Rise Ye! Rise Ye!

Rise Ye! rise ye! noble toilers! claim your rights with fire and steel!
Rise ye! for the cursed tyrants crush ye with the hiron eel!
They would treat ye worse than sl-a-a-ves! they would treat ye worse than brutes!
Rise and crush the selfish tyrants! ku-r-rush them with your hob-nailed boots!
Rise ye rise ye glorious toilers
Rise ye rise ye noble toilers!
Erwake! er-rise!
Rise ye! rise ye! noble toilers! tyrants come across the waves!
Will ye yield the Rights of Labour? will ye? will ye still be sl-a-a-ves?
Rise ye! rise ye! mighty toilers! and revoke the rotten laws!
Lo! your wives go out a-washing while ye battle for the caws!
Rise ye! rise ye glorious toilers!
Rise ye! rise ye noble toilers!
Erwake! er-rise!

Our gerlorious dawn is breaking! Lo! the tyrant trembles now!
He will sta-a-rve us here no longer! toilers will not bend or bow!
Rise ye! rise ye! noble toilers! rise! behold, revenge is near;
See the leaders of the people! come an ave a pint o beer!
Rise ye! rise ye! noble toilers!
Rise ye! rise ye! glorious toilers!
Erwake! er-rise!

Lo! the poor are starved, my brothers! lo! our wives and children weep!
Lo! our women toil to keep us while the toilers are asleep!
Rise ye! rise ye! noble toilers! rise and break the tyrants chain!
March ye! march ye! mighty toilers! even to the battle plain!
Rise ye! rise ye! noble toilers!
Rise ye! rise ye! noble toilers!
Erwake! er-r-rise!

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

Since Then

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

At The Beating Of A Drum

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

The Never-Never Country

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

The Little Native Rose

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.

A Song For The Sydney Poor or, The Australian Marseillaise

Sing the strong, proud song of Labour,
Toss the ringing music high;
Libertys a nearer neighbour
Than she was in days gone by.
Workmens weary wives and daughters
Sing the songs of liberty;
Men hail men across the waters,
Men reply across the sea.

We are marching on and onward
To the silver-streak of dawn,
To the dynasty of mankind
We are marching on.

Long the rich have been protected
By the walls that cant endure;
By the walls that they erected
To divide them from the poor.
Crumbling now, they should not trust them,
For their end is drawing near;
Walls of Cant and walls of Custom,
Walls of Ignorance and Fear.

Tyrants, grip your weapons firmer,
Grip them firmly by the helves;
For the poor begin to murmur
Lo...

Henry Lawson

The Australian Marseillaise or, A Song For The Sydney Poor

Sing the strong, proud song of Labour,
Toss the ringing music high;
Libertys a nearer neighbour
Than she was in days gone by.
Workmens weary wives and daughters
Sing the songs of liberty;
Men hail men across the waters,
Men reply across the sea.

We are marching on and onward
To the silver-streak of dawn,
To the dynasty of mankind
We are marching on.

Long the rich have been protected
By the walls that cant endure;
By the walls that they erected
To divide them from the poor.
Crumbling now, they should not trust them,
For their end is drawing near;
Walls of Cant and walls of Custom,
Walls of Ignorance and Fear.

Tyrants, grip your weapons firmer,
Grip them firmly by the helves;
For the poor begin to murmur
Lo...

Henry Lawson

The Distant Drum

Republicans! the time is coming!
Listen to the distant drumming!
Hearken to the whispers humming
In the troubled atmosphere.

Ye are born to do the toiling;
On and on, and no recoiling!
To the fighting, to the foiling
Of the wrongs that wrong us here.

Let the Loyal laugh and jeer you;
Let them in derision cheer you.
Still the cowards show they fear you
By their deeds and all they say.

Let Britannia rule for ever
Oer the wave; but never, never!
Rule a land great oceans sever
Fifteen thousand miles away.

Stained by persecutions fires
Thinned of homes and thick with spires,
They love the land that bred their sires,
Ye the Land that breeds your sons.

And your sons shall have the reaping,
And your sons shall h...

Henry Lawson

The Labour Agitator

Let the liar call me liar,
And the robber call me thief.
They can only fan the fire
That is born of my belief.
While Im speaking, while Im writing,
To reform the wrongful laws,
Well I know that I am fighting
For the grand old Cause.


See the army of the rebels
Marching on for evermore.
We are countless as the pebbles
That are strewn along the shore.
Agitating, agitating,
Till the Truth has sealed the fate
Of the wrongs that I am hating
With the grand old Hate.


Though no battle banner rustles
In a smoke that blurs the blue,
As when heroes poured from Brussels
To the field of Waterloo,
Though we do not hear the rattle
Of the rifles in the wars,
There is glory in the battle
For the grand old Cause.

Henry Lawson

Sydney Town In 91

Let us sing a song as not a
Solitary poet sings,
For our seething brain has got a
Mighty grip on earthly things;
We can feel the strength within us,
And our soul is bounding high,
And our hissing pen shall win us
Wealth and Beauty by-and-bye.

Listen to the thunder swelling
Till the mighty west vibrates!
Tis the horny-handed yelling
For the Labour candidates!
Hear the language of the frisky
Push assisting at the fun:
Liberty, and rum and whisky!
Sydney town in 91.

Whack the poor and cut a caper,
Turn the taps and shout wharroo!
For each Sydney leading paper
Has a candidate or two.
Every new one is an ember,
Lighting up this land of sin,
Clever little B, , k is member
For the Sydney Bulletin.

Wherefor...

Henry Lawson

On The March

So the time seems come at last,
And the drums go rolling past,
And above them in the sunlight Labour's banners float and flow;
They are marching with the sun,
But I look in vain for one
Of the men who fought for freedom more than fifteen years ago.

They were men who did the work
Out at Blackall, Hay, and Bourke,
They were men who fought the battle that the world shall never know;
And they vanished one by one
When their bitter task was done,
Men who worked and wrote for freedom more than fifteen years ago.

Some are scattered, some are dead,
By the shanty and the shed,
In the lignum and the mulga, by the river running low;
And I often wish in vain
I could call them back again,
Mates of mine who fought for freedom more than fifteen years ago.

Henry Lawson