Heed Not!

Heed not the cock-sure tourist,
Seeing with English eyes;
Stroked at the banquet table
Still, with the old stock lies,
Pet of a social circle,
Guest in a garden fair,
Free of the first-class carriage,
He learns no Australia there.

Heed not the Southern humbugs
By the first saloons who come,
From his work in the wide, hot scrub-lands
The Australian goes not home.
Give them the toadies knighthood,
Fit for the souls theyve got;
Fear not to shame Australia
For Australia knows them not.

Heed not the Sydney dailies,
Naught for the land they do;
Heed not the Melbourne street crowd,
For they know no more than you!
Pent in the coastal cities,
Still on the old-world track,
They know naught of Australia,
Of the heart of the great Out-Back.

But wait for the voice that gathers
Strength by the western creeks!
Heed ye the Out-Back shearers,
List when the Great Bush speaks!
Heed ye the black-sheep, working
His own salvation free,
And Oh! heed ye the sons of the exiles
When they speak of the things to be!

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

A Word To Texas Jack

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

Song Of The Old Bullock-Driver

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

To The Irish Delegates

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

The God-Forgotten Election

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

English

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From The Bush

The Channel fog has lifted,
And see where we have come!
Round all the world we've drifted,
A hundred years from "home".
The fields our parents longed for,
Ah! we shall ne'er know how,
The wealth that they were wronged for
We'll see as strangers now!

The Dover cliffs have passed on,
In the morning light aglow,
That our fathers looked their last on
A weary time ago.
Now grin, and grin your bravest!
We need be strong to fight;
For you go home to picture
And I go home to write.

Hold up your head in England,
Tread firm on London streets;
We come from where the strong heart
Of all Australia beats!
Hold up your head in England
However poor you roam!
For no men are your betters
Who never sailed from home!

From ...

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...

Henry Lawson

The Heart Of Australia

When the wars of the world seemed ended, and silent the distant drum,
Ten years ago in Australia, I wrote of a war to come:
And I pictured Australians fighting as their fathers fought of old
For the old things, pride or country, for God or the Devil or gold.

And they lounged on the rim of Australia in the peace that had come to last,
And they laughed at my "cavalry charges" for such things belonged to the past;
Then our wise men smiled with indulgence, ere the swift years proved me right,
Saying: "What shall Australia fight for? And whom shall Australia fight?"

I wrote of the unlocked rivers in the days when my heart was full,
And I pleaded for irrigation where they sacrifice all for wool.
I pictured Australia fighting when the coast had been lost and won,
With arsenals we...

Henry Lawson

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,
'Tis lost beneath the rainless skies
In hopeless deserts there;
It spreads nor'-west by No-Man's-Land,
Where clouds are seldom seen,
To where the cattle-stati...

Henry Lawson

The Bard Of Furthest Out

He longed to be a Back-Blocks Bard,
And fame he wished to win,
He wrote at night and studied hard
(He read The Bulletin);
He sent in stuff unceasingly,
But couldnt get it through;
And so, at last, he came to me
To see what I could do.

The poets light was in his eye,
He aimed to be a man;
He bought a bluey and a fly,
A brand new billy-can.
I showed him how to roll his swag
And sling it with the best;
I gave him my old water-bag,
And pointed to the west.

Now you can take the train as far
As Blazes if you like,
The wealthy go by motor-car
(Some travellers go by bike);
They race it through without a rest,
And find it very tame,
But if you tramp it to the west
Youll get there just the same.

(No matt...

Henry Lawson

Over The Ranges And Into The West

Let others sing praise of their sea-girted isles,
But give me the bush with its limitless miles;
Then its over the ranges and into the West,
To the scenes of wild boyhood; we love them the best.

Well ride and well ride from the city afar,
To the plains where the cattle and sheep stations are;
Where stockmen ride hard, and the drover starts forth
On his long, lonely journey way up in the North.

When your money is low, and your luck has gone down,
Theres no place so lone as the streets of a town;
Theres nothing but worry, and dread and unrest,
So well over the ranges and into the West.

The drought in the West may spread ruin around,
But the dread drought of life in the city is found;
And Id far sooner tread on the long dusty way,
Where each ...

Henry Lawson