The Song And The Sigh

The creek went down with a broken song,
'Neath the sheoaks high;
The waters carried the song along,
And the oaks a sigh.

The song and the sigh went winding by,
Went winding down;
Circling the foot of the mountain high,
And the hillside brown.

They were hushed in the swamp of the Dead Man's Crime,
Where the curlews cried;
But they reached the river the self-same time,
And there they died.

And the creek of life goes winding on,
Wandering by;
And bears for ever, its course upon,
A song and a sigh.

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

Fighting Hard

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

Freedom On The Wallaby

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

How The Land Was Won

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

As Good As New

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

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

Eurunderee

There are scenes in the distance where beauty is not,
On the desolate flats where gaunt appletrees rot.
Where the brooding old ridge rises up to the breeze
From his dark lonely gullies of stringy-bark trees,
There are voice-haunted gaps, ever sullen and strange,
But Eurunderee lies like a gem in the range.

Still I see in my fancy the dark-green and blue
Of the box-covered hills where the five-corners grew;
And the rugged old sheoaks that sighed in the bend
Oer the lily-decked pools where the dark ridges end,
And the scrub-covered spurs running down from the Peak
To the deep grassy banks of Eurunderee Creek.

On the knolls where the vineyards and fruit-gardens are
Theres a beauty that even the drought cannot mar;
For I noticed it oft, in the days that are lo...

Henry Lawson

Above Eurunderee

There are scenes in the distance where beauty is not,
On the desolate flats where gaunt appletrees rot.
Where the brooding old ridge rises up to the breeze
From his dark lonely gullies of stringy-bark trees,
There are voice-haunted gaps, ever sullen and strange,
But Eurunderee lies like a gem in the range.

Still I see in my fancy the dark-green and blue
Of the box-covered hills where the five-corners grew;
And the rugged old sheoaks that sighed in the bend
O'er the lily-decked pools where the dark ridges end,
And the scrub-covered spurs running down from the Peak
To the deep grassy banks of Eurunderee Creek.

On the knolls where the vineyards and fruit-gardens are
There's a beauty that even the drought cannot mar;
For I noticed it oft, in the days that are lo...

Henry Lawson

Sheoaks That Sigh When The Wind Is Still

Why are the sheoaks forever sighing?
(Sheoaks that sigh when the wind is still),
Why are the dead hopes forever dying?
(Dead hopes that died and are with us still.)
As you make it and what you will.

Why are the ridges forever waiting?
Ridges that waited ere one man came,
Still by the towns with their life vibrating
Lonely ridges that wait the same.
Ridges and gullies without a name.

Why is the strong heart forever peering
Into the future that speaks no ill?
Why is the kind heart forever cheering,
Even at times when the fears are still?
As you make it, and what you will.

Why is the distance forever drawing?
(The wide horizon is round us still!)
Why is resentment forever gnawing
Against a world that may mean no ill?
Why are so ma...

Henry Lawson

The Song Of The Darling River

The skies are brass and the plains are bare,
Death and ruin are everywhere,
And all that is left of the last year's flood
Is a sickly stream on the grey-black mud;
The salt-springs bubble and the quagmires quiver,
And, this is the dirge of the Darling River:

`I rise in the drought from the Queensland rain,
`I fill my branches again and again;
`I hold my billabongs back in vain,
`For my life and my peoples the South Seas drain;
`And the land grows old and the people never
`Will see the worth of the Darling River.

`I drown dry gullies and lave bare hills,
`I turn drought-ruts into rippling rills,
`I form fair island and glades all green
`Till every bend is a sylvan scene.
`I have watered the barren land ten leagues wide!
`But in vain I have trie...

Henry Lawson

The Legend Of Cooee Gully

The night came down thro Deadmans Gap,
Where the ghostly saplings bent
Before a wind that tore the fly
From many a diggers tent.

Dark as pitch, and the rain rushed past
On a wind that howled again;
And we crowded into the only but
That stood on the hillside then.

The strong pine rafters creaked and strained,
Til we thought that the roof would go;
And we felt the box-bark walls bend in
And bulge like calico.

A flood had come from the gorges round:
Thro the gullys bed it poured.
Down many a deep, deserted shaft
The yellow waters roared.

The scene leapt out when the lightning flashed
And shone with a ghastly grey;
And the night sprang back to the distant range
Neath a sky as bright as day.

Then the darkness...

Henry Lawson

Reedy River

Ten miles down Reedy River
A pool of water lies,
And all the year it mirrors
The changes in the skies.
Within that pool's broad bosom
Is room for all the stars:
It's bed of sand has drifted
O'er countless rocky bars.

Around the lower edges
There waves a bed of reeds,
Where water-rats are hidden
And where the wild duck breeds;
And grassy slopes rise gently
To ridges long and low,
Where groves of wattle flourish
And native bluebells grow.

Beneath the granite ridges
The eye may just discern
Where Rocky Creek emerges
From deep green banks of fern;
And standing tall between them,
The drooping she-oaks cool
The hard blue tinted waters
Before they reach the pool.

Ten miles down Reedy River
One Sunday afte...

Henry Lawson