Henry Lawson

A cloud of dust on the long white road,
And the teams go creeping on
Inch by inch with the weary load;
And by the power of the green-hide goad
The distant goal is won.

With eyes half-shut to the blinding dust,
And necks to the yokes bent low,
The beasts are pulling as bullocks must;
And the shining tires might almost rust
While the spokes are turning slow.

With face half-hid 'neath a broad-brimmed hat
That shades from the heat's white waves,
And shouldered whip with its green-hide plait,
The driver plods with a gait like that
Of his weary, patient slaves.

He wipes his brow, for the day is hot,
And spits to the left with spite;
He shouts at `Bally', and flicks at `Scot',
And raises dust from the back of `Spot',
And spits to the ...

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.

There’s the old love wronged ere the new was won, there’s the light of long ago;
There’s the cruel lie that we suffer for, and the public must not know.
So we go through life with a ghastly mask, and we’re doing fairly well,
While they break our hearts, oh, they kill our hearts! do the things we must not tell.

We see but pride in a selfish breast, while a heart is breaking there;
Oh, the world would be such a kindly world if all men’s hearts lay bare!
We live and share the living lie, we a...

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.

There's the old love wronged ere the new was won, there's the light of long ago;
There's the cruel lie that we suffer for, and the public must not know.
So we go through life with a ghastly mask, and we're doing fairly well,
While they break our hearts, oh, they kill our hearts! do the things we must not tell.

We see but pride in a selfish breast, while a heart is breaking there;
Oh, the world would be such a kindly world if all men's hearts lay bare!
We live and share the living lie, we a...

Trio East is dead and the West is done, and again our course lies thus
South-east by Fate and the Rising Sun where the Three Kings* wait for us.
When our hearts are young and the world is wide, and the heights seem grand to climb,
We are off and away to the Sydney-side; but the Three Kings bide their time.

‘I’ve been to the West,’ the digger said: he was bearded, bronzed and old;
Ah, the smothering curse of the East is wool, and the curse of the West is gold.
I went to the West in the golden boom, with Hope and a life-long mate,
‘They sleep in the sand by the Boulder Soak, and long may the Three Kings wait.’

‘I’ve had my fling on the Sydney-side,’ said a blacksheep to the sea,
Let the young fool learn when he can’t be taught: I’ve learnt what’s good for me.’
And he gazed ahead ...

We, three men of commerce,
Striving wealth to raise,
See but little promise
In the coming days;
Though our hearts are brittle,
Hardened near to stone,
We can think a little
Of the seasons flown.

Lily days and rose days:
Youthful days so bright;
We were fools in those days,
Let’s be fools to-night.

We, three men of commerce,
Men of business we,
Gave but little promise
Of what we would be
When we wandered urchins,
Foes of law and rule,
Fearing only birchings
And the village school.

Lily days and rose days,
Boyhood’s days so bright;
We were fools in those days,
Let’s be fools to-night.

We, three men of commerce,
Men of business we,
Gave but little promise
Of ability
When we lived ...

There is a quiet gentleman a-motoring in France
(Oh, don’t you hear the honking of a British motor-car?),
Like any quiet gentleman that you may meet by chance,
Who doesn’t wear a uniform, and doesn’t sport a star.
Another quiet gentleman is sitting by his side
(Oh, do you hear the “shuffling feet” tonight in Gay Paree?),
The honking of their motor-car, when they go for a ride,
Is louder than the biggest gun that’s made in Germany.
Another quiet gentleman, who’s very like the first
(Oh, don’t you hear the tinkle of the sleigh-bells on the snow?)
Is riding out in Russia now to watch the best and worst.
Oh, hear the bells of Petrograd a-ringing soft and low,
The Christmas bells of Petrograd, that hail the birth of Christ;
The sleigh-bells from the opera that hail the birth of S...

Now this is not a dismal song, like some I’ve sung of late,
When I’ve been brooding all day long about my muddled fate;
For though I’ve had a rocky time I’ll never quite forget,
And though I never was so deep in trouble and in debt,
And though I never was so poor nor in a fix so tight,
The tracks that run by India are shining in my sight.

