The Shearers

No church-bell rings them from the Track,
No pulpit lights their blindness,
Tis hardship, drought and homelessness
That teach those Bushmen kindness:
The mateship born of barren lands,
Of toil and thirst and danger,
The camp-fare for the stranger set,
The first place to the stranger.

They do the best they can to-day,
Take no thought of the morrow;
Their way is not the old-world way,
They live to lend and borrow.
When shearings done and cheques gone wrong,
They call it time to slither,
They saddle up and say So-long!
And ride, the Lord knows whither.

And though he may be brown or black,
Or wrong man there or right man,
The mate thats honest to his mates
They call that man a white man!
They tramp in mateship side by side,
The Protestant and Roman,
They call no biped lord or sir,
And touch their hats to no man!

They carry in their swags, perhaps,
A portrait and a letter,
And, maybe, deep down in their hearts,
The hope of something better.
Where lonely miles are long to ride,
And all days seem recurrent,
Theres lots of time to think of men
They might have been, but werent.

They turn their faces to the west
And leave the world behind them,
(Their drought-dried graves are seldom green
Where even mates can find them).
They know too little of the world
To rise to wealth or greatness:
But in this book of mine I pay
My tribute to their straightness.

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

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Shearers

No church-bell rings them from the Track,
No pulpit lights their blindness,
Tis hardship, drought and homelessness
That teach those Bushmen kindness:
The mateship born of barren lands,
Of toil and thirst and danger,
The camp-fare for the stranger set,
The first place to the stranger.

They do the best they can to-day,
Take no thought of the morrow;
Their way is not the old-world way,
They live to lend and borrow.
When shearings done and cheques gone wrong,
They call it time to slither,
They saddle up and say So-long!
And ride, the Lord knows whither.

And though he may be brown or black,
Or wrong man there or right man,
The mate thats honest to his mates
They call that man a white man!
They tramp in mateship side by side,...

Henry Lawson

The Swagman And His Mate

From north to south throughout the year
The shearing seasons run,
The Queensland stations start to shear
When Maoriland has done;
But labours cheap and runs are wide,
And some the track must tread
From New Years Day till Christmastide
And never get a shed!
North, west, and south, south, west and north,
They lead and follow Fate,
The stoutest hearts that venture forth,
The swagman and his mate.

A restless, homeless class they are
Who tramp in Borderland.
They take their rest neath moon and star,
Their bed the desert sand,
On sunset tracks they ride and tramp,
Till speech has almost died,
And still they drift from camp to camp
In silence side by side.
They think and dream, as all men do;
Perchance their dreams are great,
Ea...

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

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

The Men Who Made Australia

There'll be royal times in Sydney for the Cuff and Collar Push,
Therell be lots of dreary drivel and clap-trap
From the men who own Australia, but who never knew the Bush,
And who could not point their runs out on the map.
Oh, the daily Press will grovel as it never did before,
Therell be many flags of welcome in the air,
And the Civil Service poet, he shall write odes by the score,
But the men who made the land will not be there.

You shall meet the awful Lady of the latest Birthday Knight,
(She is trying to be English, dont-cher-know?)
You shall hear the empty mouthing of the champion blatherskite,
You shall hear the boss of local drapers blow.
Therell be majahs from the counter, tailors dummies from the fleet,
And to represent Australia here to-day,
There...

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