The Triumph Of The People

Lo, the gods of Vice and Mammon from their pinnacles are hurled
By the workers new religion, which is oldest in the world;
And the earth will feel her children treading firmly on the sod,
For the triumph of the People is the victory of God.

Not the victory of Churches, nor of Punishment and Wrath,
Not the triumph of the sceptic, throwing shadows on the path,
But of Christ and love and mercy oer the Monarch and the Rod,
For the harvest of the Saviour is the aftermath of God.

O the Light of Revelation, since the reign of Care began,
Has been shining through the ages on the darkened eyes of man.
And the willing slave of Error, he is senseless as a clod,
For the simple Book of Nature is the written scroll of God.

Who will dare to say the sunlight on the pregnant Earth was shed
That the few might rest and fatten, while the many fight for bread?
Lo, there springs a common garden, where the foot of Greed hath trod,
For the victory of Labour was the prophecy of God.

Mother Earth, in coming seasons, shall fulfil her motherhood;
Then the children of her bosom never more shall want for food,
And oppression shall no longer grind the people iron-shod;
For the lifted hand of Labour is the upraised hand of God.

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

Rejected

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

The Ballad Of The Rousabout

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

The Mountain Splitter

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

Since Then

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.

The Hymn Of The Socialists

By the bodies and minds and souls that rot in a common stye
In the citys offal-holes, where the dregs of its horrors lie,
By the prayers that bubble out, but never ascend to God,
We swear the tyrants of earth to rout, with tongue and with pen and sword!

By the child that sees the light, where the pestilent air stagnates,
By the woman, worn and white, who under the street-lamp waits,
By the horror of vice that thrives in the dens of the wretched poor,
We swear to strike when the time arrives, for all that is good and pure!

By the rights that were always ours, the rights that we neer enjoyed,
And the gloomy cloud that lowers on the brow of the unemployed;
By the struggling mothers and wives, by girls in the streets of sin,
We swear to strike when the time arrives, for our ...

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That Great Waiting Silence

Where shall we go for prophecy? Where shall we go for proof?
The holiday street is crowded, pavement, window and roof;
Band and banner pass by us, and the old tunes rise and fall,
But that great waiting silence is on the people all!

Where is the cheering and laughter of the eight-hour days gone by?
When the holiday heart was careless, and the holiday spirit high,
The friendly jostling and banter, the wit and the jovial call?
But that great waiting silence is over the people all.

Oh! but my heart beats faster, and a gush that was nearly tears:
Clatter of hammers on iron! and Australian Engineers!
Goods from Australian workshops, proud to the world at last
(And I see, in a flash from the future, Australian guns go past).

The morning sun-glare, softened by a veil, ...

Henry Lawson

The Labour Agitator

Let the liar call me liar,
And the robber call me thief.
They can only fan the fire
That is born of my belief.
While Im speaking, while Im writing,
To reform the wrongful laws,
Well I know that I am fighting
For the grand old Cause.


See the army of the rebels
Marching on for evermore.
We are countless as the pebbles
That are strewn along the shore.
Agitating, agitating,
Till the Truth has sealed the fate
Of the wrongs that I am hating
With the grand old Hate.


Though no battle banner rustles
In a smoke that blurs the blue,
As when heroes poured from Brussels
To the field of Waterloo,
Though we do not hear the rattle
Of the rifles in the wars,
There is glory in the battle
For the grand old Cause.

Henry Lawson

The Hymn Of The Republic

I have listened to the sighing of the burdened and the bound,
I have heard it change to crying, with a menace in the sound;
I have seen the money-getters pass unheeding on the way,
As they went to forge new fetters for the people day by day.

Then the voice of Labour thundered forth its purpose and its need,
And I marvelled, and I wondered, at the cold dull ear of greed;
For as chimes, in some great steeple, tell the passing of the hour,
So the voices of the people tell the death of purchased power.

All the gathered dust of ages, God is brushing from His book;
He is opening up its pages, and He bids His children look;
And in shock and conflagration, and in pestilence and strife,
He is speaking to the nations, of the brevity of life.

Mother Earth herself is shaken...

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Hymn Of The Reformers

By the bodies and minds and souls that rot in a common sty
In the citys offal-holes, where the dregs of its horrors lie;
By the prayers that bubble out, but never ascend to God,
We swear the tyrants of earth to rout with tongue and with pen and sword!

By the child that sees the light where the pestilent air stagnates,
And the woman worn and white who under the street-lamp waits;
By the horror of vice that thrives in the dens of the wretched poor,
We swear to strike when the time arrives for all that is good and pure.

By the rights that were always ours, the rights that we neer enjoyed,
And the gloomy cloud that lowers on the brows of the unemployed;
By the struggling mothers and wives and the girls on the streets of sin,
We swear to strike when the time arrives, for our ...

Henry Lawson

A Song For The Sydney Poor or, The Australian Marseillaise

Sing the strong, proud song of Labour,
Toss the ringing music high;
Libertys a nearer neighbour
Than she was in days gone by.
Workmens weary wives and daughters
Sing the songs of liberty;
Men hail men across the waters,
Men reply across the sea.

We are marching on and onward
To the silver-streak of dawn,
To the dynasty of mankind
We are marching on.

Long the rich have been protected
By the walls that cant endure;
By the walls that they erected
To divide them from the poor.
Crumbling now, they should not trust them,
For their end is drawing near;
Walls of Cant and walls of Custom,
Walls of Ignorance and Fear.

Tyrants, grip your weapons firmer,
Grip them firmly by the helves;
For the poor begin to murmur
Lo...

Henry Lawson