Work poems
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Mount Bukaroo
© Henry Lawson
Only one old post is standing --
Solid yet, but only one --
Where the milking, and the branding,
And the slaughtering were done.
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.
In The Manner Of G.S.
© Giorgos Seferis
Strange people! they say they're in Attica but they're really nowhere;
they buy sugared almonds to get married
they carry hair tonic, have their photographs taken
the man I saw today sitting against a background of pigeons and flowers
let the hands of the old photographer smoothe away the
wrinkles left on his face by all the birds in the sky.
For'ard'
© Henry Lawson
It is stuffy in the steerage where the second-classers sleep,
For there's near a hundred for'ard, and they're stowed away like sheep, --
They are trav'lers for the most part in a straight 'n' honest path;
But their linen's rather scanty, an' there isn't any bath --
The Cambaroora Star
© Henry Lawson
Then he stood up on a sudden, with a face as pale as death,
And he gripped my hand a moment, while he seemed to fight for breath:
`Tom, old friend,' he said, `I'm going, and I'm ready to -- to start,
For I know that there is something -- something crooked with my heart.
Tom, my first child died. I loved her even better than the pen --
Tom -- and while the STAR was dying, why, I felt like I did THEN.
Hermann And Dorothea - V. Polyhymnia
© Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
THE COSMOPOLITE.
BUT the Three, as before, were still sitting and talking together,
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.
Yam by Bruce Guernsey : American Life in Poetry #238 Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate 2004-2006
© Ted Kooser
Though some teacher may have made you think that all poetry is deadly serious, chock full of coded meanings and obscure symbols, poems, like other works of art, can be delightfully playful. Here Bruce Guernsey, who divides his time between Illinois and Maine, plays with a common yam.
Yam
September On Jessore Road
© Allen Ginsberg
Millions of babies watching the skies
Bellies swollen, with big round eyes
On Jessore Road--long bamboo huts
No place to shit but sand channel ruts
Cameron's Heart
© Henry Lawson
The diggings were just in their glory when Alister Cameron came,
With recommendations, he told me, from friends and a parson `at hame';
He read me his recommendations -- he called them a part of his plant --
The first one was signed by an Elder, the other by Cameron's aunt.
The meenister called him `ungodly -- a stray frae the fauld o' the Lord',
And his aunt set him down as a spendthrift, `a rebel at hame and abroad'.
Queen Hilda of Virland
© Henry Lawson
PART I
Queen Hilda rode along the lines,
And she was young and fair;
And forward on her shoulders fell
Corny Bill
© Henry Lawson
His old clay pipe stuck in his mouth,
His hat pushed from his brow,
His dress best fitted for the South --
I think I see him now;
The Man Who Raised Charlestown
© Henry Lawson
They were hanging men in Buckland who would not cheer King George
The parson from his pulpit and the blacksmith from his forge;
They were hanging men and brothers, and the stoutest heart was down,
When a quiet man from Buckland rode at dusk to raise Charlestown.
Borderland
© 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 pil'd
On the rain-swept wildernesses that are wildest of the wild.
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 Shower
© James Whitcomb Riley
The landscape, like the awed face of a child,
Grew curiously blurred; a hush of death
Fell on the fields, and in the darkened wild
The zephyr held its breath.
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.
Black Bonnet
© Henry Lawson
A day of seeming innocence,
A glorious sun and sky,
And, just above my picket fence,
Black Bonnet passing by.
The Christ of the 'Never'
© Henry Lawson
By his worth in the light that shall search men
And prove---ay! and justify---each,
I place him in front of all churchmen
Who feel not, who know not---but preach!
