Henry Lawson

“ For time means tucker, and tramp you must, where the scrubs and plains are wide, With seldom a track that a man can trust, or a mountain peak to guide; All day long in the dust and heat — when summer is on the track — With stinted stomachs and blistered feet, they carry their swags Out Back. He tramped away from the shanty there, when the days were long and hot, With never a soul to know or care if he died on the track or not. The poor of the city have friends in woe, no matter how much they lack, But only God and the swagmen know how a poor man fares Out Back. ”

“ We fight like women, and feel as much; the thoughts of our hearts we guard; Where scarcely the scorn of a god could touch, the sneer of a sneak hits hard; The treacherous tongue and cowardly pen, the weapons of curs, decide — They faced each other and fought like men in the days when the world was wide. Think of it all — of the life that is! Study your friends and foes! Study the past! And answer this: 'Are these times better than those?' The life-long quarrel, the paltry spite, the sting of your poisoned pride! No matter who fell it were better to fight as they did when the world was wide. ”

“ The light of passion in dreamy eyes, and a page of truth well read, The glorious thrill in a heart grown cold of the spirit I thought was dead, A song that goes to a comrade's heart, and a tear of pride let fall — And my soul is strong! and the world to me is a grand world after all! Let our enemies go by their old dull tracks, and theirs be the fault or shame (The man is bitter against the world who has only himself to blame) ; Let the darkest side of the past be dark, and only the good recall; For I must believe that the world, my dear, is a kind world after all. ”

“ When your head is hot and aching, and the shadeless plain is wide, And it's fifteen miles to water in the scrub the other side — Don't give up, don't be down-hearted, to a man's strong heart be true! Take the air in through your nostrils, set your lips and see it through — For it can't go on for ever, and — 'I'll have my day!' says you. When you're camping in the mulga, and the rain is falling slow, While you nurse your rheumatism 'neath a patch of calico; Short of tucker or tobacco, short of sugar or of tea, And the scrubs are dark and dismal, and the plains are like a sea ”

“ No sign of a stream or fountain, No spring on its dry, hot breast, No shade from the blazing noontide Where a weary man might rest. Whole years go by when the glowing Sky never clouds for rain — Only the shrubs of the desert Grow on the Great Grey Plain. From the camp, while the rich man's dreaming, Come the 'traveller' and his mate, In the ghastly dawnlight seeming Like a swagman's ghost out late; And the horseman blurs in the distance, While still the stars remain, A low, faint dust-cloud haunting His track on the Great Grey Plain. ”

“ The Poets of the Tomb The world has had enough of bards who wish that they were dead, 'Tis time the people passed a law to knock 'em on the head, For 'twould be lovely if their friends could grant the rest they crave — Those bards of 'tears' and 'vanished hopes', those poets of the grave. They say that life's an awful thing, and full of care and gloom, They talk of peace and restfulness connected with the tomb. They say that man is made of dirt, and die, of course, he must; But, all the same, a man is made of pretty solid dust. ”

“ I hear the fall of timber From distant flats and fells, The pealing of the anvils As clear as little bells, The rattle of the cradle, The clack of windlass-boles, The flutter of the crimson flags Above the golden holes. . . . . . Ah, then our hearts were bolder, And if Dame Fortune frowned Our swags we'd lightly shoulder And tramp to other ground. But golden days are vanished, And altered is the scene; The diggings are deserted, The camping-grounds are green; The flaunting flag of progress Is in the West unfurled, The mighty bush with iron rails Is tethered to the world. ”

“ When the peaks are scarred and the sea-walls crack till the furthest hills vibrate, And the world for a while goes rolling back in a storm of love and hate. . . . . . There are boys to-day in the city slum and the home of wealth and pride Who'll have one home when the storm is come, and fight for it side by side, Who'll hold the cliffs 'gainst the armoured hells that batter a coastal town, Or grimly die in a hail of shells when the walls come crashing down. ”

“ A jovial spree in the cabin at night, A song on the rolling deck, A lark ashore with the ships in sight, Till — a wreck goes down with a wreck. A smoke and a yarn on the deck by day, When life is a waking dream, And care and trouble so far away That out of your life they seem. A roving spirit in sympathy, Who has travelled the whole world o'er — My heart forgets, in a week at sea, The trouble of years on shore. A rolling stone! — 'tis a saw for slaves — Philosophy false as old — Wear out or break 'neath the feet of knaves, Or rot in your bed of mould! ”

“ An hour has filled the heavens With storm-clouds inky black; At times the lightning trickles Around the drover's track; But Harry pushes onward, His horses' strength he tries, In hope to reach the river Before the flood shall rise. The thunder from above him Goes rolling o'er the plain; And down on thirsty pastures In torrents falls the rain. And every creek and gully Sends forth its little flood, Till the river runs a banker, All stained with yellow mud. Now Harry speaks to Rover, The best dog on the plains, And to his hardy horses, And strokes their shaggy manes ”

“ Beyond the furthest two-rail fence, Colanne and Nevertire — Beyond the furthest rabbit-proof, barbed wire and common wire — Beyond the furthest 'Gov'ment' tank, and past the furthest bore — The Never-Never, No Man's Land, No More, and Nevermore — Beyond the Land o' Break-o'-Day, and Sunset and the Dawn, The soul of Marshall and the soul of Marshall's mate have gone Unto that Loving, Laughing Land where life is fresh and clean — Where the rivers flow all summer, and the grass is always green. ”

