The Bush Beyond The Range

From Crows Nest here by Sydney town
Where crows had nests of old
I see the Range where day goes down,
The dim blue in the gold.
And sometimes wonder, half in doubt,
Has there been so much change
As pictured in the prints about
The Bush beyond the Range.

Theres motor car and all the frills
But none of my old mates,
The Bush seems run by Bufflo Bills
And Hayseeds from the States.
I miss the homesteads and the scrub,
The stock and fences too,
The horse and swagmen and the pub.
That Minns and Mahoney drew.

I miss the drivers, diggers, sheep,
And, lots of things, Ah, well!
I wonder if the Kellys keep
The Carriers Camp Hotel,
If that still stands by hill and plain
As old man Kellys pride,
Or if he did pull round again
When Mary Kelly died?

And Andy Kelly took to drink,
And Barney took a horse
(And two years hard without a blink)
And each one took his course.
And what became of Andy Mack,
Tom Browne, and Pat OBrine?
It must be twenty seasons back
Since last I had a line.

I wonder if, but I forget
And wonder like a fool,
Is Bertha Lambert teaching yet
A wretched, half-time school?
I hope, ah! how the memories come,
To bother and defer,
I only hope my boyhoods chum,
Fred Spencer, married her.

I wonder if the farms we had
Are scrub or ploughed ground now?
A fence by Harry Dare or Dad
Would last it, anyhow.
I wonder if the cemetry,
Fenced in by Dad and Dare,
Is lonely as it used to be
When they were buried there.

I wonder, and the more it seems
So far away and strange,
For I have lost, except in dreams,
The Bush beyond the Range.
I wonder too, in fear and shame,
Do they, like me, forget,
I wonder if they mind the name
Of Henry Lawson yet.

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 Briny Grave

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

Send Round The Hat

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

New Life, New Love

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

Cromwell

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

English

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Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

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

A Voice From The City

On western plain and eastern hill
Where once my fancy ranged,
The station hands are riding still
And they are little changed.
But I have lost in London gloom
The glory of the day,
The grand perfume of wattle bloom
Is faint and far away.
Brown faces under broad-brimmed hats
The grip of wiry hands,
The gallops on the frosty flats,
Seem dreams of other lands;
The camp fire and the stars that blaze
Above the mystic plain
Are but the thoughts of vanished days
That never come again.

The evening star I seldom view,
That led me on to roam,
I never see the morning star
That used to draw me home.
But I have often longed for day
To hide the few I see,
Because they only point and say
Most bitter things to me.

I wear my l...

Henry Lawson

The 'Soldier Birds'

I mind the river from Mount Frome
To Ballanshanties Bridge,
The Mudgee Hills, and Buckaroo,
Lowes Peak, and Granite Ridge.
The tailers in the creek beneath,
The rugged she-oak boles,
The river cod where shallows linked,
The willowed water-holes.

I mind the blacksoil river flats,
The red soil levels, too,
The sidings where below the scrub
The golden wattles grew;
The track that ran by Tierneys Gap,
The dusk and ghost alarms,
The glorious morning on the hills,
And all the German farms.

I mind the blue-grey gully bush,
The slab-and-shingle school,
The soldier birds that picked the crumbs
Beneath the infants stool.
(Ah! did those little soldier birds,
That whispered, ever know
That one of us should rise so high

Henry Lawson

Bush Hay

The stamp of Scotland is on his face,
But he sailed to the South a lad,
And he does not think of the black bleak hills
And the bitter hard youth he had;
He thinks of a nearer and dearer past
In the bright land far away,
When the teams went up and the teams came down,
In the days when they made bush hay.

The fare was rough and the bush was grim
In the years of his pilgrimage,
But he gained the strength that is still with him
In his hale, late middle age.
He thinks of the girl at the halfway inn
They use as a barn to-day,
Oh, she was a dumpling and he was thin
In the days when they made bush hay.

The ration teams to the Bathurst Plains
Were often a fortnight full.
And they branched all ways in the early days
And back to the port with...

Henry Lawson

Borderland

Opening salvo in "The Bush Controversy".



I am back from up the country, very sorry that I went,
Seeking for the Southern poets' land whereon to pitch my tent;
I have lost a lot of idols, which were broken on the track,
Burnt a lot of fancy verses, and I'm glad that I am back.
Further out may be the pleasant scenes of which our poets boast,
But I think the country's rather more inviting round the coast,
Anyway, I'll stay at present at a boarding-house in town
Drinking beer and lemon-squashes, taking baths and cooling down.

Sunny plains! Great Scot!, those burning wastes of barren soil and sand
With their everlasting fences stretching out across the land!
Desolation where the crow is! Desert! where the eagle flies,
Paddocks where the luny bullock starts and ...

Henry Lawson

The Bard Of Furthest Out

He longed to be a Back-Blocks Bard,
And fame he wished to win,
He wrote at night and studied hard
(He read The Bulletin);
He sent in stuff unceasingly,
But couldnt get it through;
And so, at last, he came to me
To see what I could do.

The poets light was in his eye,
He aimed to be a man;
He bought a bluey and a fly,
A brand new billy-can.
I showed him how to roll his swag
And sling it with the best;
I gave him my old water-bag,
And pointed to the west.

Now you can take the train as far
As Blazes if you like,
The wealthy go by motor-car
(Some travellers go by bike);
They race it through without a rest,
And find it very tame,
But if you tramp it to the west
Youll get there just the same.

(No matt...

Henry Lawson