Stand by the Engines

On the moonlighted decks there are children at play,
While smoothly the steamer is holding her way;
And the old folks are chatting on deck-seats and chairs,
And the lads and the lassies go strolling in pairs.

Some gaze half-entranced on the beautiful sea,
And wonder perhaps if a vision it be:
And surely there journeys no sorrow nor care,
For wealth, love, and beauty are passengers there.

But down underneath, mid the coal dust that smears
The face and the hands, work the ships engineers.
Whateer be the duty of others, tis theirs
To stand by their engines whatever occurs.

The sailor may gaze on the sea and the sky;
The sailor may tell when the danger is nigh;
But when Death his black head oer the waters uprears,
Unseen he is met by the ships engineers.

They are thrown from their feet by the force of a shock;
They know that their vessel has struck on a rock.
Now stand by your engines when danger appears,
For all may depend on the ships engineers!

No thought of their danger! No mad rush on deck!
They stand at their posts in the hull of a wreck,
Firm hands on the valves; and the white steam appears;
And down with their ship go the brave engineers!

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

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English

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The Ships That Won't Go Down

We hear a great commotion
'Bout the ship that comes to grief,
That founders in mid-ocean,
Or is driven on a reef;
Because it's cheap and brittle
A score of sinners drown.
But we hear but mighty little
Of the ships that won't go down.

Here's honour to the builders,
The builders of the past;
Here's honour to the builders
That builded ships to last;
Here's honour to the captain,
And honour to the crew;
Here's double-column headlines
To the ships that battle through.

They make a great sensation
About famous men that fail,
That sink a world of chances
In the city morgue or gaol,
Who drink, or blow their brains out,
Because of "Fortune's frown".
But we hear far too little
Of the men who won't go down.

The wor...

Henry Lawson

The Stranded Ship (The Vincennes)

Twas the glowing log of a picnic fire where a red light should not be,
Or the curtained glow of a sick room light in a window that faced the sea.
But the Manly lights seemed the Sydney lights, and the bluffs as the Heads were seen;
And the Manly beach was the channel thenand the captain steered between.

The croakers said with a shoulder shrug, and a careless, know-all glance:
You might pull out her stem, or pull out her sternbut shell sail no more for France!
Her stem was dry when the tide was out, and behind her banked the sand,
Where strong gales come from the Hurricane east and the sun sets on the land.

When the tide was high and the rollers struck she shuddered as if in pain,
She had no hope for the open sea and the fair full breeze again.
She turned her side to the...

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

The Seabolts Volunteers

They towed the Seabolt down the stream,
And through the harbours mouth;
She spread her wings and sailed away
To seek the sunny South.

But, ah! she met with storm on storm
Ere half her course had run;
And all her masts were torn away,
And all her boats save one.

The good old ship had settled far
Beneath her cargo line,
Her riven sides were drinking deep
The draughts of ocean brine.

There gathered round the only boat
The women pale with fear,
And trembling little ones, who clung
To those who held them dear.

Then spoke the captain, brave and true,
His voice rose oer the roar;
The boat will save us all but five,
She cannot float with more!

And backward from the side he stepped
(He had been born at sea)

Henry Lawson

Australian Engineers

Ah, well! but the case seems hopeless, and the pen might write in vain;
The people gabble of old things over and over again.
For the sake of the sleek importer we slave with the pick and the shears,
While hundreds of boys in Australia long to be engineers.

A new generation has risen under Australian skies,
Boys with the light of genius deep in their dreamy eyes,
Not as of artists or poets with their vain imaginings,
But born to be thinkers and doers, and makers of wonderful things.

Born to be builders of vessels in the Harbours of Waste and Loss,
That shall carry our goods to the nations, flying the Southern Cross;
And fleets that shall guard our seaboard, while the East is backed by the Jews,
Under Australian captains, and manned by Australian crews.

Boys who a...

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