Poems in this topic
Society and the World
Henry Lawson
Outback
Outback
The old year went, and the new returned, in the withering weeks of drought,
The cheque was spent that the shearer earned,
and the sheds were all cut out;
The publican's words were short and few,
and the publican's looks were black --
And the time had come, as the shearer knew, to carry his swag Out Back.
For time means tucker, and tramp you must,
where the scrubs and plains are wide,
With seldom a track that a man can trust, or a mountain peak to guide;
All day long in the dust and heat -- when summer is on the track -With
stinted stomachs and blistered feet,
they carry their swags Out Back.
He tramped away from the shanty there, when the days were long and hot,
With never a soul to know or care if he died on the track or not.
The poor of the city have friends in woe, no matter how much they lack,
But only God and the swagmen know how a poor man fares Out Back.
He begged his way on the parched Paroo and the Warrego tracks once more,
And lived like a dog, as the swagmen do, till the Western stations shore;
But men were many, and sheds were full, for work in the town was slack --
The traveller never got hands in wool,
though he tramped for a year Out Back.
In stifling noons when his back was wrung
by its load, and the air seemed dead,
And the water warmed in the bag that hung to his aching arm like lead,
Or in times of flood, when plains were seas,
and the scrubs were cold and black,
He ploughed in mud to his trembling knees, and paid for his sins Out Back.
He blamed himself in the year `Too Late' -
in the heaviest hours of life -'
Twas little he dreamed that a shearing-mate had care of his home and wife;
There are times when wrongs from your kindred come,
and treacherous tongues attack --
When a man is better away from home, and dead to the world, Out Back.
And dirty and careless and old he wore, as his lamp of hope grew dim;
He tramped for years till the swag he bore seemed part of himself to him.
As a bullock drags in the sandy ruts, he followed the dreary track,
With never a thought but to reach the huts when the sun went down Out Back.
It chanced one day, when the north wind blew
in his face like a furnace-breath,
He left the track for a tank he knew -- 'twas a short-cut to his death;
For the bed of the tank was hard and dry, and crossed with many a crack,
And, oh! it's a terrible thing to die of thirst in the scrub Out Back.
A drover came, but the fringe of law was eastward many a mile;
He never reported the thing he saw, for it was not worth his while.
The tanks are full and the grass is high in the mulga off the track,
Where the bleaching bones of a white man lie
by his mouldering swag Out Back.
For time means tucker, and tramp they must,
where the plains and scrubs are wide,
With seldom a track that a man can trust, or a mountain peak to guide;
All day long in the flies and heat the men of the outside track
With stinted stomachs and blistered feet
must carry their swags Out Back.
The old year went, and the new returned, in the withering weeks of drought,
The cheque was spent that the shearer earned,
and the sheds were all cut out;
The publican's words were short and few,
and the publican's looks were black --
And the time had come, as the shearer knew, to carry his swag Out Back.
For time means tucker, and tramp you must,
where the scrubs and plains are wide,
With seldom a track that a man can trust, or a mountain peak to guide;
All day long in the dust and heat -- when summer is on the track -With
stinted stomachs and blistered feet,
they carry their swags Out Back.
He tramped away from the shanty there, when the days were long and hot,
With never a soul to know or care if he died on the track or not.
The poor of the city have friends in woe, no matter how much they lack,
But only God and the swagmen know how a poor man fares Out Back.
He begged his way on the parched Paroo and the Warrego tracks once more,
And lived like a dog, as the swagmen do, till the Western stations shore;
But men were many, and sheds were full, for work in the town was slack --
The traveller never got hands in wool,
though he tramped for a year Out Back.
In stifling noons when his back was wrung
by its load, and the air seemed dead,
And the water warmed in the bag that hung to his aching arm like lead,
Or in times of flood, when plains were seas,
and the scrubs were cold and black,
He ploughed in mud to his trembling knees, and paid for his sins Out Back.
He blamed himself in the year `Too Late' -
in the heaviest hours of life -'
Twas little he dreamed that a shearing-mate had care of his home and wife;
There are times when wrongs from your kindred come,
and treacherous tongues attack --
When a man is better away from home, and dead to the world, Out Back.
And dirty and careless and old he wore, as his lamp of hope grew dim;
He tramped for years till the swag he bore seemed part of himself to him.
As a bullock drags in the sandy ruts, he followed the dreary track,
With never a thought but to reach the huts when the sun went down Out Back.
It chanced one day, when the north wind blew
in his face like a furnace-breath,
He left the track for a tank he knew -- 'twas a short-cut to his death;
For the bed of the tank was hard and dry, and crossed with many a crack,
And, oh! it's a terrible thing to die of thirst in the scrub Out Back.
A drover came, but the fringe of law was eastward many a mile;
He never reported the thing he saw, for it was not worth his while.
The tanks are full and the grass is high in the mulga off the track,
Where the bleaching bones of a white man lie
by his mouldering swag Out Back.
For time means tucker, and tramp they must,
where the plains and scrubs are wide,
With seldom a track that a man can trust, or a mountain peak to guide;
All day long in the flies and heat the men of the outside track
With stinted stomachs and blistered feet
must carry their swags Out Back.
289
Henry Lawson
Outback
Outback
The old year went, and the new returned, in the withering weeks of drought,
The cheque was spent that the shearer earned,
and the sheds were all cut out;
The publican's words were short and few,
and the publican's looks were black --
And the time had come, as the shearer knew, to carry his swag Out Back.
For time means tucker, and tramp you must,
where the scrubs and plains are wide,
With seldom a track that a man can trust, or a mountain peak to guide;
All day long in the dust and heat -- when summer is on the track -With
stinted stomachs and blistered feet,
they carry their swags Out Back.
He tramped away from the shanty there, when the days were long and hot,
With never a soul to know or care if he died on the track or not.
The poor of the city have friends in woe, no matter how much they lack,
But only God and the swagmen know how a poor man fares Out Back.
