The Drovers

Shrivelled leather, rusty buckles, and the rot is in our knuckles,
Scorched for months upon the pommel while the brittle rein hung free;
Shrunken eyes that once were lighted with fresh boyhood, dull and blighted,
And the sores upon our eyelids are unpleasant sights to see.
And our hair is thin and dying from the ends, with too long lying
In the night dews on the ashes of the Dry Countree.
Yes, weve seen em bleaching whitely where the salt-bush sparkles brightly,
But their grins were over-friendly, so we passed and let them be.

And weve seen them rather recent, and weve stopped to hide em decent
When they werent nice to handle and they werent too nice to see;
We have heard the dry bones rattle under fifteen hundred cattle,
Seen the rags go up in dust-clouds and the brittle joints kicked free;
But theres little time to tarry, if you wish to live and marry,
When the cattle shy at something in the Dry Countree.

No, you neednt fear the blacks on the Never Never tracks,
For the Myall in his freedoms an uncommon sight to see;
Oh! we do not stick at trifles, and the trackers sneak their rifles,
And go strolling in the gloaming while the sergeants yarning free:
Round the Myalls creep the trackers, theres a sound like firing crackers
And, the blacks are getting scarcer in the Dry Countree.
(Goes an unprotected maiden-cross the clearing carrion-laden,
Oh they ride em down on horseback in the Dry Countree.)

But you dont know what might happen when a tank is but a trap on
Roofs of hell, and there is nothing but the blaze of hell to see;
And the phantom waters lapping, and no limb for saddle-strapping,
Better carry your revolver through the Dry Countree.
But Im feeling gay and frisky, come with me and have a whisky!
Change of hells is all we live for (thats my mate thats got D.T.);
We have fought through hells own weather, he and I and death together,
Oh, the devil grins to greet us from the Dry Countree!

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

Wide Lies Australia

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

A Prouder Man Than You

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

Golden Gully

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

As Ireland Wore The Green

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.

Outback

The old year went, and the new returned, in the withering weeks of drought,
The cheque was spent that the shearer earned, and the sheds were all cut out;
The publican's words were short and few, and the publican's looks were black,
And the time had come, as the shearer knew, to carry his swag Out Back.

For time means tucker, and tramp you must, where the scrubs and plains are wide,
With seldom a track that a man can trust, or a mountain peak to guide;
All day long in the dust and heat, when summer is on the track,
With stinted stomachs and blistered feet, they carry their swags Out Back.

He tramped away from the shanty there, when the days were long and hot,
With never a soul to know or care if he died on the track or not.
The poor of the city have friends in woe, no matter how...

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 Never-Never Country

By homestead, hut, and shearing-shed,
By railroad, coach, and track,
By lonely graves of our brave dead,
Up-Country and Out-Back:
To where 'neath glorious the clustered stars
The dreamy plains expand,
My home lies wide a thousand miles
In the Never-Never Land.

It lies beyond the farming belt,
Wide wastes of scrub and plain,
A blazing desert in the drought,
A lake-land after rain;
To the sky-line sweeps the waving grass,
Or whirls the scorching sand,
A phantom land, a mystic land!
The Never-Never Land.

Where lone Mount Desolation lies,
Mounts Dreadful and Despair,
'Tis lost beneath the rainless skies
In hopeless deserts there;
It spreads nor'-west by No-Man's-Land,
Where clouds are seldom seen,
To where the cattle-stati...

Henry Lawson

Song Of The Old Bullock-Driver

Far back in the days when the blacks used to ramble
In long single file neath the evergreen tree,
The wool-teams in season came down from Coonamble,
And journeyed for weeks on their way to the sea,
Twas then that our hearts and our sinews were stronger,
For those were the days when the bushman was bred.
We journeyed on roads that were rougher and longer
Than roads where the feet of our grandchildren tread.

With mates who have gone to the great Never-Never,
And mates whom Ive not seen for many a day,
I camped on the banks of the Cudgegong River
And yarned at the fire by the old bullock-dray.
I would summon them back from the far Riverina,
From days that shall be from all others distinct,
And sing to the sound of an old concertina
Their rugged old songs wher...

Henry Lawson

Song Of The Old Bullock-Driver

Far back in the days when the blacks used to ramble
In long single file neath the evergreen tree,
The wool-teams in season came down from Coonamble,
And journeyed for weeks on their way to the sea,
Twas then that our hearts and our sinews were stronger,
For those were the days when the bushman was bred.
We journeyed on roads that were rougher and longer
Than roads where the feet of our grandchildren tread.

With mates who have gone to the great Never-Never,
And mates whom Ive not seen for many a day,
I camped on the banks of the Cudgegong River
And yarned at the fire by the old bullock-dray.
I would summon them back from the far Riverina,
From days that shall be from all others distinct,
And sing to the sound of an old concertina
Their rugged old songs wher...

Henry Lawson

In Answer To "Banjo," And Otherwise. (The City Bushman)

Part of "The Bush Controversy".


It was pleasant up the country, Mr. Banjo, where you went,
For you sought the greener patches and you travelled like a gent.,
And you curse the trains and 'busses and the turmoil and the "push,"
Tho' you know the "squalid city" needn't keep you from the bush;
But we lately heard you singing of the "plains where shade is not,"
And you mentioned it was dusty, "all is dry and all is hot."

True, the bush "hath moods and changes," and the bushman hath 'em, too,
For he's not a poet's dummy, he's a man, the same as you;
But his back is growing rounder - slaving for the "absentee",
And his toiling wife is thinner than a country wife should be,
For he noticed that the faces of the folks we chanerd to meet
Should have made a greater contras...

Henry Lawson