Henry Lawson Poems

By his paths through the parched desolation,
Hot rides and the terrible tramps;
By the hunger, the thirst, the privation
Of his work in the further most camps.
...

AT A POINT where the old road crosses
The river, and turns to the right,
I’d camped with the team; and the hosses
Was all fixed up for the night.
...

Oh, the wild black swans fly westward still,
While the sun goes down in glory—
And away o’er lonely plain and hill
Still runs the same old story:
...

When you fear the barber’s mirror when you go to get a crop,
Or in sorrow every morning comb your hair across the top:
When you titivate and do the little things you never used—
It is close upon the season when your sins come home to roost.
...

“Not from the seas does he draw inspiration,
Not from the rivers that croon on their bars;
But a wide, a world-old desolation –
On a dead land alone with the stars.
...

He has notions of Australia from the tales that he’s been told—
Land of leggings and revolvers, land of savages and gold;
So he begs old shirts, and someone patches up his worn-
...

If yer gotter corf about yer,
Gotter corf –
Gotter corf –
If yer gotter corf about yer,
...

WHEN you drink of what the poets rave about as “sorrer’s cup”,
And yer mouth, in spite of laughin’, gits a curve the wrong way up,
...

The skies are brass and the plains are bare,
Death and ruin are everywhere --
And all that is left of the last year's flood
Is a sickly stream on the grey-black mud;
...

Though doctors may your name discard
And say you physicked vilely,
I would I were as good a bard
As you a doctor, Wylie!
...