The roads that run by India, and all the ports of call,
I’m going back to London first to raise the wherewithal.
I’ll call at Suez and Port Said as I am going past
(I was too worried to take notes when I was that way last),
At Naples and at Genoa, and, if I get the chance,
Who knows but I might run across the pleasant land of France.

The track that runs by India goes up the hot Red Sea,
The other side of Africa is far too dull f...

Oh, I never felt so wretched, and things never looked so blue
Since the days I gulped the physic that my Granny used to brew;
For a friend in whom I trusted, entering my room last night,
Stole a bottleful of Heenzo from the desk whereon I write.

I am certain sure he did it (though he never would let on),
For all last week he had a cold and to-day his cough is gone;
Now I'm sick and sore and sorry, and I'm sad for friendship's sake
(It was better than the cough-cure that our Granny used to make).

Oh, he might have pinched my whisky, and he might have pinched my beer,
Or all the fame or money that I make while writing here,
Oh, he might have shook the blankets and I'd not have made a row,
If he'd only left my Heenzo till the morning, anyhow.

So I've lost my faith ...

Lo, the gods of Vice and Mammon from their pinnacles are hurled
By the workers’ new religion, which is oldest in the world;
And the earth will feel her children treading firmly on the sod,
For the triumph of the People is the victory of God.

Not the victory of Churches, nor of Punishment and Wrath,
Not the triumph of the sceptic, throwing shadows on the path,
But of Christ and love and mercy o’er the Monarch and the Rod,
For the harvest of the Saviour is the aftermath of God.

O the Light of Revelation, since the reign of Care began,
Has been shining through the ages on the darkened eyes of man.
And the willing slave of Error, he is senseless as a clod,
For the simple Book of Nature is the written scroll of God.

Who will dare to say the sunlight on the pregnant E...

A tramp was trampin’ on the road,
The afternoon was warm an’ muggy,
And by-and-by he chanced to meet
A parsin ridin’ in a buggy.
Said he: “As follerers ov the Loard,
To do good offices we oughter!”
An’ from a water-bag he poured,
An’ guv the tramp, a drink er water.

The parsin he went rattlin’ ’ome
To ware his fam-i-lee was thrivin’,
The tramp went on until he met
A bullick-driver, bullick drivin’,
“It’s bilin’ ’ot,” the driver sed
As soon’s the dirty tramp drawed nearer,
And from a little keg he poured,
And giv the tramp a pint of beer, “ah!”

(P.S., The “ah” is meant to stand for the tramp a-drinking ov it.)

I ain’t agin the temperance cause,
Nor yet no advocate ov drinkin’,
I only tells the yarn because,
Well, at the tim...

Fight through ignorance, want, and care,
Through the griefs that crush the spirit;
Push your way to a fortune fair,
And the smiles of the world you’ll merit.
Long, as a boy, for the chance to learn,
For the chance that Fate denies you;
Win degrees where the Life-lights burn,
And scores will teach and advise you.

My cultured friends! you have come too late
With your bypath nicely graded;
I’ve fought thus far on my track of Fate,
And I’ll follow the rest unaided.
Must I be stopped by a college gate
On the track of Life encroaching?
Be dumb to Love, and be dumb to Hate,
For the lack of a college coaching?

You grope for Truth in a language dead,
In the dust ’neath tower and steeple!
What know you of the tracks we tread?
And what know you...

The President to Kingdoms,
As in the Days of Old;
The King to the Republic,
As it had been foretold.
They could not read the spelling,
They would not hear the call;
They would not brook the telling
Of Writing on the Wall.

I buy my Peace with Slaughter,
With Peace I fashion War;
I drown the land with water,
With land I build the shore.
I walk with Son and Daughter
Where Ocean rolled before.
I build a town where sea was
A tower where tempests roar.

From bays in distant islands,
And rocks in lonely seas,
With unseen Death in silence
I smite mine enemies!
The great Cathedral crashes
Where once a city stood;
I build again on ashes
And breed on clotted blood!

I link the seas together,
And at my sign and ...

White handkerchiefs wave from the short black pier
As we glide to the grand old sea,
But the song of my heart is for none to hear
If one of them waves for me.
A roving, roaming life is mine,
Ever by field or flood,
For not far back in my father's line
Was a dash of the Gipsy blood.

