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 pounding seas and the foam glared over the rails,
It seemed her fate to be sold and stripped, and broken by winter gales.

But they sent strong gear, and they sent the gangs, and they sent her a man who knew,
And the tugs came nosing round from the Heads to see what a tug could do;
The four-ton anchors they laid to sea in the waves and the wind and rain,
And the great steel hawser they hove aboard made fast to her cable chain.

And then, while the gaping townsfolk stared from the shining beach in doubt,
The crew and the shore-gangs lowered her yards and they hove the ballast out.
(To lie like a strange sea-grave upheaved on the smooth sand by her side)
And they made all ready and clear for the tugs to come on the rising tide.

And so, in the night when the tide was in and a black sky hid the stars,
The shoremen worked at the jumping winch and the crew at the capstan bars.
To seaward the two tugs rose and fell in their own wild stormy glare
And her head came round for a fathoms length! for a mighty heave was there.

So, tide by tide, and yard by yard, they hove her off the shore
To fit, and load for her ports of call, and to sail for France once more.
Till at last she came with the wild blind rush of a frightened thing set free,
And they towed her round to the Sydney Heads and in from the stormy sea.

And the croakers say, when a man is down, with a shrug and a know-all glance,
Oh, hell never get out of the gutter again, he has done with every chance;
But well haul and heave on the block and sheeve, wave-beaten and black-rock hemmed,
And well sail with cargoes that they shall buy, when their ships are all condemned.

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

One Hundred And Three

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

The Firing-Line

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

The Spirits For Good

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

Sweethearts Wait On Every Shore

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

English

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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)

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 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

The Ballad Of The Calliope

By the far Samoan shore,
Where the league-long rollers pour
All the wash of the Pacific on the coral-guarded bay,
Riding lightly at their ease,
In the calm of tropic seas,
The three great nations' warships at their anchors proudly lay.

Riding lightly, head to wind,
With the coral reefs behind,
Three German and three Yankee ships were mirrored in the blue;
And on one ship unfurled
Was the flag that rules the world,
For on the old Calliope the flag of England flew.

When the gentle off-shore breeze,
That had scarcely stirred the trees,
Dropped down to utter stillness, and the glass began to fall,
Away across the main
Lowered the coming hurricane,
And far away to seaward hung the cloud-wrack like a pall.

If the word had passed around,

Andrew Barton Paterson

The Light On The Wreck

Out there by the rocks, at the end of the bank,
In the mouth of the river, the Wanderer sank.
She is resting where meet the blue water and green,
And only her masts and her funnel are seen;
And you see, when is fading the sunsets last fleck,
On her foremast a lantern, a light on a wreck.

Tis a light on a wreck, warning ships to beware
Of the drowned iron hull of the Wanderer there;
And the ships that come in and go out in the night
Keep a careful lookout for the Wanderers light.
There are rules for the harbour and rules for the wave;
But all captains steer clear of the Wanderers grave.

And the stories of strong lives that ended in wrecks
Might be likened to lights over derelict decks;
Like the light where, in sight of the streets of the town,
In the...

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

The Stranded Ship (The Vincennes)

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The Stranded Ship (The Vincennes)