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

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.'

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Above Eurunderee

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English

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Sydney Harbour

Where Hornby, like a mighty fallen star,
Burns through the darkness with a splendid ring
Of tenfold light, and where the awful face
Of Sydneys northern headland stares all night
Oer dark, determined waters from the east,
From year to year a wild, Titanic voice
Of fierce aggressive sea shoots up and makes,
When storm sails high through drifts of driving sleet,
And in the days when limpid waters glass
Decembers sunny hair and forest face,
A roaring down by immemorial caves,
A thunder in the everlasting hills.

But calm and lucid as an English lake,
Beloved by beams and wooed by wind and wing,
Shut in from tempest-trampled wastes of wave,
And sheltered from white wraths of surge by walls
Grand ramparts founded by the hand of God,
The lordly Harbour g...

Henry Kendall

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

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...

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

Bonnie New South Wales

It surely cannot be too soon, and never is too late,
It tones with all Australias tune to praise ones native State,
And so I bring an old refrain from days of posts and rails,
And lift the good old words again, for Sunny New South Wales.

She bore me on her tented fields, and wore my youth away,
And little gold of all she yields repays my toil to-day;
By track and camp and bushmans hut, by streets where courage fails,
Ive sung for all Australia, but my hearts in New South Wales.

The waratah and wattle there in all their glory grow,
And if they bloom on hills elsewhere, Im not supposed to know,
The tales that other States may tell, I never hear the tales!
For I, her son, have sinned as well as Bonnie New South Wales.

I only know her heart is good to sweethea...

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