Sydney-Side

Where's the steward?, Bar-room steward? Berth? Oh, any berth will do,
I have left a three-pound billet just to come along with you.
Brighter shines the Star of Rovers on a world thats growing wide,
But I think Id give a kingdom for a glimpse of Sydney-Side.

Run of rocky shelves at sunrise, with their base on oceans bed;
Homes of Coogee, homes of Bondi, and the lighthouse on South Head.
For in loneliness and hardship, and with just a touch of pride,
Has my heart been taught to whisper, You belong to Sydney-Side.

Oh, there never dawned a morning, in the long and lonely days,
But I thought I saw the ferries streaming out across the bays,
And as fresh and fair in fancy did the picture rise again
As the sunrise flushed the city from Woollahra to Balmain:

And the sunny water frothing round the liners black and red,
And the coastal schooners working by the loom of Bradleys Head;
And the whistles and the sirens that re-echo far and wide,
All the life and light and beauty that belong to Sydney-Side.

And the dreary cloud-line never veiled the end of one day more,
But the city set in jewels rose before me from The Shore.
Round the sea-world shine the beacons of a thousand ports o call,
But the harbour-lights of Sydney are the grandest of them all!

Toiling out beyond Coolgardie, heart and back and spirit broke,
Where the Rovers Star gleams redly in the desert by the soak,
But says one mate to the other, Brace your lip and do not fret,
We will laugh on trains and buses, Sydneys in the same place yet.

Working in the South in winter, to the waist in dripping fern,
Where the local spirit hungers for each saxpence that we earn,
We can stand it for a season, for our world is growing wide,
And they all are friends and strangers who belong to Sydney-Side.

Tother-siders! Tother-siders! Yet we wake the dusty dead;
It is we that send the backward province fifty years ahead;
We it is that trim Australia, making narrow country wide,
Yet were always Tother-siders till we sail for Sydney-side.

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 Drunkard's Vision

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

The Sorrows Of A Simple Bard

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

The Cab Lamps Or, From The Lanes Of Loo

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

Young Kings And Old

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

English

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Lachlan Side

Region of damper and junk and tea,
Region of pastures wide!
The fairest spots in the world to me
Are out on the Lachlan Side.

CHORUS:
        Im off to the Lachlan Side,
                Where the bright lagoons are wide;
                I long for river and grass and tree,
                And someone dearer than all to me,
                Far out on the Lachlan Side.

My heart was hardened against advice
And reason I would not see,
For by the ocean a paradise
The city appeared to me.

CHORUS:
                Im off to the Lachlan Side, etc.

Not I for a bumpkins fate, I cried,
Ill not be a country clown!
A lifes too slow on the Lachlan Side;
Ill go to the shining town!

CHORUS:
        ...

Henry Lawson

Above Lavender Bay

Tis glorious morning everywhere
Save where the alleys lie,
I see the fleecy steam jets bid
Good morning to the sky.
The gullies of the waratah
Are near, with fall and pool,
And by the shadowed western rocks
The bays are fresh and cool.
To points that hint of Italy,
Of Italy and Spain,
I see the busy ferry boats
Come nosing round again.
To the toy station down below
I see the toy trains run,
(I wonder when those ferry boats
Will get their business done?)

Above the Bay called Lavender
This bard is domiciled,
Where up through rich, dark greenery
The red-tiled roofs are piled,
(At least some are, I hope that soon
They all shall be red-tiled),
A moonlight night in middle-age
That makes one feel a child.

Close...

Henry Lawson

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

Bourke

Ive followed all my tracks and ways,from old bark school to Leicester Square,
Ive been right back to boyhoods days, and found no light or pleasure there.
But every dream and every track, and there were many that I knew,
They all lead on, or they lead back, to Bourke in Ninety-one, and two.

No sign that green grass ever grew in scrubs that blazed beneath the sun;
The plains were dust in Ninety-two, that baked to bricks in Ninety-one.
On glaring iron-roofs of Bourke, the scorching, blinding sandstorms blew,
And there was nothing beautiful in Ninety-one and Ninety-two.

Save grit and generosity of hearts that broke and healed again,
The hottest drought that ever blazed could never parch the hearts of men;
And they were men in spite of all, and they were straight, and they were t...

Henry Lawson

The Last Review

Turn the light down, nurse, and leave me, while I hold my last review,
For the Bush is slipping from me, and the town is going too:
Draw the blinds, the streets are lighted, and I hear the tramp of feet,
And Im weary, very weary, of the Faces in the Street.

In the dens of Grind and Heartbreak, in the streets of Never-Rest,
I have lost the scent and colour and the music of the West:
And I would recall old faces with the memories they bring,
Where are Bill and Jim and Mary and the Songs They used to Sing?

They are coming! They are coming! they are passing through the room
With the smell of gum leaves burning, and the scent of Wattle bloom!
And behind them in the timber, after dust and heat and toil,
Others sit beside the camp fire yarning while the billies boil.

...

Henry Lawson

The Bonny Port Of Sydney

The lovely Port of Sydney
Lies laughing to the sky,
The bonny Port of Sydney,
Where the ships of nations lie.
You shall never see such beauty,
Though you sail the wide world oer,
As the sunny Port of Sydney,
As we see it from the Shore.

The shades of night are falling
On many ports of call,
But the harbour lights of Sydney
Are the grandest of them all;
Such a city set in jewels
Has neer been seen before
As the harbour lights of Sydney
As we see them from the Shore.

I must sail for gloomy London,
Where there are no harbour lights,
Where no sun is seen in winter,
And there are no starry nights;
And the bonny port of Sydney,
I may never see it more,
But Ill always dream about it
As we view it from North Shore.

Henry Lawson