In the Height of Fashion
SO at last a toll they’ll levy
For the passing fool who sings—
Take the harp grown dull and heavy
(With the dried blood on the strings)
Let us sing, and sing right gaily,
For the wreath is on our brow—
Are you hearin’, Victor Daley?
We are fashionable now!
Once the greatest earl could flout us,
And the meanest scribe could sneer—
Nought too bad to say about us,
Nought too hard for us to hear.
Slaves to journal-owning Neroes,
And we died—no matter how—
We’re sweet singers now and heroes,
We are fashionable now.
Once we suffered all save gaol, if
We’d no rich admirers near;
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poem by Henry Lawson
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The Port O'Call
Our hull is seldom painted,
Our decks are seldom stoned;
Our sails are patched and cobbled
And chains by rust marooned.
Our rigging is untidy,
And all things in accord:—
We always sail on Friday
With thirteen souls on board.
For all the days save Friday
Were days of dark despair—
The fourteenth died of fever
Whenever he was there.
Our good ship is the Chancit—
Her oldest name of all;
But, in the ports we’re blown to,
She’s called the ‘Port o’ Call.’
Our captain old Wot Matters—
Our first mate young Hoo Kares,
Our cook is Wen Yew Wan Tit,
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poem by Henry Lawson
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When You’re Bad in Your Inside
I remarked that man is saddest, and his heart is filled with woe,
When he hasn’t any money, and his pants begin to go;
But I think I was mistaken, and there are many times I find
When you do not care a candle if your pants are gone behind;
For a fellow mostly loses all ambition, hope, and pride,
When—to put the matter mildly—he is bad in his inside.
Bobby Burns was down on toothache, and it troubled him no doubt;
But you know a man can always have a molar taken out,
And be all right then, excepting for the duller pain that comes
To the hollow that is lying like a gully in the gums.
But you can’t extract your innards—they must stay within your hide,
And you’ve got to moan and cuss it—when you’re bad in your inside.
You dunno what to take for it—you dunno what to do:
You are puzzled to remember what has disagreed with you,
You lie in all positions—there is none will give you ease;
And you think an aching stomach is the king of agonies.
You feel as though your innards in a double knot are tied,
While the devil ties it tighter—when you’re bad in your inside.
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poem by Henry Lawson
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Peddling Round the World
When at first in foreign parts
Was her flag unfurled,
England was a Gipsy lass
Peddling round the world.
Sailing on the Spanish Main—
Everywhere you roam—
Peddling in the Persian Gulf
Things she’d made at home.
Peddling round the world,
Peddling round the world—
England was a Gipsy lass
Peddling round the world.
England never wanted war,
Not on land or sea—
Other nations rising up
Couldn’t let her be.
England only wanted peace,
And the ocean’s breath;
So there came, in course of time,
Queen Elizabeth.
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poem by Henry Lawson
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The Never-Never Country
By homestead, hut, and shearing-shed,
By railroad, coach, and track --
By lonely graves of our brave dead,
Up-Country and Out-Back:
To where 'neath glorious the clustered stars
The dreamy plains expand --
My home lies wide a thousand miles
In the Never-Never Land.
It lies beyond the farming belt,
Wide wastes of scrub and plain,
A blazing desert in the drought,
A lake-land after rain;
To the sky-line sweeps the waving grass,
Or whirls the scorching sand --
A phantom land, a mystic land!
The Never-Never Land.
Where lone Mount Desolation lies,
Mounts Dreadful and Despair --
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poem by Henry Lawson
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He Had So Much Work To Do
Tell a simple little story of a settler in the West,
Where the soldier birds and farmers, and selectors never rest
While the sun shines—and they often work in rainy weather, too:
But it’s all about a young man who had so much work to do.
One of Mason’s sons, Jim Mason, and the straightest of the lot,
(They were all straight for that matter) Jim was working for old Scott—
(Scott that fired at Brummy Hughson, when the “stick-ups” used to be),
Jim was courting Mary Kelly down at Lowes, at Wilbertree.
Jim was trucking for a sawmill to make money for the home,
He was making, out of Mudgee, for the family to come,
And a load-chain snapped the switch-bar, and Black Anderson found Jim,
In the morning, in a creek-bed, with a log on top of him.
There was riding for the doctor—just the same old reckless race:
And a spring cart with a mattress came and took him from the place,
To the hospital at Gulgong—but they couldn’t pull him through—
And Jim said “It seems a pity—I—had so much work to do.”
“There’s the hut—it’s close-up finished; and the forty acres fenced;
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poem by Henry Lawson
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The Ballad Of The Drover
Across the stony ridges,
Across the rolling plain,
Young Harry Dale, the drover,
Comes riding home again.
And well his stock-horse bears him,
And light of heart is he,
And stoutly his old pack-horse
Is trotting by his knee.
Up Queensland way with cattle
He travelled regions vast;
And many months have vanished
Since home-folk saw him last.
He hums a song of someone
He hopes to marry soon;
And hobble-chains and camp-ware
Keep jingling to the tune.
Beyond the hazy dado
Against the lower skies
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poem by Henry Lawson
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The Roaring Days
The night too quickly passes
And we are growing old,
So let us fill our glasses
And toast the Days of Gold;
When finds of wondrous treasure
Set all the South ablaze,
And you and I were faithful mates
All through the roaring days!
Then stately ships came sailing
From every harbour's mouth,
And sought the land of promise
That beaconed in the South;
Then southward streamed their streamers
And swelled their canvas full
To speed the wildest dreamers
E'er borne in vessel's hull.
Their shining Eldorado,
Beneath the southern skies,
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poem by Henry Lawson
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The Rovers
Some born of homely parents
For ages settled down—
The steady generations
Of village, farm, and town:
And some of dusky fathers
Who wandered since the flood—
The fairest skin or darkest
Might hold the roving blood—
Some born of brutish peasants,
And some of dainty peers,
In poverty or plenty
They pass their early years;
But, born in pride of purple,
Or straw and squalid sin,
In all the far world corners
The wanderers are kin.
A rover or a rebel,
Conceived and born to roam,
As babies they will toddle
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poem by Henry Lawson
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Golden Gully
No one lives in Golden Gully, for its golden days are o’er,
And its clay shall never sully blucher-boots of diggers more,
For the diggers long have vanished — nought but broken shafts remain,
And the bush, by diggers banished, fast reclaims its own again.
Now, when dying Daylight slowly draws her fingers from the “Peak”,
The Weird Empress Melancholy rises from the reedy creek —
In the gap above the gully, while the dismal curlews scream
Loud to welcome her as ruler of the dreary night supreme —
Takes her throne, and by her presence fills the strange, uncertain air
With a ghostly phosphorescence of the horrors hidden there.
None would think, by camp-fire blazy, lighting fitfully the scene,
In the seasons that are hazy, how in seasons gone between,
Diggers yarned or joined in jolly ballads of the field and foam,
Or grew sad and melancholy over songs like “Home, Sweet Home” —
Songs of other times, demanding sullen tears that would not start,
Every digger understanding what was in his comrade’s heart.
It may seem to you a riddle how a poet’s fancies roam,
But methinks I hear a fiddle softly playing “Home, Sweet Home”
’Mid the trees, while meditative diggers round the camp-fire stand.
(Those were days before Australians learned to love their native land.)
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poem by Henry Lawson
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