Out On The Roofs Of Hell

Sing us a song in this cynical age,
Sing us a song, my friend,
While the Flesh and the Devil are all the rage
And Death seems the only end.
Give it the clatter of hoof-clipped bones
And a note like a dingos yell,
And the long, low sigh when the big mob moans
Out on the roofs of hell.

For Wool, Tallow, and Hides and Co.,
For Wool, Tallow, and Hides,
Over the roofs of hell we go
For Wool, Tallow, and Hides.

We take the route or we take the track,
Hell-doomed by the greed of man,
And we leave our wives in the scrubs out back
To struggle as best they can.
For the credit is short and the flour is low,
And this is the tale we tell,
A check must be made and the stock must go
Over the roofs of hell.

Wake ere the burst of the great white sun
Into the blazing skies,
Our limbs are stiff and the lids are gummed
Over our blighted eyes.
But our souls have perished in dust and heat,
And this is the tale we tell,
Our lives are ever a grim retreat
With Death on the roofs of hell.

They drivel and say how the bushman drinks,
But what do the townsfolk know?
The life is a hell to the man who thinks,
He must drink or his reason go.
Drink and drink, as the bushman knows,
Till he strip to the skin and yell;
Down for a change! for a rest! he goes
Down through the roofs of hell.

For Wool, Tallow, and Hides and Co.,
For Wool, Tallow, and Hides,
Down through the roofs of hell they go
For Wool, Tallow, and Hides.

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 Bonny Port Of Sydney

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

The Bard Of Furthest Out

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

Knockin' Around

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

The Bulletin Hotel

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 Drovers

Shrivelled leather, rusty buckles, and the rot is in our knuckles,
Scorched for months upon the pommel while the brittle rein hung free;
Shrunken eyes that once were lighted with fresh boyhood, dull and blighted,
And the sores upon our eyelids are unpleasant sights to see.
And our hair is thin and dying from the ends, with too long lying
In the night dews on the ashes of the Dry Countree.
Yes, weve seen em bleaching whitely where the salt-bush sparkles brightly,
But their grins were over-friendly, so we passed and let them be.

And weve seen them rather recent, and weve stopped to hide em decent
When they werent nice to handle and they werent too nice to see;
We have heard the dry bones rattle under fifteen hundred cattle,
Seen the rags go up in dust-clouds and the bri...

Henry Lawson

The Song Of A Prison

Now this is the song of a prison, a song of a gaol or jug,
A ballad of quod or of chokey, the ultimate home of the mug.
The yard where the Foolish are drafted; Hells school where the harmless are taught;
For the big beast never is captured and the great thief never is caught.

A song of the trollops victim, and the dealer in doubtful eggs,
And a song of the man who was ruined by the lie with a thousand legs.
A song of suspected persons and rouge-and-vagabond pals,
And of persons beyond suspicion, the habitual criminals.

Tis a song of the weary warders, whom prisoners call the screws,
A class of men who I fancy would cleave to the Evening News.
They look after their treasures sadly. By the screw of their keys they are known,
And they screw them many times daily before...

Henry Lawson

The Women Of The Town

It is up from out the alleys, from the alleys dark and vile,
It is up from out the alleys I have struggled for a while,
Just to breathe the breath of Heaven ere my devil drags me down,
And to sing a song of pity for the women of the town.

Johnnies in the private bar room, weak and silly, vain and blind,
Even they would shrink and shudder if they knew the hell behind,
And the meanest wouldnt grumble when hes bilked of half-a-crown
If he knew as much as I do of the women of the town.

For I see the end too plainly of the golden-headed star
Who is smiling like an angel in the gilded private bar,
Drifting to the third-rate houses, drifting, sinking lower down
Till she raves in some foul parlour with the women of the town.

To the dingy beer-stained parlour all day l...

Henry Lawson

An Interlude Of Peace - The Fairy West

I.

We wrote and sang of a bush we never
Had known in youth in the Western land;
Of the dear old homes by the shining river,
The deep, clear creeks and the hills so grand.
The grass waved high on the flat and siding,
The wild flowers bloomed on the banks so fair,
And younger sons from the North came riding
To vine-clad homes in the gardens there.
We wrote and sang, and the Lord knows best,
Oh, those dear old songs of the fairy West!

We dreamed and sang of the bustling mother;
The brick-floored kitchen we saw so clear,
The pranks and jokes of the youngest brother,
The evening songs of our sisters dear.
The old man dozed in the chimney corner,
Or smoked and blinked at the cheerful blaze,
Or yarned with a crony, old Jack Horner,
Whod known...

Henry Lawson

Written Out

Sing the song of the reckless, who care not what they do;
Sing the song of a sinner and the song of a writer, too,
Down in a pub in the alleys, in a dark and dirty hole,
With every soul a drunkard and the boss with never a soul.

Uncollared, unkempt, unshaven, sat the writer whose fame was fair,
And the girls of the streets were round him, and the bullies and bludgers there;
He was one of themselves and they told him the things that they had to tell,
He was studying human nature with his brothers and sisters in hell.

He was neither poor nor lonely, for a place in the world hed won,
And up in the heights of the city hed a thousand friends or none;
But he knew that his chums could wait awhile, that hed reckon with foes at last,
For he lived far into a future that he knew b...

Henry Lawson

The Empty Glass

There are three lank bards in a borrowed room,
Ah! The number is one too few,
They have deemed their home and the bars unfit
For the thing that they have to do.
Three glasses they fill with the Lands own wine,
And the bread of life they pass.
Their glasses they take, which they slowly raise,
And they drink to an empty glass.

(Theres a greater glare in the street to-night,
And a louder rush and roar,
Theres a mad crowd yelling the winners name,
And howling the cricket score:
Oh! The bright moonlight on the angels white,
And the tombs and the monuments grand,
And down by the water at Waverley
Theres a little lone mound of sand.)

Oh, the drinkers would deem them drunk or mad,
And the barmaid stare and frown,
Each lays a hand on the empt...

Henry Lawson