All Poems
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Taking His Chance
© Henry Lawson
They stood by the door of the Inn on the Rise;
May Carney looked up in the bushranger's eyes:
`Oh! why did you come? -- it was mad of you, Jack;
You know that the troopers are out on your track.'
A laugh and a shake of his obstinate head --
`I wanted a dance, and I'll chance it,' he said.
Sonnet 95: Yet Sighs, dear Sighs
© Sir Philip Sidney
Yet Sighs, dear Sighs, indeed true friends you are,
That do not leave your least friend at the worst,
But as you with my breast I oft have nurs'd,
So grateful now you wait upon my care.
The Ships that Won't Go Down
© Henry Lawson
We hear a great commotion
'Bout the ship that comes to grief,
That founders in mid-ocean,
Or is driven on a reef;
Night On The Prairies
© Walt Whitman
NIGHT on the prairies;
The supper is over-the fire on the ground burns low;
The wearied emigrants sleep, wrapt in their blankets:
I walk by myself-I stand and look at the stars, which I think now I
never realized before.
The Fight at Eureka Stockade
© Henry Lawson
"Was I at Eureka?" His figure was drawn to a youthful height,
And a flood of proud recollections made the fire in his grey eyes bright;
With pleasure they lighted and glisten'd, tho' the digger was grizzled and old,
And we gathered about him and listen'd while the tale of Eureka he told.
The Shearers Dream
© Henry Lawson
O I dreamt I shore in a shearing shed and it was a dream of joy
For every one of the rouseabouts was a girl dressed up as a boy
Dressed up like a page in a pantomime the prettiest ever seen
They had flaxen hair they had coal black hair and every shade between
The Low Sky
© Robinson Jeffers
No vulture is here, hardly a hawk,
Could long wings or great eyes fly
Under this low-lidded soft sky?
Eureka
© Henry Lawson
'Twas of such stuff the men were made who saw our nation born,
And such as Lalor were the men who led the vanguard on;
And like such men may we be found, with leaders such as they,
In the roll-up of Australians on our darkest, grandest day!
How Jack Found That Beans May Go Back On A Chap
© Guy Wetmore Carryl
Without the slightest basis
For hypochondriasis
When Your Pants Begin to Go
© Henry Lawson
When you wear a cloudy collar and a shirt that isn't white,
And you cannot sleep for thinking how you'll reach to-morrow night,
You may be a man of sorrows, and on speaking terms with Care,
And as yet be unacquainted with the Demon of Despair;
For I rather think that nothing heaps the trouble on your mind
Like the knowledge that your trousers badly need a patch behind.
The Heart of Australia
© Henry Lawson
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.
General B.F. Butler
© Ambrose Bierce
Thy flesh to earth, thy soul to God,
We gave, O gallant brother;
And o'er thy grave the awkward squad
Fired into one another!
No Name
© Adam Lindsay Gordon
"A stone upon her heart and head,
But no name written on that stone;
Sweet neighbours whisper low instead,
This sinner was a loving one." - Mrs. Browning.
Wide Spaces
© Henry Lawson
When the man I was denounces all the things that I was not,
When the true souls stand like granite, while the souls of liars not
When the quids I gave are counted, and the trays I cadged forgot;
The Artist. (Sonnet I.)
© Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Nothing the greatest artist can conceive
That every marble block doth not confine
The Shearers
© Henry Lawson
No church-bell rings them from the Track,
No pulpit lights theirblindness--
'Tis hardship, drought, and homelessness
That teach those Bushmen kindness:
The Glass On The Bar
© Henry Lawson
Three bushmen one morning rode up to an inn,
And one of them called for the drinks with a grin;
They'd only returned from a trip to the North,
And, eager to greet them, the landlord came forth.
He absently poured out a glass of Three Star.
And set down that drink with the rest on the bar.
Matthew Arnold On Hearing Him Read His Poems In Boston
© Katharine Lee Bates
A stranger, schooled to gentle arts,
He stept before the curious throng;
