The Song Of Australia

The centuries found me to nations unknown,
My people have crowned me and made me a throne;
My royal regalia is love, truth, and light,
A girl called Australia, I've come to my right.

Though no fields of conquest grew red at my birth,
My dead were the noblest and bravest on earth;
Their strong sons are worthy to stand with the best,
My brave Overlanders ride west of the west.

My cities are seeking the clean and the right;
My Statesmen are speaking in London to-night;
The voice of my Bushmen is heard oversea;
My army and navy are coming to me.

By all my grim headlands my flag is unfurled,
My artists and singers are charming the world;
The White world shall know its young outpost with pride;
The fame of my poets goes ever more wide.

By old tow'r and steeple of nation grown grey
The name of my people is spreading to-day;
Through all the old nations my learners go forth;
My youthful inventors are startling the north.

In spite of all Asia, and safe from her yet,
Through wide Australasia my standards I'll set;
A grand world and bright world to rise in an hour,
The Wings of the White world, the Balance of Power.

Through storm, or serenely, whate'er I go through,
God grant I be queenly! God grant I be true!
To suffer in silence, and strike at a sign,
Till all the fair islands of these seas are mine.

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 Ballad Of The Rousabout

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

In The Storm That Is To Come

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

Old North Sydney

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

The Stringy-Bark Tree

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.

Waratah And Wattle

Though poor and in trouble I wander alone,
With rebel cockade in my hat,
Though friends may desert me, and kindred disown,
My country will never do that!
You may sing of the Shamrock, the Thistle, the rose,
Or the three in a bunch, if you will;
But I know of a country that gathered all those,
And I love the great land where the Waratah grows.
And the Wattle-bough blooms on the hill.

Australia! Australia! so fair to behold-
While the blue sky is arching above;
The stranger should never have need to be told,
That the Wattle-bloom means that her heart is of gold.
And the Waratah's red with her love.

Australia! Australia! most beautiful name,
Most kindly and bountiful land;
I would die every death that might save her from shame,
If a black cloud s...

Henry Lawson

From The Bush

The Channel fog has lifted,
And see where we have come!
Round all the world we've drifted,
A hundred years from "home".
The fields our parents longed for,
Ah! we shall ne'er know how,
The wealth that they were wronged for
We'll see as strangers now!

The Dover cliffs have passed on,
In the morning light aglow,
That our fathers looked their last on
A weary time ago.
Now grin, and grin your bravest!
We need be strong to fight;
For you go home to picture
And I go home to write.

Hold up your head in England,
Tread firm on London streets;
We come from where the strong heart
Of all Australia beats!
Hold up your head in England
However poor you roam!
For no men are your betters
Who never sailed from home!

From ...

Henry Lawson

The Heart Of Australia

When the wars of the world seemed ended, and silent the distant drum,
Ten years ago in Australia, I wrote of a war to come:
And I pictured Australians fighting as their fathers fought of old
For the old things, pride or country, for God or the Devil or gold.

And they lounged on the rim of Australia in the peace that had come to last,
And they laughed at my "cavalry charges" for such things belonged to the past;
Then our wise men smiled with indulgence, ere the swift years proved me right,
Saying: "What shall Australia fight for? And whom shall Australia fight?"

I wrote of the unlocked rivers in the days when my heart was full,
And I pleaded for irrigation where they sacrifice all for wool.
I pictured Australia fighting when the coast had been lost and won,
With arsenals we...

Henry Lawson

Wide Lies Australia

Wide lies Australia! The seas that surround her
Flow for her unity, all states in one.
Never has Custom nor Tyranny bound her,
Never was conquest so peacefully won.
Fair lies Australia! with all things within her
Meet for a Nation, the greatest to be:
Free to the White Man to woo and to win her:
Those who'd be happy and those who'd be free.

Free to live fully and free to live cleanly,
Free to give learning to daughter and son;
Free to act nobly but not to act meanly,
Free to forget what the old lands had done.
Free to be Brothers! Our hymn and our sermon
To keep for the White World the balance of Power,
Welcoming all, be they British or German,
All come to help us, we'll wait for the hour.

Out in the West where the flood-water gathers,
Out in ...

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

Australia's Peril (The Warning)

We must suffer, husband and father, we must suffer, daughter and son,
For the wrong we have taken part in and the wrong that we have seen done.
Let the bride of frivolous fashion, and of ease, be ashamed and dumb,
For I tell you the nations shall rule us who have let their children come!

How shall Australia escape it, we in the South and alone
Who have taken the sword for no right of England and none of our own?
(Can we bring back the husbands and fathers, can we bring the lovers and sons?
From the Dead to the homes we have ruined with the fire of our murdering guns?)

Who shall aid and protect us when the blood-streaked dawn we meet?
Will England, the hated of nations, whose existence depends on her fleet?
Who, because of the deer-parks and game-runs where her wheat-fields and ...

Henry Lawson