The Vanguard

While the crippled cruisers stagger where the blind horizon dips,
And the ocean ooze is rising round the sunken battle-ships,
While the battered wrecks, unnoticed, with their mangled crews drift past,
Let me fire one gun for Russia, though that gun should be the last.

Tis a struggle of the Ages, and the White Mans star is dim,
There is little jubilation, for the game has got too grim;
But though Russias hope seems shattered, and the Russian star seems set,
It may mean the Dawn for Russia, and my hopes in IVAN yet!

Let the Jingo in his blindness cant and cackle as he will;
But across the path from Asia run the Russian trenches still!
And the sahib in his rickshaw may loll back and smoke at ease,
While the haggard, ragged heroes man the battered batteries.

Tis the first round of the struggle of the East against the West,
Of the fearful war of races, for the White Man could not rest.
Hold them, IVAN! staggering bravely underneath your gloomy sky;
Hold them, IVAN! we shall want you pretty badly by-and-bye!

Fighting for the Indian empire, when the British pay their debt;
Never Britain watched for BLUCHER as hell watch for IVAN yet!
It means all to young Australia, it means life or death to us,
For the vanguard of the White Man is the vanguard of the Russ!

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 Cockney Soul

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

The Song Of The Waste-Paper Basket

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

Interlude. Callaghans Hotel

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

Booth's Drum

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

English

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Nemesis

It is night-time when the saddest and the darkest memories haunt,
When outside the printing office the most glaring posters flaunt,
When the love-wrong is accomplished. And I think of things and mark
That the blackest lies are written, told, and printed after dark.
Tis the time of late editions. It is night when, as of old,
Foulest things are done for hatred, for ambition, love and gold.

Racing from the senseless city down the dull suburban streets,
Come again the ragged newsboys yelping with their paltry sheets,
Lying posters meaning nothing, double columns meaning less,
Twisted facts and reckless falsehoods, dodges of the Daily Press.
In the town the roar and rattle of the great machines once more,
Greedy for the extra penny, while the Public howls for war.

War...

Henry Lawson

Skaal

While they struggle on exhausted,
While they plough through bog and flood,
While they drag their sick and wounded
Where the tracks are drenched with blood;
While the Fates seemed joined to crush her
And her bravest hearts lie low,
I might sing one song for Russia,
Even though she be our foe.
Still be generous to foemen,
And have charity for all,
Right or wrong, fill up the wine cup;
Skaal! unto all brave men, Skaal!

While they suffer, cold and hungry,
All the heart-break of defeat,
And the twice heroic rearguard
Grimly holds the grim retreat;
While they fight the last alive on
Fields where countless corpses are,
We might drop one tear for Ivan,
Dead for Russia and the Czar!

Sullen grief of boorish brother,
Sisters scal...

Henry Lawson

The March Of Ivan

Are you coming, Ivan, coming?, Ah, the ways are long and slow,
In the vast land that we know not, and we never sought to know.
We are watching through the daybreak, when the anxious night is done,
For the dots upon the skyline, black against the rising sun;
We are watching through the morning haze, and waiting through the night,
For the long, dark, distant columns that proclaim the Muscovite!
Are you coming, Ivan, coming? (Oh! the world is growing gray
With the terror of the future and the madness of to-day!)
Are you marching, Ivan, forward? (Oh! the world is darkning fast,
For the crimes of greater nations gainst the small ones in the past.)
Yours, in part, to make atonement, so remember what you are!
Ivan! Sing!, The Slav is coming! On for Russia and the Czar!


I...

Henry Lawson

The Vanguard

They say, in all kindness, Im out of the hunt,
Too old and too deaf to be sent to the Front.
A scribbler of stories, a maker of songs,
To the fireside and armchair my valour belongs!
Yet in campaigns all hopeless, in bitterest strife,
I have been at the Front all the days of my life.

Oh, your girl feels a princess, your people are proud,
As you march down the street, midst the cheers of the crowd;
And the Nations behind you and cloudless your sky,
And you come back to Honour, or gloriously die;
While for each thing that brightens, and each thing that cheers,
I have starved in the trenches these forty long years.

The cities were silent, the people were glum,
No sound of a bugle, no tap of a drum;
Our enemies mighty and Parliaments sour,
Our Lands lov...

Henry Lawson

A Song Of Brave Men

Man, is the Sea your master? Sea, and is man your slave?,
This is the song of brave men who never know they are brave:
Ceaselessly watching to save you, stranger from foreign lands,
Soundly asleep in your state room, full sail for the Goodwin Sands!
Life is a dream, they tell us, but life seems very real,
When the lifeboat puts out from Ramsgate, and the buggers put out from Deal!

A gun from the lightship!, a rocket!, a cry of, Turn out, me lad!
Ship on the Sands! theyre shouting, and a rush of the oilskin-clad.
The lifeboat leaping and swooping, in the wake of the fighting tug,
And the luggers afloat in Hells water, Oh, tourist, with cushion and rug!,
Think of the freezing fury, without one minutes relief,
When they stood all night in the blackness by the wreck of the ...

Henry Lawson

A Song Of Brave Men

Man, is the Sea your master? Sea, and is man your slave?,
This is the song of brave men who never know they are brave:
Ceaselessly watching to save you, stranger from foreign lands,
Soundly asleep in your state room, full sail for the Goodwin Sands!
Life is a dream, they tell us, but life seems very real,
When the lifeboat puts out from Ramsgate, and the buggers put out from Deal!

A gun from the lightship!, a rocket!, a cry of, "Turn out, me lad!"
"Ship on the Sands!" they're shouting, and a rush of the oilskin-clad.
The lifeboat leaping and swooping, in the wake of the fighting tug,
And the luggers afloat in Hell's water, Oh, "tourist", with cushion and rug!,
Think of the freezing fury, without one minute's relief,
When they stood all night in the blackness by the wreck of the ...

Henry Lawson