He begged his way on the parched Paroo and the Warrego tracks once more,
And lived like a dog, as the swagmen do, till the Western stations shore;
But men were many, and sheds were full, for work in the town was slack --
The traveller never got hands in wool,
though he tramped for a year Out Back.
In stifling noons when his back was wrung
by its load, and the air seemed dead,
And the water warmed in the bag that hung to his aching arm like lead,
Or in times of flood, when plains were seas,
and the scrubs were cold and black,
He ploughed in mud to his trembling knees, and paid for his sins Out Back.
He blamed himself in the year `Too Late' -
in the heaviest hours of life -'
Twas little he dreamed that a shearing-mate had care of his home and wife;
There are times when wrongs from your kindred come,
and treacherous tongues attack --
When a man is better away from home, and dead to the world, Out Back.
And dirty and careless and old he wore, as his lamp of hope grew dim;
He tramped for years till the swag he bore seemed part of himself to him.
As a bullock drags in the sandy ruts, he followed the dreary track,
With never a thought but to reach the huts when the sun went down Out Back.
It chanced one day, when the north wind blew
in his face like a furnace-breath,
He left the track for a tank he knew -- 'twas a short-cut to his death;
For the bed of the tank was hard and dry, and crossed with many a crack,
And, oh! it's a terrible thing to die of thirst in the scrub Out Back.
A drover came, but the fringe of law was eastward many a mile;
He never reported the thing he saw, for it was not worth his while.
The tanks are full and the grass is high in the mulga off the track,
Where the bleaching bones of a white man lie
by his mouldering swag Out Back.
For time means tucker, and tramp they must,
where the plains and scrubs are wide,
With seldom a track that a man can trust, or a mountain peak to guide;
All day long in the flies and heat the men of the outside track
With stinted stomachs and blistered feet
must carry their swags Out Back.
The old year went, and the new returned, in the withering weeks of drought,
The cheque was spent that the shearer earned,
and the sheds were all cut out;
The publican's words were short and few,
and the publican's looks were black --
And the time had come, as the shearer knew, to carry his swag Out Back.
For time means tucker, and tramp you must,
where the scrubs and plains are wide,
With seldom a track that a man can trust, or a mountain peak to guide;
All day long in the dust and heat -- when summer is on the track -With
stinted stomachs and blistered feet,
they carry their swags Out Back.
He tramped away from the shanty there, when the days were long and hot,
With never a soul to know or care if he died on the track or not.
The poor of the city have friends in woe, no matter how much they lack,
But only God and the swagmen know how a poor man fares Out Back.
He begged his way on the parched Paroo and the Warrego tracks once more,
And lived like a dog, as the swagmen do, till the Western stations shore;
But men were many, and sheds were full, for work in the town was slack --
The traveller never got hands in wool,
though he tramped for a year Out Back.
In stifling noons when his back was wrung
by its load, and the air seemed dead,
And the water warmed in the bag that hung to his aching arm like lead,
Or in times of flood, when plains were seas,
and the scrubs were cold and black,
He ploughed in mud to his trembling knees, and paid for his sins Out Back.
He blamed himself in the year `Too Late' -
in the heaviest hours of life -'
Twas little he dreamed that a shearing-mate had care of his home and wife;
There are times when wrongs from your kindred come,
and treacherous tongues attack --
When a man is better away from home, and dead to the world, Out Back.
And dirty and careless and old he wore, as his lamp of hope grew dim;
He tramped for years till the swag he bore seemed part of himself to him.
As a bullock drags in the sandy ruts, he followed the dreary track,
With never a thought but to reach the huts when the sun went down Out Back.
It chanced one day, when the north wind blew
in his face like a furnace-breath,
He left the track for a tank he knew -- 'twas a short-cut to his death;
For the bed of the tank was hard and dry, and crossed with many a crack,
And, oh! it's a terrible thing to die of thirst in the scrub Out Back.
A drover came, but the fringe of law was eastward many a mile;
He never reported the thing he saw, for it was not worth his while.
The tanks are full and the grass is high in the mulga off the track,
Where the bleaching bones of a white man lie
by his mouldering swag Out Back.
For time means tucker, and tramp they must,
where the plains and scrubs are wide,
With seldom a track that a man can trust, or a mountain peak to guide;
All day long in the flies and heat the men of the outside track
With stinted stomachs and blistered feet
must carry their swags Out Back.
289
Henry Lawson
Outside
Outside
I want to be lighting my pipe on deck,
With my baggage safe below—
I want to be free of the crowded quay,
While the steamer’s swinging slow.
I want to be free of treachery,
And of sordid joys and griefs—
To be out of sight of the faces white,
And the waving of handkerchiefs.
I want to be making my ship-board friends,
I want to be free of the past—
I want to be laughing with kindred souls,
While the Heads are opening fast.
I want to be sailing far to-day,
On the tracks where the rovers go,
To feel the heave of the deck, and draw
The breath that the rovers know.
I want to be lighting my pipe on deck,
With my baggage safe below—
I want to be free of the crowded quay,
While the steamer’s swinging slow.
I want to be free of treachery,
And of sordid joys and griefs—
To be out of sight of the faces white,
And the waving of handkerchiefs.
I want to be making my ship-board friends,
I want to be free of the past—
I want to be laughing with kindred souls,
While the Heads are opening fast.
I want to be sailing far to-day,
On the tracks where the rovers go,
To feel the heave of the deck, and draw
The breath that the rovers know.
266
Henry Lawson
Outside
Outside
I want to be lighting my pipe on deck,
With my baggage safe below—
I want to be free of the crowded quay,
While the steamer’s swinging slow.
I want to be free of treachery,
And of sordid joys and griefs—
To be out of sight of the faces white,
And the waving of handkerchiefs.
I want to be making my ship-board friends,
I want to be free of the past—
I want to be laughing with kindred souls,
While the Heads are opening fast.
