All Poems
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Waratah and Wattle
© Henry Lawson
Australia! Australia! so fair to behold-
While the blue sky is arching above;
The stranger should never have need to be told,
That the Wattle-bloom means that her heart is of gold.
And the Waratah's red with her love.
All Winged Creatures I Have Loved
© Victor Marie Hugo
All the winged creatures I have loved!
And when, a child, I 'neath the thicket roved,
I from their nests the little birds conveyed
At first, of reeds I cages for them made,
Victory
© Henry Lawson
The schools marched in procession in happiness and pride,
The city bands before them, the soldiers marched beside;
Oh, starched white frocks and sashes and suits that high schools wear,
The boy scout and the boy lout and all the rest were there,
And all flags save Australia's flag waved high in sun and air!
The Four Bridges
© Jean Ingelow
I love this gray old church, the low, long nave,
The ivied chancel and the slender spire;
No less its shadow on each heaving grave,
With growing osier bound, or living brier;
I love those yew-tree trunks, where stand arrayed
So many deep-cut names of youth and maid.
Up The Country
© Henry Lawson
Dreary land in rainy weather, with the endless clouds that drift
O'er the bushman like a blanket that the Lord will never lift --
Dismal land when it is raining -- growl of floods, and, oh! the woosh
Of the rain and wind together on the dark bed of the bush --
Ghastly fires in lonely humpies where the granite rocks are piled
In the rain-swept wildernesses that are wildest of the wild.
Jack Dunn of Nevertire
© Henry Lawson
It chanced upon the very day we'd got the shearing done,
A buggy brought a stranger to the West-o'-Sunday Run;
He had a round and jolly face, and he was sleek and stout,
He drove right up between the huts and called the super out.
At The Close
© George Meredith
To Thee, dear God of Mercy, both appeal,
Who straightway sound the call to arms. Thou know'st;
How the Land was Won
© Henry Lawson
The future was dark and the past was dead
As they gazed on the sea once more
But a nation was born when the immigrants said
"Good-bye!" as they stepped ashore!
May-Day
© Ralph Waldo Emerson
The world rolls round,--mistrust it not,--
Befalls again what once befell;
All things return, both sphere and mote,
And I shall hear my bluebird's note,
And dream the dream of Auburn dell.
Freedom on the Wallaby
© Henry Lawson
Australia's a big country
An' Freedom's humping bluey,
An' Freedom's on the wallaby
Oh! don't you hear 'er cooey?
Forgiveness
© Muriel Stuart
ASK not my pardon! For if one hath need
Once to forgive the god that he hath raised,
No further creed
Can that god give; but 'neath the soul who praised
Lies bruisèd like a reed.
Uncle Harry
© Henry Lawson
Oh, never let on to your own true love
That ever you drank a drop;
That ever you played in a two-up school
Or slept in a sly-grog shop;
To Holmes: On His Seventy-Fifth Birthday
© James Russell Lowell
Dear Wendell, why need count the years
Since first your genius made me thrill,
If what moved then to smiles or tears,
Or both contending, move me still?
At The Beating Of A Drum
© Henry Lawson
Fear ye not the stormy future, for the Battle Hymn is strong,
And the armies of Australia shall not march without a song;
The glorious words and music of Australia's song shall come
When her true hearts rush together at the beating of a drum.
The White Seal
© Rudyard Kipling
Oh! hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us,
And black are the waters that sparkled so green.
A Song of Brave Men
© Henry Lawson
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!
The Fire At Ross's Farm
© Henry Lawson
The squatter saw his pastures wide
Decrease, as one by one
The farmers moving to the west
Selected on his run;
The Old Stoic
© Emily Jane Brontë
Riches I hold in light esteem,
And love I laugh to scorn;
And lust of fame was but a dream
That vanish'd with the morn:
