Outside

I want to be lighting my pipe on deck,
With my baggage safe below,
I want to be free of the crowded quay,
While the steamers swinging slow.
I want to be free of treachery,
And of sordid joys and griefs,
To be out of sight of the faces white,
And the waving of handkerchiefs.
I want to be making my ship-board friends,
I want to be free of the past,
I want to be laughing with kindred souls,
While the Heads are opening fast.
I want to be sailing far to-day,
On the tracks where the rovers go,
To feel the heave of the deck, and draw
The breath that the rovers know.

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 Old, Old Story And The New Order

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

Australian Bards And Bush Reviewers

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

The Good Old Concertina

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

Nemesis

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 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 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

Wide Spaces

When my last long-beer has vanished and the truth is left unsaid;
When each sordid care is banished from my chair and from my bed,
And my common people sadly murmur: "'Arry Lawson dead,"

When the man I was denounces all the things that I was not,
When the true souls stand like granite, while the souls of liars not,
When the quids I gave are counted, and the trays I cadged forgot;

Shall my spirit see the country that it wrote for once again?
Shall it see the old selections, and the common street and lane?
Shall it pass across the Black Soil and across the Red Soil Plain?

Shall it see the gaunt Bushwoman "slave until she's fit to drop",
For the distant trip to Sydney, all depending on the crop?
Or the twinkling legs of kiddies, running to the lollie-shop?

Sh...

Henry Lawson

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

The Port O'Call

Our hull is seldom painted,
Our decks are seldom stoned;
Our sails are patched and cobbled
And chains by rust marooned.
Our rigging is untidy,
And all things in accord:,
We always sail on Friday
With thirteen souls on board.

For all the days save Friday
Were days of dark despair,
The fourteenth died of fever
Whenever he was there.
Our good ship is the Chancit,
Her oldest name of all;
But, in the ports were blown to,
Shes called the Port o Call.

Our captain old Wot Matters,
Our first mate young Hoo Kares,
Our cook is Wen Yew Wan Tit,
And so the Chancit fares.
The sweethearts, wives, and others,
And all we left behind,
Have many names to go by;
But mine is Never Mind.

We fear no hell hereafter,
...

Henry Lawson

Bound For The Lord-Knows-Where

Where are you going with your horse and bike,
And the townsfolk still at rest?
Where are you going, with your swag and pack,
And the night still in the West?
Your clothes are worn, and your cheques are gone,
But your eyes are free from care?
Were bushmen down for a spree in town,
And were bound for the Lord-knows-where,
Old chap, were bound for the Lord-knows-where.

(There are great dark scrubs in the Lord-knows-where,
Where they fight it out alone,
There are wide wide plains in the Lord-knows-where,
Where a mans soul is his own.
There is healthy work, there is healthy rest,
There is peace from self-torture there,
And the glorious freedom from paltriness!
And theyre bound for the Lord-knows-where.)

Now, where are you going in your Su...

Henry Lawson