I want to be sailing far to-day,
On the tracks where the rovers go,
To feel the heave of the deck, and draw
The breath that the rovers know.
I want to be lighting my pipe on deck,
With my baggage safe below—
I want to be free of the crowded quay,
While the steamer’s swinging slow.
I want to be free of treachery,
And of sordid joys and griefs—
To be out of sight of the faces white,
And the waving of handkerchiefs.
I want to be making my ship-board friends,
I want to be free of the past—
I want to be laughing with kindred souls,
While the Heads are opening fast.
I want to be sailing far to-day,
On the tracks where the rovers go,
To feel the heave of the deck, and draw
The breath that the rovers know.
266
Henry Lawson
Out Back
Out Back
The old year went, and the new returned, in the withering weeks of drought,
The cheque was spent that the shearer earned,
and the sheds were all cut out;
The publican's words were short and few,
and the publican's looks were black --
And the time had come, as the shearer knew, to carry his swag Out Back.
For time means tucker, and tramp you must,
where the scrubs and plains are wide,
With seldom a track that a man can trust, or a mountain peak to guide;
All day long in the dust and heat -- when summer is on the track -With
stinted stomachs and blistered feet,
they carry their swags Out Back.
He tramped away from the shanty there, when the days were long and hot,
With never a soul to know or care if he died on the track or not.
The poor of the city have friends in woe, no matter how much they lack,
But only God and the swagmen know how a poor man fares Out Back.
He begged his way on the parched Paroo and the Warrego tracks once more,
And lived like a dog, as the swagmen do, till the Western stations shore;
But men were many, and sheds were full, for work in the town was slack --
The traveller never got hands in wool,
though he tramped for a year Out Back.
In stifling noons when his back was wrung
by its load, and the air seemed dead,
And the water warmed in the bag that hung to his aching arm like lead,
Or in times of flood, when plains were seas,
and the scrubs were cold and black,
He ploughed in mud to his trembling knees, and paid for his sins Out Back.
He blamed himself in the year `Too Late' -
in the heaviest hours of life -'
Twas little he dreamed that a shearing-mate had care of his home and wife;
There are times when wrongs from your kindred come,
and treacherous tongues attack --
When a man is better away from home, and dead to the world, Out Back.
And dirty and careless and old he wore, as his lamp of hope grew dim;
He tramped for years till the swag he bore seemed part of himself to him.
As a bullock drags in the sandy ruts, he followed the dreary track,
With never a thought but to reach the huts when the sun went down Out Back.
It chanced one day, when the north wind blew
in his face like a furnace-breath,
He left the track for a tank he knew -- 'twas a short-cut to his death;
For the bed of the tank was hard and dry, and crossed with many a crack,
And, oh! it's a terrible thing to die of thirst in the scrub Out Back.
A drover came, but the fringe of law was eastward many a mile;
He never reported the thing he saw, for it was not worth his while.
The tanks are full and the grass is high in the mulga off the track,
Where the bleaching bones of a white man lie
by his mouldering swag Out Back.
For time means tucker, and tramp they must,
where the plains and scrubs are wide,
With seldom a track that a man can trust, or a mountain peak to guide;
All day long in the flies and heat the men of the outside track
With stinted stomachs and blistered feet
must carry their swags Out Back.
The old year went, and the new returned, in the withering weeks of drought,
The cheque was spent that the shearer earned,
and the sheds were all cut out;
The publican's words were short and few,
and the publican's looks were black --
And the time had come, as the shearer knew, to carry his swag Out Back.
For time means tucker, and tramp you must,
where the scrubs and plains are wide,
With seldom a track that a man can trust, or a mountain peak to guide;
All day long in the dust and heat -- when summer is on the track -With
stinted stomachs and blistered feet,
they carry their swags Out Back.
He tramped away from the shanty there, when the days were long and hot,
With never a soul to know or care if he died on the track or not.
The poor of the city have friends in woe, no matter how much they lack,
But only God and the swagmen know how a poor man fares Out Back.
He begged his way on the parched Paroo and the Warrego tracks once more,
And lived like a dog, as the swagmen do, till the Western stations shore;
But men were many, and sheds were full, for work in the town was slack --
The traveller never got hands in wool,
though he tramped for a year Out Back.
In stifling noons when his back was wrung
by its load, and the air seemed dead,
And the water warmed in the bag that hung to his aching arm like lead,
Or in times of flood, when plains were seas,
and the scrubs were cold and black,
He ploughed in mud to his trembling knees, and paid for his sins Out Back.
He blamed himself in the year `Too Late' -
in the heaviest hours of life -'
Twas little he dreamed that a shearing-mate had care of his home and wife;
There are times when wrongs from your kindred come,
and treacherous tongues attack --
When a man is better away from home, and dead to the world, Out Back.
And dirty and careless and old he wore, as his lamp of hope grew dim;
He tramped for years till the swag he bore seemed part of himself to him.
As a bullock drags in the sandy ruts, he followed the dreary track,
With never a thought but to reach the huts when the sun went down Out Back.
It chanced one day, when the north wind blew
in his face like a furnace-breath,
He left the track for a tank he knew -- 'twas a short-cut to his death;
For the bed of the tank was hard and dry, and crossed with many a crack,
And, oh! it's a terrible thing to die of thirst in the scrub Out Back.
A drover came, but the fringe of law was eastward many a mile;
He never reported the thing he saw, for it was not worth his while.
The tanks are full and the grass is high in the mulga off the track,
Where the bleaching bones of a white man lie
by his mouldering swag Out Back.
For time means tucker, and tramp they must,
where the plains and scrubs are wide,
With seldom a track that a man can trust, or a mountain peak to guide;
All day long in the flies and heat the men of the outside track
With stinted stomachs and blistered feet
must carry their swags Out Back.
