A May Night on the Mountains

’Tis a wonderful time when these hours begin,
These long ‘small hours’ of night,
When grass is crisp, and the air is thin,
And the stars come close and bright.
The moon hangs caught in a silvery veil,
From clouds of a steely grey,
And the hard, cold blue of the sky grows pale
In the wonderful Milky Way.
There is something wrong with this star of ours,
A mortal plank unsound,
That cannot be charged to the mighty powers
Who guide the stars around.
Though man is higher than bird or beast,
Though wisdom is still his boast,
He surely resembles Nature least,
And the things that vex her most.

Oh, say, some muse of a larger star,
Some muse of the Universe,
If they who people those planets far

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poem by Henry Lawson
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Till All the Bad Things Came Untrue

BY blacksoil plains burned grey with drought
Where desert shrubs and grasses grow,
Along the Land of Furthest Out
That only Overlanders know.
I dreamed I camped on river grass
In bends where river timber grew—
I dreamed, I dreamed the days to pass
Till all the bad things came untrue.

I dreamed that I was young again,
But was not young as I had been,
My path through life seemed fair and plain,
My sight and hearing clear and keen.
No longer bent nor lined and grey,
I met and loved and worshipped you—
I dreamed, I dreamed the days away
Till all the sad things came untrue.

I dreamed a home of freestone stood
With toned tiled roofs as roofs should be,

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poem by Henry Lawson
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Fall In, My Men, Fall In

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.
Three days have we retreated
The brave old Curse-and-Grin –
Outnumbered and defeated –
Fall in, my men, fall in.

Poor weary, hungry sinners,
Past caring and past fear,
The camp-fires of the winners
Are gleaming in the rear.
Each day their front advances,
Each day the same old din,
But freedom holds the chances –
Fall in, my men, fall in.

Despair's cold fingers searches
The sky is black ahead,

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poem by Henry Lawson
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The Wantaritencant

It watched me in the cradle laid, and from my boyhood’s home
It glared above my shoulder-blade when I wrote my first “pome”;
It’s sidled by me ever since, with greeny eyes aslant—
It is the thing (O, Priest and Prince!) that wants to write, but can’t.

It yells and slobbers, mows and whines, It follows everywhere;
’Tis gloating on these very lines with red and baleful glare.
It murders friendship, love and truth (It makes the “reader” pant),
It ruins editorial youth, the Wantaritencant.

Its slime is ever on my work, and ever on my name;
No toil nor trouble does It shirk—for It will write, all the same!
It tantalized when great thoughts burned, in trouble and in want;
It makes it hell for all concerned, the Wantaritencant.

And now that I would gladly die, or rest my weary mind,
I cannot rest to think that I must leave the Thing behind.
Its green rot damns the dead, for sure—that greatest curse extant,
’Twill kill Australian literature, the Wantaritencant!

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poem by Henry Lawson
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When the Irish Flag Went By

’Twas Eight-Hour Day, and proudly
Old Labour led the way;
The drums were bearing loudly,
The crowded streets were gay;
But something touched my heart like pain,
I could not check the sigh
That rose within my bosom when
The Irish Flag went by.

Bright flags were raised about it
And one of them my own:
And patriots trod beneath it—
But it seemed all alone.
I thought of ruined Ireland
While crystals from the sky
Fell soft like tears by angels shed,
As the Irish Flag went by.

I love the dark green standard
As Irish patriots do;

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poem by Henry Lawson
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Let’s Be Fools To-Night

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—

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poem by Henry Lawson
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Divorced

TWO COUPLES are drifting the self-same way
(Men of the world know well)
From the ballroom glare as the night grows grey
(Men of the world can tell).
Many are round them who know, and knew,
But men of the world are blind;
That couple in front has nought to do
With the couple that comes behind.

The woman starts on her partner’s arm,
For a reason he could not tell—
She trips and she laughs the Society laugh,
That men of the world know well.
If she laughs too suddenly, talks too fast,
We are deaf as well as blind—
’Twas only the ghosts of the girlish days
When she married the man behind.

He feels a pang where his heart had been
(For a reason he cannot tell).

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poem by Henry Lawson
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Bush Hay

The stamp of Scotland is on his face,
But he sailed to the South a lad,
And he does not think of the black bleak hills
And the bitter hard youth he had;
He thinks of a nearer and dearer past
In the bright land far away,
When the teams went up and the teams came down,
In the days when they made bush hay.

The fare was rough and the bush was grim
In the “years of his pilgrimage”,
But he gained the strength that is still with him
In his hale, late middle age.
He thinks of the girl at the halfway inn
They use as a barn to-day—
Oh, she was a dumpling and he was thin
In the days when they made bush hay.

The ration teams to the Bathurst Plains
Were often a fortnight full.

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poem by Henry Lawson
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The Pavement Stones :A Song of the Unemployed

WHEN first I came to town, resolved
To fight my way alone,
No prouder foot than mine e’er trod
Upon the pavement stone;
But I am one in thousands,
And why should I repine?
The pavement stones have broken springs
In stronger feet than mine.

I brought to aid me all the hope
And energy of youth;
And in my heart I felt the strength
Of plain bucolic truth:
The independence nourished
Amid the hills and trees—
But, ah! the city hath a cure
For qualities like these.

I wonder oft how e’er I made
The efforts that I made,

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poem by Henry Lawson
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The Triumph of the People

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 Earth was shed
That the few might rest and fatten, while the many fight for bread?
Lo, there springs a common garden, where the foot of Greed hath trod,
For the victory of Labour was the prophecy of God.

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poem by Henry Lawson
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