Clinging Back

When you see a man come walking down through George Street loose and free,
Suit of saddle tweed and soft shirt, and a belt and cabbagetree,
With the careless swing and carriage, and the confidence you lack,
There is freedom in Australia! hes a man thats clinging back.
Clingin back,
Holdin back,
To the old things and the bold things clinging back.

When you see a woman riding as I saw one ride to-day
Down the street to Milsons Ferry on a big, upstanding bay,
With her body gently swaying to the horse-shoes click-a-clack,
You might lift your hat (with caution), shes a girl whos clinging back.
Clinging back,
Swinging back.
To the old things and the bold things clinging back.

When you see a rich man pulling on the harbour in a boat,
With the motor launches racing till they scarcely seem to float,
And the little skiff is lifting to his muscles tense and slack,
You say Go it to a sane man. Hes a man thats clinging back.
Clinging back,
Swinging back,
To the old things and the bold things clinging back.

When you see two lovers strolling, arm-in-arm, or round the waist,
And they never seem to loiter, and they never seem to haste,
But indifferent to others take the rock or bush-hid track
You be sure about their future, theyre a pair thats clinging back.
Clinging back,
Holding back,
To the old things and the bold things clinging back.

I, a weary picture writer in a time thats cruel plain,
Have been clinging all too sadly to what shall not come again,
To what shall not come and should not! for the silvers mostly black,
And the gold a dull red copper by the springs where I held back.
Clinging back,
Holding back,
To the old things and the cold things clinging back.

But if you should read a writer sending truths home every time,
While his every point goes ringing like the grandest prose in rhyme,
Though he writes the peoples grammar, and he spreads the peoples clack,
He is stronger than the Public! and hell jerk the mad world back.
Yank it back,
Hold it back,
For the love of little children hold it back.

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

And What Have You To Say

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

The Labour Agitator

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

Wide Lies Australia

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

The Brass Well

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

The Ballad Of The Rousabout

A Rouseabout of rouseabouts, from any land, or none,
I bear a nick-name of the bush, and Im, a womans son;
I came from where I campd last night, and, at the day-dawn glow,
I rub the darkness from my eyes, roll up my swag, and go.

Some take the track for bitter pride, some for no pride at all,
(But, to us all the world is wide when driven to the wall)
Some take the track for gain in life, some take the track for loss,
And some of us take up the swag as Christ took up the Cross.

Some take the track for faith in men, some take the track for doubt,
Some flee a squalid home to work their own salvation out.
Some dared not see a mothers tears nor meet a fathers face,
Born of good Christian families some leap, head-long, from Grace.

Oh we are men who fought and ros...

Henry Lawson

The Men Who Come Behind

There's a class of men (and women) who are always on their guard,
Cunning, treacherous, suspicious, feeling softly, grasping hard,
Brainy, yet without the courage to forsake the beaten track,
Cautiously they feel their way behind a bolder spirits back.

If you save a bit of money, and you start a little store,
Say, an oyster-shop, for instance, where there wasnt one before,
When the shop begins to pay you, and the rent is off your mind,
You will see another started by a chap that comes behind.

So it is, and so it might have been, my friend, with me and you,
When a friend of both and neither interferes between the two;
They will fight like fiends, forgetting in their passion mad and blind,
That the row is mostly started by the folk who come behind.

They will sti...

Henry Lawson

A Voice From The City

On western plain and eastern hill
Where once my fancy ranged,
The station hands are riding still
And they are little changed.
But I have lost in London gloom
The glory of the day,
The grand perfume of wattle bloom
Is faint and far away.
Brown faces under broad-brimmed hats
The grip of wiry hands,
The gallops on the frosty flats,
Seem dreams of other lands;
The camp fire and the stars that blaze
Above the mystic plain
Are but the thoughts of vanished days
That never come again.

The evening star I seldom view,
That led me on to roam,
I never see the morning star
That used to draw me home.
But I have often longed for day
To hide the few I see,
Because they only point and say
Most bitter things to me.

I wear my l...

Henry Lawson

Old Australian Ways

The London lights are far abeam
Behind a bank of cloud,
Along the shore the gaslights gleam,
The gale is piping loud;
And down the Channel, groping blind,
We drive her through the haze
Towards the land we left behind,
The good old land of "never mind",
And old Australian ways.

The narrow ways of English folk
Are not for such as we;
They bear the long-accustomed yoke
Of staid conservancy:
But all our roads are new and strange,
And through our blood there runs
The vagabonding love of change
That drove us westward of the range
And westward of the suns.

The city folk go to and fro
Behind a prison's bars,
They never feel the breezes blow
And never see the stars;
They never hear in blossomed trees
The music low and swee...

Andrew Barton Paterson

The Old Australian Ways

The London lights are far abeam
Behind a bank of cloud,
Along the shore the gaslights gleam,
The gale is piping loud;
And down the Channel, groping blind,
We drive her through the haze
Towards the land we left behind,
The good old land of `never mind',
And old Australian ways.

The narrow ways of English folk
Are not for such as we;
They bear the long-accustomed yoke
Of staid conservancy:
But all our roads are new and strange,
And through our blood there runs
The vagabonding love of change
That drove us westward of the range
And westward of the suns.

The city folk go to and fro
Behind a prison's bars,
They never feel the breezes blow
And never see the stars;
They never hear in blossomed trees
The music low and swee...

Andrew Barton Paterson

The Last Review

Turn the light down, nurse, and leave me, while I hold my last review,
For the Bush is slipping from me, and the town is going too:
Draw the blinds, the streets are lighted, and I hear the tramp of feet,
And Im weary, very weary, of the Faces in the Street.

In the dens of Grind and Heartbreak, in the streets of Never-Rest,
I have lost the scent and colour and the music of the West:
And I would recall old faces with the memories they bring,
Where are Bill and Jim and Mary and the Songs They used to Sing?

They are coming! They are coming! they are passing through the room
With the smell of gum leaves burning, and the scent of Wattle bloom!
And behind them in the timber, after dust and heat and toil,
Others sit beside the camp fire yarning while the billies boil.

...

Henry Lawson