247
Henry Lawson
Otherside
Otherside
Somewhere in the mystic future, on the road to Paradise,
There’s a very pleasant country that I’ve dreamed of once or twice,
It has inland towns, and cities by the ocean’s rocky shelves,
But the people of the country differ somewhat from ourselves;
It is many leagues beyond us, and they call it Otherside.
And there is among its people more Humanity than Pride.
Now, a social system never was complete, without a flaw,
And among the Othersiders there is love and gold and war.
But if one is fairly beaten he can turn upon the track,
For in such a case there isn’t any shame in going back;
And a broken-hearted mortal never thinks of suicide,
For he finds amongst his brothers more Humanity than Pride.
And the lords of that creation never scoff at simple things,
Never scorn the lad who’s tethered to his mother’s apron-strings.
He will speak of “home” and “mother” without shame when he’s inclined,
Yet the blow he strikes in battle mostly leaves a mark behind.
They are brave against invasion; they can die in Otherside,
Though there is among the people more Humanity than Pride.
Poets sing in simple language that a child might understand,
Yet their songs are sung for ages by the elders of the land;
And the people know that Freedom never shall be wanting guards,
For the foremost in the vanguard waves the banner of the Bards.
O the poets march together, and at home in peace abide,
For there is amongst the people more Humanity than Pride.
And when I am very weary, ’neath a load of “worldly care”,
There are times when I’ve a longing just to hump my bluey there;
But alone I could not reach it, for the track is barred to one—
I must take the nations with me—all mankind must go, or none—
And we’d trample one another on the way to Otherside,
For I find among my brothers less Humanity than Pride.
Somewhere in the mystic future, on the road to Paradise,
There’s a very pleasant country that I’ve dreamed of once or twice,
It has inland towns, and cities by the ocean’s rocky shelves,
But the people of the country differ somewhat from ourselves;
It is many leagues beyond us, and they call it Otherside.
And there is among its people more Humanity than Pride.
Now, a social system never was complete, without a flaw,
And among the Othersiders there is love and gold and war.
But if one is fairly beaten he can turn upon the track,
For in such a case there isn’t any shame in going back;
And a broken-hearted mortal never thinks of suicide,
For he finds amongst his brothers more Humanity than Pride.
And the lords of that creation never scoff at simple things,
Never scorn the lad who’s tethered to his mother’s apron-strings.
He will speak of “home” and “mother” without shame when he’s inclined,
Yet the blow he strikes in battle mostly leaves a mark behind.
They are brave against invasion; they can die in Otherside,
Though there is among the people more Humanity than Pride.
Poets sing in simple language that a child might understand,
Yet their songs are sung for ages by the elders of the land;
And the people know that Freedom never shall be wanting guards,
For the foremost in the vanguard waves the banner of the Bards.
O the poets march together, and at home in peace abide,
For there is amongst the people more Humanity than Pride.
And when I am very weary, ’neath a load of “worldly care”,
There are times when I’ve a longing just to hump my bluey there;
But alone I could not reach it, for the track is barred to one—
I must take the nations with me—all mankind must go, or none—
And we’d trample one another on the way to Otherside,
For I find among my brothers less Humanity than Pride.
268
Henry Lawson
Otherside
Otherside
Somewhere in the mystic future, on the road to Paradise,
There’s a very pleasant country that I’ve dreamed of once or twice,
It has inland towns, and cities by the ocean’s rocky shelves,
But the people of the country differ somewhat from ourselves;
It is many leagues beyond us, and they call it Otherside.
And there is among its people more Humanity than Pride.
Now, a social system never was complete, without a flaw,
And among the Othersiders there is love and gold and war.
But if one is fairly beaten he can turn upon the track,
For in such a case there isn’t any shame in going back;
And a broken-hearted mortal never thinks of suicide,
For he finds amongst his brothers more Humanity than Pride.
And the lords of that creation never scoff at simple things,
Never scorn the lad who’s tethered to his mother’s apron-strings.
He will speak of “home” and “mother” without shame when he’s inclined,
Yet the blow he strikes in battle mostly leaves a mark behind.
They are brave against invasion; they can die in Otherside,
Though there is among the people more Humanity than Pride.
Poets sing in simple language that a child might understand,
Yet their songs are sung for ages by the elders of the land;
And the people know that Freedom never shall be wanting guards,
For the foremost in the vanguard waves the banner of the Bards.
O the poets march together, and at home in peace abide,
For there is amongst the people more Humanity than Pride.
And when I am very weary, ’neath a load of “worldly care”,
There are times when I’ve a longing just to hump my bluey there;
But alone I could not reach it, for the track is barred to one—
I must take the nations with me—all mankind must go, or none—
And we’d trample one another on the way to Otherside,
For I find among my brothers less Humanity than Pride.
Somewhere in the mystic future, on the road to Paradise,
There’s a very pleasant country that I’ve dreamed of once or twice,
It has inland towns, and cities by the ocean’s rocky shelves,
But the people of the country differ somewhat from ourselves;
It is many leagues beyond us, and they call it Otherside.
And there is among its people more Humanity than Pride.
Now, a social system never was complete, without a flaw,
And among the Othersiders there is love and gold and war.
But if one is fairly beaten he can turn upon the track,
For in such a case there isn’t any shame in going back;
And a broken-hearted mortal never thinks of suicide,
For he finds amongst his brothers more Humanity than Pride.
And the lords of that creation never scoff at simple things,
Never scorn the lad who’s tethered to his mother’s apron-strings.
He will speak of “home” and “mother” without shame when he’s inclined,
Yet the blow he strikes in battle mostly leaves a mark behind.
They are brave against invasion; they can die in Otherside,
Though there is among the people more Humanity than Pride.
Poets sing in simple language that a child might understand,
Yet their songs are sung for ages by the elders of the land;
And the people know that Freedom never shall be wanting guards,
For the foremost in the vanguard waves the banner of the Bards.
O the poets march together, and at home in peace abide,
For there is amongst the people more Humanity than Pride.
