Before We Were Married

Blacksoil plains were grey soil, grey soil in the drought.
Fifteen years away, and five hundred miles out;
Swag and bag and billy carried all our care
Before we were married, and I wish that I were there.

River banks were grassy, grassy in the bends,
Running through the land where mateship never ends;
We belled the lazy fishing lines and droned the time away
Before we were married, and I wish it were to-day.

Working down the telegraph, winters gales and rains
Cross the tumbled scenery of Marlborough plains,
Beach and bluff and cooks tent, and the cook was a cow
Before we were married, but I wish that it was now.

The rolling road to Melbourne, and grey-eyed girl in fur,
One arm to a stanchion, and one round her;
Seat abaft the skylight when the moon had set,
Before she was married, and I wish it wasnt yet.

Henry Lawson

Henry Lawson was an Australian writer and poet. Along with Banjo Paterson, he is among the best-known Australian poets and fiction writers of the colonial period and is often called Australia's 'greatest short story writer'. His works frequently document the lives and struggles of rural and outback Australians. Lawson's own life was marked by hardship and struggles including impaired hearing and financial difficulties, which influenced his realist depictions of Australian life. Some of his notable works include 'While the Billy Boils' and 'In the Days When the World was Wide.'

Henry Lawson

Interlude. Callaghans Hotel

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

The Memories They Bring

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

Taking His Chance

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

The Man Who Raised Charlestown

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

English

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The Black Bordered Letter

An SO es dead in London,
An answered to the call,
An trotted through the Long Street,
With earse an plumes an all?
We was village boys an brothers,
We was warm as we could be,
In the milk-walk an the fried fish,
Up in London, im an me.

We was warm,
We was warm,
As we ad always been;
We never ad a dry word
Till she come between.

I lived round Windsor Terrace,
An im across the wye,
An when I sailed a emigrant
We never said good-bye!
He wos better than a brother,
Wot you Bushmen call a mate.
(Did he reach the rylwye stytion,
As they told me, just too late!)

We was warm,
We was warm,
As pals was ever seen;
We never ad a dry word
Till she come between.

I meant to go back om...

Henry Lawson

The Shakedown On The Floor

Set me back for twenty summers,
For Im tired of cities now,
Set my feet in red-soil furrows
And my hands upon the plough,
With the two Black Brothers trudging
On the home stretch through the loam,
While, along the grassy siding,
Come the cattle grazing home.

And I finish ploughing early,
And I hurry home to tea,
Theres my black suit on the stretcher,
And a clean white shirt for me.
Theres a dance at Rocky Rises,
And, when all the fun is oer,
For a certain favoured party
Theres a shake-down on the floor.

You remember Mary Carey,
Bushmens favourite at the Rise?
With her sweet small freckled features,
Red-gold hair, and kind grey eyes;
Sister, daughter, to her mother,
Mother, sister, to the rest,
And of all my fri...

Henry Lawson

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,
By cliff and fall and beach and wood
With wide verandahs to the sea.
I dreamed a ha...

Henry Lawson

New Life, New Love

The breezes blow on the river below,
And the fleecy clouds float high,
And I mark how the dark green gum trees match
The bright blue dome of the sky.
The rain has been, and the grass is green
Where the slopes were bare and brown,
And I see the things that I used to see
In the days ere my head went down.
I have found a light in my long dark night,
Brighter than stars or moon;
I have lost the fear of the sunset drear,
And the sadness of afternoon.
Here let us stand while I hold your hand,
Where the lights on your golden head,
Oh! I feel the thrill that I used to feel
In the days ere my heart was dead.

The storms gone by, but my lips are dry
And the old wrong rankles yet,
Sweetheart or wife, I must take new life
From your red lips warm and ...

Henry Lawson

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.
And they branched all ways in the early days
And back to the port with...

Henry Lawson

Song Of The Old Bullock-Driver

Far back in the days when the blacks used to ramble
In long single file neath the evergreen tree,
The wool-teams in season came down from Coonamble,
And journeyed for weeks on their way to the sea,
Twas then that our hearts and our sinews were stronger,
For those were the days when the bushman was bred.
We journeyed on roads that were rougher and longer
Than roads where the feet of our grandchildren tread.

With mates who have gone to the great Never-Never,
And mates whom Ive not seen for many a day,
I camped on the banks of the Cudgegong River
And yarned at the fire by the old bullock-dray.
I would summon them back from the far Riverina,
From days that shall be from all others distinct,
And sing to the sound of an old concertina
Their rugged old songs wher...

Henry Lawson