell you what you Wanderers
© Henry Lawson
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.
It's hard to go away alone and leave old chums behind-
It's hard to travel steerage when your tastes are more refined-
There Was A Time, I Need Not Name
© George Gordon Byron
There was a time, I need not name,
Since it will ne'er forgotten be,
When all our feelings were the same
As still my soul hath been to thee.
Knocked Up
© Henry Lawson
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;
I've got no spirits left to rise and smooth me achin' brow --
I'm too knocked up to light a fire and bile the billy now.
Shadows Before
© Henry Lawson
"Like clouds o'er the South are the nations who reign
On fair islands that we would command;
But clouds that are darker and denser than these
Have sailed from an Isle in the Northern Seas
And rest on our Southern Land.
To Be Amused
© Henry Lawson
You ask me to be gay and glad
While lurid clouds of danger loom,
And vain and bad and gambling mad,
Australia races to her doom.
The Wreath Of Forest Flowers
© Rosanna Eleanor Leprohon
In a fair and sunny forest glade
Oerarched with chesnuts old,
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'.
On the March
© Henry Lawson
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;
They are marching with the sun,
But I look in vain for one
Of the men who fought for freedom more than fifteen years ago.
O World Of Many Worlds
© Wilfred Owen
O World of many worlds, O life of lives,
What centre hast thou? Where am I?
O whither is it thy fierce onrush drives?
Fight I, or drift; or stand; or fly?
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;
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.
A Song of the Republic
© Henry Lawson
Sons of the South, awake! arise!
Sons of the South, and do.
Banish from under your bonny skies
Those old-world errors and wrongs and lies.
Making a hell in a Paradise
That belongs to your sons and you.
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.
A Vision Of Resurrection
© Robert Laurence Binyon
The Genius of an hour that fading day
Resigned to wide--haired Night's impending brow
Stole me apart, I knew not where nor how,
And from my sense ravished the world away.
To An Old Mate
© Henry Lawson
Old Mate! In the gusty old weather,
When our hopes and our troubles were new,
In the years spent in wearing out leather,
I found you unselfish and true --
I have gathered these verses together
For the sake of our friendship and you.
The Old Jimmy Woodser
© Henry Lawson
The old Jimmy Woodser comes into the bar
Unwelcomed, unnoticed, unknown,
Too old and too odd to be drunk with, by far;
So he glides to the end where the lunch baskets are
And they say that he tipples alone.