And when I am very weary, ’neath a load of “worldly care”,
There are times when I’ve a longing just to hump my bluey there;
But alone I could not reach it, for the track is barred to one—
I must take the nations with me—all mankind must go, or none—
And we’d trample one another on the way to Otherside,
For I find among my brothers less Humanity than Pride.
268
Henry Lawson
Otherside
Otherside
Somewhere in the mystic future, on the road to Paradise,
There’s a very pleasant country that I’ve dreamed of once or twice,
It has inland towns, and cities by the ocean’s rocky shelves,
But the people of the country differ somewhat from ourselves;
It is many leagues beyond us, and they call it Otherside.
And there is among its people more Humanity than Pride.
Now, a social system never was complete, without a flaw,
And among the Othersiders there is love and gold and war.
But if one is fairly beaten he can turn upon the track,
For in such a case there isn’t any shame in going back;
And a broken-hearted mortal never thinks of suicide,
For he finds amongst his brothers more Humanity than Pride.
And the lords of that creation never scoff at simple things,
Never scorn the lad who’s tethered to his mother’s apron-strings.
He will speak of “home” and “mother” without shame when he’s inclined,
Yet the blow he strikes in battle mostly leaves a mark behind.
They are brave against invasion; they can die in Otherside,
Though there is among the people more Humanity than Pride.
Poets sing in simple language that a child might understand,
Yet their songs are sung for ages by the elders of the land;
And the people know that Freedom never shall be wanting guards,
For the foremost in the vanguard waves the banner of the Bards.
O the poets march together, and at home in peace abide,
For there is amongst the people more Humanity than Pride.
And when I am very weary, ’neath a load of “worldly care”,
There are times when I’ve a longing just to hump my bluey there;
But alone I could not reach it, for the track is barred to one—
I must take the nations with me—all mankind must go, or none—
And we’d trample one another on the way to Otherside,
For I find among my brothers less Humanity than Pride.
Somewhere in the mystic future, on the road to Paradise,
There’s a very pleasant country that I’ve dreamed of once or twice,
It has inland towns, and cities by the ocean’s rocky shelves,
But the people of the country differ somewhat from ourselves;
It is many leagues beyond us, and they call it Otherside.
And there is among its people more Humanity than Pride.
Now, a social system never was complete, without a flaw,
And among the Othersiders there is love and gold and war.
But if one is fairly beaten he can turn upon the track,
For in such a case there isn’t any shame in going back;
And a broken-hearted mortal never thinks of suicide,
For he finds amongst his brothers more Humanity than Pride.
And the lords of that creation never scoff at simple things,
Never scorn the lad who’s tethered to his mother’s apron-strings.
He will speak of “home” and “mother” without shame when he’s inclined,
Yet the blow he strikes in battle mostly leaves a mark behind.
They are brave against invasion; they can die in Otherside,
Though there is among the people more Humanity than Pride.
Poets sing in simple language that a child might understand,
Yet their songs are sung for ages by the elders of the land;
And the people know that Freedom never shall be wanting guards,
For the foremost in the vanguard waves the banner of the Bards.
O the poets march together, and at home in peace abide,
For there is amongst the people more Humanity than Pride.
And when I am very weary, ’neath a load of “worldly care”,
There are times when I’ve a longing just to hump my bluey there;
But alone I could not reach it, for the track is barred to one—
I must take the nations with me—all mankind must go, or none—
And we’d trample one another on the way to Otherside,
For I find among my brothers less Humanity than Pride.
268
Henry Lawson
Otherside
Otherside
Somewhere in the mystic future, on the road to Paradise,
There’s a very pleasant country that I’ve dreamed of once or twice,
It has inland towns, and cities by the ocean’s rocky shelves,
But the people of the country differ somewhat from ourselves;
It is many leagues beyond us, and they call it Otherside.
And there is among its people more Humanity than Pride.
Now, a social system never was complete, without a flaw,
And among the Othersiders there is love and gold and war.
But if one is fairly beaten he can turn upon the track,
For in such a case there isn’t any shame in going back;
And a broken-hearted mortal never thinks of suicide,
For he finds amongst his brothers more Humanity than Pride.
And the lords of that creation never scoff at simple things,
Never scorn the lad who’s tethered to his mother’s apron-strings.
He will speak of “home” and “mother” without shame when he’s inclined,
Yet the blow he strikes in battle mostly leaves a mark behind.
They are brave against invasion; they can die in Otherside,
Though there is among the people more Humanity than Pride.
Poets sing in simple language that a child might understand,
Yet their songs are sung for ages by the elders of the land;
And the people know that Freedom never shall be wanting guards,
For the foremost in the vanguard waves the banner of the Bards.
O the poets march together, and at home in peace abide,
For there is amongst the people more Humanity than Pride.
And when I am very weary, ’neath a load of “worldly care”,
There are times when I’ve a longing just to hump my bluey there;
But alone I could not reach it, for the track is barred to one—
I must take the nations with me—all mankind must go, or none—
And we’d trample one another on the way to Otherside,
For I find among my brothers less Humanity than Pride.
Somewhere in the mystic future, on the road to Paradise,
There’s a very pleasant country that I’ve dreamed of once or twice,
It has inland towns, and cities by the ocean’s rocky shelves,
But the people of the country differ somewhat from ourselves;
It is many leagues beyond us, and they call it Otherside.
And there is among its people more Humanity than Pride.
Now, a social system never was complete, without a flaw,
And among the Othersiders there is love and gold and war.
But if one is fairly beaten he can turn upon the track,
For in such a case there isn’t any shame in going back;
And a broken-hearted mortal never thinks of suicide,
For he finds amongst his brothers more Humanity than Pride.
And the lords of that creation never scoff at simple things,
Never scorn the lad who’s tethered to his mother’s apron-strings.
He will speak of “home” and “mother” without shame when he’s inclined,
Yet the blow he strikes in battle mostly leaves a mark behind.
They are brave against invasion; they can die in Otherside,
Though there is among the people more Humanity than Pride.
