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)
Now who will seek in oceans depths
A sailors grave with me?

Then up there stepped a merchant stout,
His face was brown and tan:
Ill volunteer to stay on board,
For Im an Englishman!

Then spoke a gallant gentleman,
A lover of romance:
Remain I for the ladies sake,
For Im a son of France!

And next there spoke a Highlander:
Go search the wide world round,
Youll find no spot where on the earth
A Scotsman is not found!

And then there spoke a lad to whom
Killarneys lakes were dear:
It wont be said that Ireland found
No place of honour here!

The boat pushed from the vessels side
Amid the ringing cheers;
And now beneath Old Ocean sleep
The Seabolts volunteers.

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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English

Suggested Poems

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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

For He Was A Jolly Good Fellow

They cheered him from the wharf, it was a glorious day:
His hand went to his scarf, his thoughts were far away.
Oh, he was Jolly Good, they sang it long and loud,
The money lender stood unknown amongst the crowd.
Hed taken him aside, while trembling fit to fall,
No friendly eye espied the last farewell of all!

He held a peevish kid, another at his knee;
The wife whom he could bid farewell, eternally
Stood nagging at his side in tones that none could hear,
And deared him, tender eyed, when passengers came near
(The cabin waits below the row and childrens squall,
And not a soul to know the bitter farce of all).

Their hearts were good as gold, each pocket spared a tray,
They pooled them as of old to drink him on his way.
His pile of luggage rose, as brave...

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

Captain Von Esson Of The Sebastopol

Of his    beauty, or stature, or colour of hair I hadnt the slightest hint,
But he comes to me as a little man, with a scrubby beard and a squint,
With a heart somewhere if it wasnt there, and an Irish terrier nose,
With a bark or a yelp for his friends and his crew, and a bull-dog grip for his foes.

The Japs had taken a permanent fort at the price of ten thousand sons,
And they shelled the ships in the harbour there with their landed naval guns.
Through sand bags laid on the upper deck, the shells went through with a whelt,
And some (because of ballistic curve) out under the armoured belt.

Till each was sunk that the Russians left, while the buildings reeled with the shock,
Save the last of the Russian ships of war, the Sebastopol, in dock.
And this is the reason, told in a ...

Henry Lawson

The Vagabond

White handkerchiefs wave from the short black pier
As we glide to the grand old sea,
But the song of my heart is for none to hear
If one of them waves for me.
A roving, roaming life is mine,
Ever by field or flood,
For not far back in my father's line
Was a dash of the Gipsy blood.

Flax and tussock and fern,
Gum and mulga and sand,
Reef and palm, but my fancies turn
Ever away from land;
Strange wild cities in ancient state,
Range and river and tree,
Snow and ice. But my star of fate
Is ever across the sea.

A god-like ride on a thundering sea,
When all but the stars are blind,
A desperate race from Eternity
With a gale-and-a-half behind.
A jovial spree in the cabin at night,
A song on the rolling deck,
A lark ashore wit...

Henry Lawson

A Song Of Brave Men

Man, is the Sea your master? Sea, and is man your slave?,
This is the song of brave men who never know they are brave:
Ceaselessly watching to save you, stranger from foreign lands,
Soundly asleep in your state room, full sail for the Goodwin Sands!
Life is a dream, they tell us, but life seems very real,
When the lifeboat puts out from Ramsgate, and the buggers put out from Deal!

A gun from the lightship!, a rocket!, a cry of, Turn out, me lad!
Ship on the Sands! theyre shouting, and a rush of the oilskin-clad.
The lifeboat leaping and swooping, in the wake of the fighting tug,
And the luggers afloat in Hells water, Oh, tourist, with cushion and rug!,
Think of the freezing fury, without one minutes relief,
When they stood all night in the blackness by the wreck of the ...

Henry Lawson

The Seabolts Volunteers

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The Seabolts Volunteers