What Have We All Forgotten?

What have we all forgotten, at the break of the seventh year?
With a nation born to the ages and a Bad Time borne on its bier!
Public robbing, and lying that death cannot erase,
Private strife and deception, Cover the bad dead face!
Drinking, gambling and madness, Cover and bear it away,
But what have we all forgotten at the dawn of the seventh day?

These are the years of plenty, years when the tanks are full,
Stacked by the lonely sidings mountains of wheat and wool.
Country crowds to the city, healthy, shaven and dressed,
Clothes to wear with the gayest, money to spend with the best.
Grand are the lights of the cities, carnival kings in power,
But what have we all forgotten, in this, the eleventh hour?

We have brought the states together, a land to the lands new born.
We have worked in the glorious weather, we have garnered and reaped and shorn.
We have come from the grass-waves flowing under Heavens electric lamps
(Making of sordid cities, boyish and jovial camps).
We have cleansed the cities and townships: we rest and frolic and gain,
But what have we all forgotten? Did we send the peace and the rain?

What have we all forgotten, here in our glorious home?
(I the greater the sinner because I was greater than some.)
What have we all forgotten so widely from east to west?
(I, and the most ungrateful because I was doubly blessed.)
Sinners to self and to country! and saviours though misunderstood!
Let us all kneel for one moment and thank the Great Spirits for Good.

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 Roaring Days

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

To An Old Mate

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

Send Round The Hat

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

The Men Who Come Behind

Henry Lawson, Simple Poetry

English

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The Roaring Days

The night too quickly passes
And we are growing old,
So let us fill our glasses
And toast the Days of Gold;
When finds of wondrous treasure
Set all the South ablaze,
And you and I were faithful mates
All through the roaring days!

Then stately ships came sailing
From every harbour's mouth,
And sought the land of promise
That beaconed in the South;
Then southward streamed their streamers
And swelled their canvas full
To speed the wildest dreamers
E'er borne in vessel's hull.

Their shining Eldorado,
Beneath the southern skies,
Was day and night for ever
Before their eager eyes.
The brooding bush, awakened,
Was stirred in wild unrest,
And all the year a human stream
Went pouring to the West.

The rough bush ...

Henry Lawson

A Fantasy Of War

From Australia.

Oh, tell me, God of Battles! Oh, say what is to come!
The King is in his trenches, the millionaire at home;
The Kaiser with his toiling troops, the Czar is at the front.
Oh! Tell me, God of Battles! Who bears the battles brunt?
The Queen knits socks for soldiers, the Empress does the same,
And know no more than peasant girls which nation is to blame.
The wounded live to fight again, or live to slave for bread;
The Slain have graves above the Slain the Dead are with the Dead.
The widowed young shall wed or not, the widowed old remain
And all the nations of the world prepare for war again!
But ere that time shall be, O God, say what shall here befall!
Ten millions at the battle fronts, and were five millions all!
The world You made was wide, O God, the ...

Henry Lawson

Above Crows Nest - Sydney

A blanket low and leaden,
Though rent across the west,
Whose darkness seems to deaden
The brightest and the best;
A sunset white and staring
On cloud-wrecks far away,
And haggard house-walls glaring
A farewell to the day.

A light on tower and steeple,
Where sun no longer shines,
My people, Oh my people!
Rise up and read the signs!
Low looms the nearer high-line
(No sign of star or moon),
The horseman on the skyline
Rode hard this afternoon!

(Is he, and who shall know it?,
The spectre of a scout?
The spirit of a poet,
Whose truths were met with doubt?
Who sought and who succeeded
In marking dangers track,
Whose warnings were unheeded
Till all the sky was black?)

It is a shameful story
For our young...

Henry Lawson

In The Day's When We Are Dead

Listen! The end draws nearer,
Nearer the morning, or night,
And I see with a vision clearer
That the beginning was right!
These shall be words to remember
When all has been done and said,
And my fame is a dying ember
In the days when I am dead.

Listen! We wrote in sorrow,
And we wrote by candle light;
We took no heed of the morrow,
And I think that we were right,
(To-morrow, but not the day after,
And I think that we were right).

We wrote of a world that was human
And we wrote of blood that was red,
For a child, or a man, or a woman,
Remember when we are dead.

Listen! We wrote not for money,
And listen! We wrote not for fame,
We wrote for the milk and the honey
Of Kindness, and not for a name.

We paused not...

Henry Lawson

An Interlude Of Peace - The Fairy West

I.

We wrote and sang of a bush we never
Had known in youth in the Western land;
Of the dear old homes by the shining river,
The deep, clear creeks and the hills so grand.
The grass waved high on the flat and siding,
The wild flowers bloomed on the banks so fair,
And younger sons from the North came riding
To vine-clad homes in the gardens there.
We wrote and sang, and the Lord knows best,
Oh, those dear old songs of the fairy West!

We dreamed and sang of the bustling mother;
The brick-floored kitchen we saw so clear,
The pranks and jokes of the youngest brother,
The evening songs of our sisters dear.
The old man dozed in the chimney corner,
Or smoked and blinked at the cheerful blaze,
Or yarned with a crony, old Jack Horner,
Whod known...

Henry Lawson

The Empty Glass

There are three lank bards in a borrowed room,
Ah! The number is one too few,
They have deemed their home and the bars unfit
For the thing that they have to do.
Three glasses they fill with the Lands own wine,
And the bread of life they pass.
Their glasses they take, which they slowly raise,
And they drink to an empty glass.

(Theres a greater glare in the street to-night,
And a louder rush and roar,
Theres a mad crowd yelling the winners name,
And howling the cricket score:
Oh! The bright moonlight on the angels white,
And the tombs and the monuments grand,
And down by the water at Waverley
Theres a little lone mound of sand.)

Oh, the drinkers would deem them drunk or mad,
And the barmaid stare and frown,
Each lays a hand on the empt...

Henry Lawson