'GS' or the Fourth Cook

He has notions of Australia from the tales that hes been told,
Land of leggings and revolvers, land of savages and gold;
So he begs old shirts, and someone patches up his worn-out duds.
He is shipped as general servant, scrubbing pots and peeling spuds
(In the steamers grimy alley, hating man and peeling spuds).

There is little time to comfort, there is little time to cry,
He will come back with a fortune, Well be happy by-and-by!
Scarcely time to kiss his sweetheart, barely time to change his duds,
Ere they want him at the galley, and they set him peeling spuds
(With a butchers knife, a bucket, and, say, half a ton of spuds).

And he peels em hard to Plymouth, peels em fast to drown his grief,
Peels em while his stomach sickens on the road to Teneriffe;
Peels em while the donkey rattles, peels em while the engine thuds,
By the time they touch at Cape Town hes a don at peeling spuds
(And he finds some time for dreaming as he gets on with the spuds).

In the steamers slushy alley, where the souls of men are dead,
And the adjectives are crimson if the substances are red,
Hes perhaps a college black-sheep, and, maybe, of ancient blood,
Ah! his devil grips him sometimes as he reaches for a spud
(And he jerks his head and sadly gouges dry-rot from a spud).

And his brave heart hopes and sickens as the weary days go round;
There is lots o time for blue-lights ere they reach King Georges Sound.
But he gets his best suit ready, two white shirts and three bone studs!
He will face the new world bravely when hes finished with the spuds
(And next week, perhaps, hell gladly take a job at peeling spuds).

There were heroes in Australia went exploring long ago;
There are heroes in Australia that the world shall never know;
And the men we use for heroes in the land of droughts and floods
Often win their way to Sydney scrubbing pots and peeling spuds
(Plucky beggars! brave, poor devils! gouging dry-rot from their spuds).

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

In Possum Land

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

The Drums Of Battersea

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

The Alleys

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

In The Day's When We Are Dead

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

English

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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

The Men Who Made Australia

There'll be royal times in Sydney for the Cuff and Collar Push,
Therell be lots of dreary drivel and clap-trap
From the men who own Australia, but who never knew the Bush,
And who could not point their runs out on the map.
Oh, the daily Press will grovel as it never did before,
Therell be many flags of welcome in the air,
And the Civil Service poet, he shall write odes by the score,
But the men who made the land will not be there.

You shall meet the awful Lady of the latest Birthday Knight,
(She is trying to be English, dont-cher-know?)
You shall hear the empty mouthing of the champion blatherskite,
You shall hear the boss of local drapers blow.
Therell be majahs from the counter, tailors dummies from the fleet,
And to represent Australia here to-day,
There...

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Golden Gully

No one lives in Golden Gully, for its golden days are oer,
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 ba...

Henry Lawson

The Old Stockman's Lament

Wrap me up in me stockwhip and blanket,
And bury me deep down below,
Where this piffle and sham wont disgust me,
In the land where the coolibahs grow;
For Ive stayed with some well-to-do people,
And Ive dined with some middle-class folk;
And Ive sorrowed by clock-tower and steeple
Till my heart for the Commonwealths broke.

They have flown in another direction,
Who used to clack-clack by the hour
Of this awful Freetrade and Protection,
Of our dear darling member in power,
And the Higher Religion for Dossers,
And the Need of an Object for Drunks,
Now theyre all of them Red or Blue Crossers,
With their tails sticking out of their trunks.

There are citified Martins in dozens,
The Darling Point Martins the pick,
Who used to be horrif...

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

Henry Lawson

Outback

The old year went, and the new returned, in the withering weeks of drought,
The cheque was spent that the shearer earned, and the sheds were all cut out;
The publican's words were short and few, and the publican's looks were black,
And the time had come, as the shearer knew, to carry his swag Out Back.

For time means tucker, and tramp you must, where the scrubs and plains are wide,
With seldom a track that a man can trust, or a mountain peak to guide;
All day long in the dust and heat, when summer is on the track,
With stinted stomachs and blistered feet, they carry their swags Out Back.

He tramped away from the shanty there, when the days were long and hot,
With never a soul to know or care if he died on the track or not.
The poor of the city have friends in woe, no matter how...

Henry Lawson