“ Where the idle shanty-keeper never fails to make a draw, And the dummy gets his tucker through provisions in the law; Where the labour-agitator — when the shearers rise in might — Makes his money sacrificing all his substance for The Right; Where the squatter makes his fortune, and 'the seasons rise and fall', And the poor and honest bushman has to suffer for it all; Where the drovers and the shearers and the bushmen and the rest Never reach the Eldorado of the poets of the West. ”

“ Past Carin' 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', But from my heart no tear nor sound, For I have gone past carin' — Past worryin' or carin', Past feelin' aught or carin'; But from my heart no tear nor sound, For I have gone past carin'. Through Death and Trouble, turn about, Through hopeless desolation, Through flood and fever, fire and drought, And slavery and starvation ”

“ Pouring on, pouring on, To a drum's loud threatening beat, And the war-hymns and the cheering of the people in the street. And so it must be while the world goes rolling round its course, The warning pen shall write in vain, the warning voice grow hoarse, But not until a city feels Red Revolution's feet Shall its sad people miss awhile the terrors of the street — The dreadful everlasting strife For scarcely clothes and meat In that pent track of living death — the city's cruel street. ”

“ Rest, for your eyes are weary, girl — you have driven the worst away — The ghost of the man that I might have been is gone from my heart to-day; We'll live for life and the best it brings till our twilight shadows fall; My heart grows brave, and the world, my girl, is a good world after all.
Marshall's Mate You almost heard the surface bake, and saw the gum-leaves turn — You could have watched the grass scorch brown had there been grass to burn. In such a drought the strongest heart might well grow faint and weak — 'Twould frighten Satan to his home — not far from Dingo Creek. ”

“ If you sing of waving grasses when the plains are dry as bricks, And discover shining rivers where there's only mud and sticks; If you picture 'mighty forests' where the mulga spoils the view — You're superior to Kendall, and ahead of Gordon too. If you swear there's not a country like the land that gave you birth, And its sons are just the noblest and most glorious chaps on earth; If in every girl a Venus your poetic eye discerns, You are gracefully referred to as the 'young Australian Burns'. ”

“ When the place and you are strangers and you struggle all alone, And you have a mighty longing for the town where you are known; When your clothes are very shabby and the future's very black, There is nothing that can hurt you like the shame of going back. When we've fought the battle bravely and are beaten to the wall, 'Tis the sneers of men, not conscience, that make cowards of us all; And the while you are returning, oh! your brain is on the rack, And your heart is in the shadow of the shame of going back. ”

“ March till the world grows wide!
Faces in the Street 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, drifting past, To the beat of weary feet — While I sorrow for the owners of those faces in the street. ”

“ Where, in clouds of dust enveloped, roasted bullock-drivers creep Slowly past the sun-dried shepherd dragged behind his crawling sheep. Stunted peak of granite gleaming, glaring like a molten mass Turned from some infernal furnace on a plain devoid of grass. Miles and miles of thirsty gutters — strings of muddy water-holes In the place of 'shining rivers' — 'walled by cliffs and forest boles.' Barren ridges, gullies, ridges! where the ever-madd'ning flies — Fiercer than the plagues of Egypt — swarm about your blighted eyes! Bush! where there is no horizon! ”

“ I'm too knocked out to eat a bite — I'm too knocked up to smoke. The blessed rain is comin' too — there's oceans in the sky, An' I suppose I must get up and rig the blessed fly; The heat is bad, the water's bad, the flies a crimson curse, The grub is bad, mosquitoes damned — but rheumatism's worse. I wonder why poor blokes like me will stick so fast ter breath, Though Shakespeare says it is the fear of somethin' after death; But though Eternity be cursed with God's almighty curse — What ever that same somethin' is I swear it can't be worse. ”

“ And the 'rise and fall of seasons' suits the rise and fall of rhyme, But we know that western seasons do not run on schedule time; For the drought will go on drying while there's anything to dry, Then it rains until you'd fancy it would bleach the sunny sky — Then it pelters out of reason, for the downpour day and night Nearly sweeps the population to the Great Australian Bight. It is up in Northern Queensland that the seasons do their best, But it's doubtful if you ever saw a season in the West ”

“ They'll know, apart from its mystic charm, what music is at last, When, proud as a boy with a broken arm, the regiment marches past. And the veriest wreck in the drink-fiend's clutch, no matter how low or mean, Will feel, when he hears the march, a touch of the man that he might have been. And fools, when the fiends of war are out and the city skies aflame, Will have something better to talk about than an absent woman's shame, Will have something nobler to do by far than jest at a friend's expense, Or blacken a name in a public bar or over a backyard fence. ”

“ And many a pink-white baby girl, the queen of her home to-day, Shall see the wings of the tempest whirl the mist of our dawn away — Shall live to shudder and stop her ears to the thud of the distant gun, And know the sorrow that has no tears when a battle is lost and won, — As a mother or wife in the years to come, will kneel, wild-eyed and white, And pray to God in her darkened home for the 'men in the fort to-night'. ”

“ And you think the bush is purer and that life is better there, But it doesn't seem to pay you like the 'squalid street and square'. Pray inform us, City Bushman, where you read, in prose or verse, Of the awful 'city urchin who would greet you with a curse'. There are golden hearts in gutters, though their owners lack the fat, And we'll back a teamster's offspring to outswear a city brat. Do you think we're never jolly where the trams and buses rage? Did you hear the gods in chorus when 'Ri-tooral' held the stage? ”

“ Pull yourself together, Peter; 'tis the dying wish of Joe That the business world shall honour Peter Anderson and Co. 'When you feel your life is sinking in a dull and useless course, And begin to find in drinking keener pleasure and remorse — When you feel the love of leisure on your careless heart take holt, Break away from friends and pleasure, though it give your heart a jolt. ”