Poets sing in simple language that a child might understand,
Yet their songs are sung for ages by the elders of the land;
And the people know that Freedom never shall be wanting guards,
For the foremost in the vanguard waves the banner of the Bards.
O the poets march together, and at home in peace abide,
For there is amongst the people more Humanity than Pride.
And when I am very weary, ’neath a load of “worldly care”,
There are times when I’ve a longing just to hump my bluey there;
But alone I could not reach it, for the track is barred to one—
I must take the nations with me—all mankind must go, or none—
And we’d trample one another on the way to Otherside,
For I find among my brothers less Humanity than Pride.
268
Henry Lawson
One Hundred and Three
One Hundred and Three
With the frame of a man, and the face of a boy, and a manner strangely wild,
And the great, wide, wondering, innocent eyes of a silent-suffering child;
With his hideous dress and his heavy boots, he drags to Eternity—
And the Warder says, in a softened tone: ‘Keep step, One Hundred and Three.’
’Tis a ghastly travesty of drill—or a ghastly farce of work—
But One Hundred and Three, he catches step with a start, a shuffle and jerk.
’Tis slow starvation in separate cells, and a widow’s son is he,
And the widow, she drank before he was born—(Keep step, One Hundred and Three!)
They shut a man in the four-by-eight, with a six-inch slit for air,
Twenty-three hours of the twenty-four, to brood on his virtues there.
And the dead stone walls and the iron door close in as an iron band
On eyes that followed the distant haze far out on the level land.
Bread and water and hominy, and a scrag of meat and a spud,
A Bible and thin flat book of rules, to cool a strong man’s blood;
They take the spoon from the cell at night—and a stranger might think it odd;
But a man might sharpen it on the floor, and go to his own Great God.
One Hundred and Three, it is hard to believe that you saddled your horse at dawn;
There were girls that rode through the bush at eve, and girls who lolled on the lawn.
There were picnic parties in sunny bays, and ships on the shining sea;
There were foreign ports in the glorious days—(Hold up, One Hundred and Three!)
A man came out at exercise time from one of the cells to-day:
’Twas the ghastly spectre of one I knew, and I thought he was far away;
We dared not speak, but he signed ‘Farewell—fare—well,’ and I knew by this
And the number stamped on his clothes (not sewn) that a heavy sentence was his.
Where five men do the work of a boy, with warders not to see,
It is sad and bad and uselessly mad, it is ugly as it can be,
From the flower-beds laid to fit the gaol, in circle and line absurd,
To the gilded weathercock on the church, agape like a strangled bird.
Agape like a strangled bird in the sun, and I wonder what he could see?
The Fleet come in, and the Fleet go out? (Hold up, One Hundred and Three!)
The glorious sea, and the bays and Bush, and the distant mountains blue
(Keep step, keep step, One Hundred and Three, for my lines are halting too)
The great, round church with its volume of sound, where we dare not turn our eyes—
They take us there from our separate hells to sing of Paradise.
In all the creeds there is hope and doubt, but of this there is no doubt:
That starving prisoners faint in church, and the warders carry them out.
They double-lock at four o’clock and the warders leave their keys,
And the Governor strolls with a friend at eve through his stone conservatories;
Their window slits are like idiot mouths with square stone chins adrop,
And the weather-stains for the dribble, and the dead flat foreheads atop.
No light save the lights in the yard beneath the clustering lights of the Lord—
And the lights turned in to the window slits of the Observation Ward.
(They eat their meat with their fingers there in a madness starved and dull—
Oh! the padded cells and the “O—b—s” are nearly always full.)
Rules, regulations—red-tape and rules; all and alike they bind:
Under ‘separate treatment ’ place the deaf; in the dark cell shut the blind!
And somewhere down in his sandstone tomb, with never a word to save,
One Hundred and Three is keeping step, as he’ll keep it to his grave.
The press is printing its smug, smug lies, and paying its shameful debt—
It speaks of the comforts that prisoners have, and ‘holidays’ prisoners get.
The visitors come with their smug, smug smiles through the gaol on a working day,
And the public hears with its large, large ears what authorities have to say.
They lay their fingers on well-hosed walls, and they tread on the polished floor;
They peep in the generous shining cans with their ration Number Four.
And the visitors go with their smug, smug smiles; the reporters’ work is done;
Stand up! my men, who have done your time on ration Number One!
Speak up, my men! I was never the man to keep my own bed warm,
I have jogged with you round in the Fools’ Parade, and I’ve worn your uniform;
I’ve seen you live, and I’ve seen you die, and I’ve seen your reason fail—
I’ve smuggled tobacco and loosened my tongue—and I’ve been punished in gaol.
Ay! clang the spoon on the iron floor, and shove in the bread with your toe,
And shut with a bang the iron door, and clank the bolt—just so,
With an ignorant oath for a last good-night—or the voice of a filthy thought.
By the Gipsy Blood you have caught a man you’ll be sorry that ever you caught.
He shall be buried alive without meat, for a day and a night unheard
If he speak to a fellow prisoner, though he die for want of a word.
He shall be punished, and he shall be starved, and he shall in darkness rot,
He shall be murdered body and soul—and God said, ‘Thou shalt not!’
I’ve seen the remand-yard men go out, by the subway out of the yard—
And I’ve seen them come in with a foolish grin and a sentence of Three Years Hard.
They send a half-starved man to the court, where the hearts of men they carve—
Then feed him up in the hospital to give him the strength to starve.
You get the gaol-dust in your throat, in your skin the dead gaol-white;
You get the gaol-whine in your voice and in every letter you write.
And in your eyes comes the bright gaol-light—not the glare of the world’s distraught,
Not the hunted look, nor the guilty look, but the awful look of the Caught.
There was one I met—’twas a mate of mine—in a gaol that is known to us;
He died—and they said it was ‘heart disease’; but he died for want of a truss.
