Henry Lawson

Now up and down the siding brown The great black crows are flyin',
And down below the spur,
I know, Another `milker's' dyin';
The crops have withered from the ground, The tank's clay bed is glarin',

The Valley's full of misty cloud, Its tinted beauty drowning,
The Eucalypti roar aloud, The mountain fronts are frowning
The mist is hanging like a pall From many granite ledges,
And many a little waterfall Starts o’er the valley’s ...

ER II cannot blame old Israel yet, For I am not a sage—I shall not know until I get The son of my old age
The mysteries of this Vale of Tears We will perchance
When we have lived a thousand years And died and come again
No doubt old...

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 ...

Ten miles down Reedy RiverA pool of water lies,
And all the year it
The changes in the skies
Within that pool's broad

The world is narrow and ways are short, and our lives are dull and slow,
For little is new where the crowds resort, and less where the wanderers go;
Greater, or smaller, the same old things we see by the dull road-side — And tired of all...

I
TE this grinding poverty— To toil, and pinch, and borrow,
And be for ever haunted by The spectre of to-morrow
It breaks the strong heart of a man, It crushes out his spirit—Do what he will, do what he can, However high his merit...

They lie, the men who tell us in a loud decisive tone That want is here a stranger, and that misery's unknown;
For where the nearest suburb and the city proper meet My window-sill is level with the faces in the street — Drifting past, driftin...

They'd parted but a year before—she never thought he’d come,
She stammer’d, blushed, held out her hand, and called him ‘Mister Gum
’How could he know that all the while she longed to murmur ‘John
’He called her ‘Miss le Brook,’ and ...

They say that I never have written of love,
As a writer of songs should do;
They say that I never could touch the strings With a touch that is firm and true;
They say I know nothing of women and men In the fields where Love's roses ...

The short hour's halt is ended,
The red gone from the west,
The broken wheel is mended,
And the dead men laid to rest

Once I wrote a little poem which I thought was very fine,
And I showed the printer’s copy to a critic friend of mine,
First he praised the thing a little, then he found a little fault;‘The ideas are good,’ he muttered, ‘but the rhythm se...