Poverty

I hate this grinding poverty,
To toil, and pinch, and borrow,
And be for ever haunted by
The spectre of to-morrow.
It breaks the strong heart of a man,
It crushes out his spirit,
Do what he will, do what he can,
However high his merit!

I hate the praise that Want has got
From preacher and from poet,
The cant of those who know it not
To blind the men who know it.
The greatest curse since man had birth,
An everlasting terror:
The cause of half the crime on earth,
The cause of half the error.

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 Cockney Soul

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

As Ireland Wore The Green

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

Sweethearts Wait On Every Shore

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

To Jim

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.

Beaten Back

Beaten back in sad dejection,
After years of weary toil
On that burning hot selection
Where the drought has gorged his spoil.

All in vain gainst him, the vulture,
I have battled without rest,
In the van of agriculture,
Marching out into the West.

Now the eagle-hawks are feeding
On my perished stock that reek
Where the water-holes receding
Long had left the burning creek.

I must labour without pity,
I the pick and spade must wield
In the streetways of the city
Or upon anothers field!

Can it be my reasons rocking,
For I feel a burning hate
For the God who, only mocking,
Sent the prayed-for rain too late?

Pour, ye mocking rains, and rattle
On the bare, brown, grassless plain,
On the shrivelled hides o...

Henry Lawson

The Soul Of A Poet

I have written, long years I have written,
For the sake of my people and right,
I was true when the iron had bitten
Deep into my soul in the night;
I wrote not for praise nor for money,
I craved but the soul and the pen,
And I felt not the sting in the honey
Of writing the kindness of men.

You read and you saw without seeing,
My work seemed a trifle apart,
While the truth of things thrilled through my being,
And the wrong of things murdered my heart!
Cast out, and despised and neglected,
And weak, and in fear, and in debt,
My songs, mutilated! rejected!
Shall ring through the Commonwealth yet!

And you to the pure and the guileless,
And the peace of your comfort and pride,
You have mocked at my bodily vileness,
You have tempted and ca...

Henry Lawson

The Afterglow

Oh, for the fire that used to glow
In those my days of old!
I never thought a man could grow
So callous and so cold.
Ah, for the heart that used to ache
For those in sorrows ways;
I often wish my heart could break
As it did in those dead days.

Along my track of storm and stress,
And it is plain to trace,
I look back from the loneliness
And the depth of my disgrace.
Twas fate and only fate I know,
But all mistakes are plain,
Tis sadder than the afterglow,
More dreary than the rain.

But still there lies a patch of sun
That neer will come again,
Those golden days when I was one
Of Natures gentlemen.
And if there is a memory
Could break me down at last,
It sure would be the thought of this,
The sunshine in the pa...

Henry Lawson

The Song Of The Waste-Paper Basket

O bard of fortune, you deem me nought
But a mark for your careless scorn.
For I am the echo-less grave of thought
That is strangled before its born.
You think perchance that I am a doom
Which only a dunce should dread,
Nor dream Ive been the dishonoured tomb
Of the noblest and brightest dead.

The brightest fancies that eer can fly
From the labouring minds of men
Are often written in lines awry,
And marred by a blundering pen;
And thus it comes that I gain a part
Of what to the world is loss,
Of genius lost for the want of art,
Of pearls that are set in dross.

And though I am of a lowly birth
My fame has been cheaply bought,
A power am I, for I rob the earth
Of the brightest gems of thought;
The Press gains much of my lawful s...

Henry Lawson

The Shame Of Going Back

When you've come to make a fortune and you haven't made your salt,
And the reason of your failure isn't anybody's fault,
When you haven't got a billet, and the times are very slack,
There is nothing that can spur you like the shame of going back;
Crawling home with empty pockets,
Going back hard-up;
Oh! it's then you learn the meaning of humiliation's cup.

When the place and you are strangers and you struggle all alone,
And you have a mighty longing for the town where you are known;
When your clothes are very shabby and the future's very black,
There is nothing that can hurt you like the shame of going back.

When we've fought the battle bravely and are beaten to the wall,
'Tis the sneers of men, not conscience, that make cowards of us all;
And the while you are r...

Henry Lawson

The Peace Maker

It has a point of neither sex
But comes in guise of both,
And, doubly dangerous complex,
It is a thing to loathe,
A lady with her sweet, sad smile,
A gentleman on oath.

Strip off the mother-veil, and fur!
And signs of quiet taste.
The dead childs locket take from her
(The dead mans gift in haste)
And wash from every evil line
The layers of filling paste!

From saddened eyes the hells own glare!
From sweet mouth blasphemy!
Wrench out the gold-filled false teeth there
That twice mock honesty,
And leave the evil face awry
For married folk to see.

For foolish girl wives in despair,
For mens and childrens sakes,
Let loose the glossed and padded hair
To writhe like scorching snakes!
And strip the barren bod...

Henry Lawson