I’ve knelt at the head of the pallid dead, where the living dead were we,
And I’ve closed the yielding lids with my thumbs—(Keep step, One Hundred and
Three!)
A criminal face is rare in gaol, where all things else are ripe—
It is higher up in the social scale that you’ll find the criminal type.
But the kindness of man to man is great when penned in a sandstone pen—
The public call us the ‘criminal class,’ but the warders call us ‘the men.’
The brute is a brute, and a kind man kind, and the strong heart does not fail—
A crawler’s a crawler everywhere, but a man is a man in gaol!
For forced ‘desertion’ or drunkenness, or a law’s illegal debt,
While never a man who was a man was ‘reformed’ by punishment yet.
The champagne lady comes home from the course in charge of the criminal swell—
They carry her in from the motor car to the lift in the Grand Hotel.
But armed with the savage Habituals Act they are waiting for you and me,
And the drums, they are beating loud and near. (Keep step, One Hundred and Three!)
The clever scoundrels are all outside, and the moneyless mugs in gaol—
Men do twelve months for a mad wife’s lies or Life for a strumpet’s tale.
If the people knew what the warders know, and felt as the prisoners feel—
If the people knew, they would storm their gaols as they stormed the old Bastile.
And the cackling, screaming half-human hens who were never mothers nor wives
Would send their sisters to such a hell for the term of their natural lives,
Where laws are made in a Female Fit in the Land of the Crazy Fad,
And drunkards in judgment on drunkards sit and the mad condemn the mad.
The High Church service swells and swells where the tinted Christs look down—
It is easy to see who is weary and faint and weareth the thorny crown.
There are swift-made signs that are not to God, and they march us Hellward then.
It is hard to believe that we knelt as boys to ‘for ever and ever, Amen. ’
Warders and prisoners all alike in a dead rot dry and slow—
The author must not write for his own, and the tailor must not sew.
The billet-bound officers dare not speak and discharged men dare not tell
Though many and many an innocent man must brood in this barren hell.
We are most of us criminal, most of us mad, and we do what we can do.
(Remember the Observation Ward and Number Forty-Two.)
There are eyes that see through stone and iron, though the rest of the world be blind—
We are prisoners all in God’s Great Gaol, but the Governor, He is kind.
They crave for sunlight, they crave for meat, they crave for the might-have-been,
But the cruellest thing in the walls of a gaol is the craving for nicotine.
Yet the spirit of Christ is everywhere where the heart of a man can dwell,
It comes like tobacco in prison—or like news to the separate cell.
They have smuggled him out to the Hospital with no one to tell the tale,
But it’s little the doctors and nurses can do for the patient from Starvinghurst Gaol.
He cannot swallow the food they bring, for a gaol-starved man is he,
And the blanket and screen are ready to draw—(Keep step, One Hundred and Three!)
‘What were you doing, One Hundred and Three?’ and the answer is ‘Three years hard,
And a month to go’—and the whisper is low: ‘There’s the moonlight—out in the yard.’
The drums, they are beating far and low, and the footstep’s light and free,
And the angels are whispering over his bed: ‘Keep step, One Hundred and Three!’
With the frame of a man, and the face of a boy, and a manner strangely wild,
And the great, wide, wondering, innocent eyes of a silent-suffering child;
With his hideous dress and his heavy boots, he drags to Eternity—
And the Warder says, in a softened tone: ‘Keep step, One Hundred and Three.’
’Tis a ghastly travesty of drill—or a ghastly farce of work—
But One Hundred and Three, he catches step with a start, a shuffle and jerk.
’Tis slow starvation in separate cells, and a widow’s son is he,
And the widow, she drank before he was born—(Keep step, One Hundred and Three!)
They shut a man in the four-by-eight, with a six-inch slit for air,
Twenty-three hours of the twenty-four, to brood on his virtues there.
And the dead stone walls and the iron door close in as an iron band
On eyes that followed the distant haze far out on the level land.
Bread and water and hominy, and a scrag of meat and a spud,
A Bible and thin flat book of rules, to cool a strong man’s blood;
They take the spoon from the cell at night—and a stranger might think it odd;
But a man might sharpen it on the floor, and go to his own Great God.
One Hundred and Three, it is hard to believe that you saddled your horse at dawn;
There were girls that rode through the bush at eve, and girls who lolled on the lawn.
There were picnic parties in sunny bays, and ships on the shining sea;
There were foreign ports in the glorious days—(Hold up, One Hundred and Three!)
A man came out at exercise time from one of the cells to-day:
’Twas the ghastly spectre of one I knew, and I thought he was far away;
We dared not speak, but he signed ‘Farewell—fare—well,’ and I knew by this
And the number stamped on his clothes (not sewn) that a heavy sentence was his.
Where five men do the work of a boy, with warders not to see,
It is sad and bad and uselessly mad, it is ugly as it can be,
From the flower-beds laid to fit the gaol, in circle and line absurd,
To the gilded weathercock on the church, agape like a strangled bird.
Agape like a strangled bird in the sun, and I wonder what he could see?
The Fleet come in, and the Fleet go out? (Hold up, One Hundred and Three!)
The glorious sea, and the bays and Bush, and the distant mountains blue
(Keep step, keep step, One Hundred and Three, for my lines are halting too)
The great, round church with its volume of sound, where we dare not turn our eyes—
They take us there from our separate hells to sing of Paradise.
In all the creeds there is hope and doubt, but of this there is no doubt:
That starving prisoners faint in church, and the warders carry them out.
They double-lock at four o’clock and the warders leave their keys,
And the Governor strolls with a friend at eve through his stone conservatories;
Their window slits are like idiot mouths with square stone chins adrop,
And the weather-stains for the dribble, and the dead flat foreheads atop.
No light save the lights in the yard beneath the clustering lights of the Lord—
And the lights turned in to the window slits of the Observation Ward.
(They eat their meat with their fingers there in a madness starved and dull—
Oh! the padded cells and the “O—b—s” are nearly always full.)
