Nineteen Nine

There's a light out there in the nearer east
In the dawn of Nineteen Nine;
Theres the old ghost light in the salty yeast
Where the black rocks meet the brine.
Heres the same old strife and toil in vain,
Heres the same old hope and doubt,
Heres the same old useless care and pain,
And the sea is my way out,
My dear,
The sea is my way out.
Tis a grey and a sad old sea for me,
With a growing grey head too.
Oh, the heads were brown and the eyes were bright
When the sea was white and blue.
It was round the world and home again,
We could turn and turn about,
And the sea means exile now in vain,
But the sea is my way out,
My dear,
The sea is my way out.

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

The Statue Of Our Queen

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

The Black Bordered Letter

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

For'ard

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

Wholl Wear The Beaten Colours?

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

English

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The Vagabond

White handkerchiefs wave from the short black pier
As we glide to the grand old sea,
But the song of my heart is for none to hear
If one of them waves for me.
A roving, roaming life is mine,
Ever by field or flood,
For not far back in my father's line
Was a dash of the Gipsy blood.

Flax and tussock and fern,
Gum and mulga and sand,
Reef and palm, but my fancies turn
Ever away from land;
Strange wild cities in ancient state,
Range and river and tree,
Snow and ice. But my star of fate
Is ever across the sea.

A god-like ride on a thundering sea,
When all but the stars are blind,
A desperate race from Eternity
With a gale-and-a-half behind.
A jovial spree in the cabin at night,
A song on the rolling deck,
A lark ashore wit...

Henry Lawson

The Outside Track

There were ten of us there on the moonlit quay,
And one on the forard hatch;
No straighter mate to his mates than he
Had ever said: Lens a match!

"Twill be long, old man, ere our glasses clink,
Twill be long ere we grip your hand!",
And we dragged him ashore for a final drink
Till the whole wide world seemed grand.

For they marry and go as the world rolls back,
They marry and vanish and die;
But their spirit shall live on the Outside Track
As long as the years go by.

The port-lights glowed in the morning mist
That rolled from the waters green;
And over the railing we grasped his fist
As the dark tide came between.

We cheered the captain and cheered the crew,
And our mate, times out of mind;
We cheered the land he was goi...

Henry Lawson

The Ports Of The Open Sea

Down here where the ships loom large in
The gloom when the sea-storms veer,
Down here on the south-west margin
Of the western hemisphere,
Where the might of a world-wide ocean
Round the youngest land rolls free,
Storm-bound from the worlds commotion,
Lie the Ports of the Open Sea.

By the bluff where the grey sand reaches
To the kerb of the spray-swept street,
By the sweep of the black sand beaches
From the main-road travellers feet,
By the heights like a work Titanic,
By a bluff lined coast volcanic
Lie the Ports of the wild South-east.

By the steeps of the snow-capped range,
By the scarped and terraced hills,
Far away from the swift life-changes,
From the wear of the strife that kills,
Where the land in the Spring seems younger

Henry Lawson

The Cliffs

They sing of the grandeur of cliffs inland,
But the cliffs of the ocean are truly grand;
And I long to wander and dream and doubt
Where the cliffs by the ocean run out and out.

To the northward far as the eye can reach
Are sandhill, boulder, and sandy beach;
But southward rises the track for me,
Where the cliffs by the ocean run out to sea.

Friends may be gone in the morning fair,
But the cliffs by the ocean are always there;
Lovers may leave when the wind is chill,
But the cliffs by the ocean are steadfast still.

They watch the sea and they ward the land,
And they warn the ships from the treacherous sand;
And I sadly think in the twilight hour
What I might have been had I known my power.

Where the smoke-cloud blurs and the white sails ...

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

By Hut, Homestead And Shearing Shed,

By hut, homestead and shearing shed,
By railroad, coach and track,
By lonely graves where rest the dead,
Up-Country and Out-Back:
To where beneath the clustered stars
The dreamy plains expand.

My home lies wide a thousand miles
In 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 skyline sweeps the waving grass,
Or whirls the scorching sand,
A phantom land, a mystic realm!
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 stations lie
Thr...

Henry Lawson