Flax and tussock and fern,
Gum and mulga and sand,
Reef and palm, but my fancies turn
Ever away from land;
Strange wild cities in ancient state,
Range and river and tree,
Snow and ice. But my star of fate
Is ever across the sea.

A god-like ride on a thundering sea,
When all but the stars are blind,
A desperate race from Eternity
With a gale-and-a-half behind.
A jovial spree in the cabin at night,
A song on the rolling deck,
A lark ashore wit...

While the crippled cruisers stagger where the blind horizon dips,
And the ocean ooze is rising round the sunken battle-ships,
While the battered wrecks, unnoticed, with their mangled crews drift past,
Let me fire one gun for Russia, though that gun should be the last.

’Tis a struggle of the Ages, and the White Man’s star is dim,
There is little jubilation, for the game has got too grim;
But though Russia’s hope seems shattered, and the Russian star seems set,
It may mean the Dawn for Russia, and my hope’s in IVAN yet!

Let the Jingo in his blindness cant and cackle as he will;
But across the path from Asia run the Russian trenches still!
And the sahib in his rickshaw may loll back and smoke at ease,
While the haggard, ragged heroes man the battered batteries.

’Ti...

They say, in all kindness, I’m out of the hunt,
Too old and too deaf to be sent to the Front.
A scribbler of stories, a maker of songs,
To the fireside and armchair my valour belongs!
Yet in campaigns all hopeless, in bitterest strife,
I have been at the Front all the days of my life.

Oh, your girl feels a princess, your people are proud,
As you march down the street, ’midst the cheers of the crowd;
And the Nation’s behind you and cloudless your sky,
And you come back to Honour, or gloriously die;
While for each thing that brightens, and each thing that cheers,
I have starved in the trenches these forty long years.

The cities were silent, the people were glum,
No sound of a bugle, no tap of a drum;
Our enemies mighty and Parliaments sour,
Our Land’s lov...

“Did she care as much as I did
When our paths of Fate divided?
Was the love, then, all onesided,
Did she understand or care?”
Slowly fall the moments leaden,
And the silence seems to deaden,
And a voice from over yonder answers sadly: “I’ve been there.”


“Have you tramped the streets of cities
Poor? And do you know what it is,
While no mortal cares or pities,
To have drifted past ambition;
To have sunk below despair?
Doomed to slave and stint and borrow;
Ever haunted in your sorrow
By the spectre of To-morrow?”
And the voice from over yonder answers sadly: “I’ve been there.”

“Surely in the wide Hereafter
There’s a land of love and laughter?
Say: Is this life all we live for,
Say it! think it, if you dare!
Have you ever thou...

The other night I got the blues and tried to smile in vain.
I couldn’t chuck a chuckle at the foolery of Twain;
When Ward and Billings failed to bring a twinkle to my eye,
I turned my eyes to Hansard of the fifteenth of July.
I laughed and roared until I thought that I was growing fat,
And all the boarders came to see what I was laughing at:
It rose the risibility of some, I grieve to state,
That foolish speech of Brentnall’s in the Vote of Thanks debate.

O Brentnall, of the olden school and cold sarcastic style!
You’ll take another WORKER now and stick it on your file;
“We’re very fond of poetry,”, we hope that this is quite
As entertaining as the lines you read the other night.
We know that you are honest, but ’twas foolish to confess
You read and file the WORKER; we...

And they heard the tent-poles clatter,
And the fly in twain was torn,
'Tis the soiled rag of a tatter
Of the tent where I was born.
And what matters it, I wonder?
Brick or stone or calico?,
Or a bush you were born under,
When it happened long ago?

And my beds were camp beds and tramp beds and damp beds,
And my beds were dry beds on drought-stricken ground,
Hard beds and soft beds, and wide beds and narrow,
For my beds were strange beds the wide world round.

And the old hag seemed to ponder
('Twas my mother told me so),
And she said that I would wander
Where but few would think to go.
"He will fly the haunts of tailors,
He will cross the ocean wide,
For his fathers, they were sailors
All on his good father's side."

Behind m...