Rules, regulations—red-tape and rules; all and alike they bind:
Under ‘separate treatment ’ place the deaf; in the dark cell shut the blind!
And somewhere down in his sandstone tomb, with never a word to save,
One Hundred and Three is keeping step, as he’ll keep it to his grave.
The press is printing its smug, smug lies, and paying its shameful debt—
It speaks of the comforts that prisoners have, and ‘holidays’ prisoners get.
The visitors come with their smug, smug smiles through the gaol on a working day,
And the public hears with its large, large ears what authorities have to say.
They lay their fingers on well-hosed walls, and they tread on the polished floor;
They peep in the generous shining cans with their ration Number Four.
And the visitors go with their smug, smug smiles; the reporters’ work is done;
Stand up! my men, who have done your time on ration Number One!
Speak up, my men! I was never the man to keep my own bed warm,
I have jogged with you round in the Fools’ Parade, and I’ve worn your uniform;
I’ve seen you live, and I’ve seen you die, and I’ve seen your reason fail—
I’ve smuggled tobacco and loosened my tongue—and I’ve been punished in gaol.
Ay! clang the spoon on the iron floor, and shove in the bread with your toe,
And shut with a bang the iron door, and clank the bolt—just so,
With an ignorant oath for a last good-night—or the voice of a filthy thought.
By the Gipsy Blood you have caught a man you’ll be sorry that ever you caught.
He shall be buried alive without meat, for a day and a night unheard
If he speak to a fellow prisoner, though he die for want of a word.
He shall be punished, and he shall be starved, and he shall in darkness rot,
He shall be murdered body and soul—and God said, ‘Thou shalt not!’
I’ve seen the remand-yard men go out, by the subway out of the yard—
And I’ve seen them come in with a foolish grin and a sentence of Three Years Hard.
They send a half-starved man to the court, where the hearts of men they carve—
Then feed him up in the hospital to give him the strength to starve.
You get the gaol-dust in your throat, in your skin the dead gaol-white;
You get the gaol-whine in your voice and in every letter you write.
And in your eyes comes the bright gaol-light—not the glare of the world’s distraught,
Not the hunted look, nor the guilty look, but the awful look of the Caught.
There was one I met—’twas a mate of mine—in a gaol that is known to us;
He died—and they said it was ‘heart disease’; but he died for want of a truss.
I’ve knelt at the head of the pallid dead, where the living dead were we,
And I’ve closed the yielding lids with my thumbs—(Keep step, One Hundred and
Three!)
A criminal face is rare in gaol, where all things else are ripe—
It is higher up in the social scale that you’ll find the criminal type.
But the kindness of man to man is great when penned in a sandstone pen—
The public call us the ‘criminal class,’ but the warders call us ‘the men.’
The brute is a brute, and a kind man kind, and the strong heart does not fail—
A crawler’s a crawler everywhere, but a man is a man in gaol!
For forced ‘desertion’ or drunkenness, or a law’s illegal debt,
While never a man who was a man was ‘reformed’ by punishment yet.
The champagne lady comes home from the course in charge of the criminal swell—
They carry her in from the motor car to the lift in the Grand Hotel.
But armed with the savage Habituals Act they are waiting for you and me,
And the drums, they are beating loud and near. (Keep step, One Hundred and Three!)
The clever scoundrels are all outside, and the moneyless mugs in gaol—
Men do twelve months for a mad wife’s lies or Life for a strumpet’s tale.
If the people knew what the warders know, and felt as the prisoners feel—
If the people knew, they would storm their gaols as they stormed the old Bastile.
And the cackling, screaming half-human hens who were never mothers nor wives
Would send their sisters to such a hell for the term of their natural lives,
Where laws are made in a Female Fit in the Land of the Crazy Fad,
And drunkards in judgment on drunkards sit and the mad condemn the mad.
The High Church service swells and swells where the tinted Christs look down—
It is easy to see who is weary and faint and weareth the thorny crown.
There are swift-made signs that are not to God, and they march us Hellward then.
It is hard to believe that we knelt as boys to ‘for ever and ever, Amen. ’
Warders and prisoners all alike in a dead rot dry and slow—
The author must not write for his own, and the tailor must not sew.
The billet-bound officers dare not speak and discharged men dare not tell
Though many and many an innocent man must brood in this barren hell.
We are most of us criminal, most of us mad, and we do what we can do.
(Remember the Observation Ward and Number Forty-Two.)
There are eyes that see through stone and iron, though the rest of the world be blind—
We are prisoners all in God’s Great Gaol, but the Governor, He is kind.
They crave for sunlight, they crave for meat, they crave for the might-have-been,
But the cruellest thing in the walls of a gaol is the craving for nicotine.
Yet the spirit of Christ is everywhere where the heart of a man can dwell,
It comes like tobacco in prison—or like news to the separate cell.
They have smuggled him out to the Hospital with no one to tell the tale,
But it’s little the doctors and nurses can do for the patient from Starvinghurst Gaol.
He cannot swallow the food they bring, for a gaol-starved man is he,
And the blanket and screen are ready to draw—(Keep step, One Hundred and Three!)
‘What were you doing, One Hundred and Three?’ and the answer is ‘Three years hard,
And a month to go’—and the whisper is low: ‘There’s the moonlight—out in the yard.’
The drums, they are beating far and low, and the footstep’s light and free,
And the angels are whispering over his bed: ‘Keep step, One Hundred and Three!’
239
Henry Lawson
One Hundred and Three
One Hundred and Three
With the frame of a man, and the face of a boy, and a manner strangely wild,
And the great, wide, wondering, innocent eyes of a silent-suffering child;
With his hideous dress and his heavy boots, he drags to Eternity—
And the Warder says, in a softened tone: ‘Keep step, One Hundred and Three.’
’Tis a ghastly travesty of drill—or a ghastly farce of work—
But One Hundred and Three, he catches step with a start, a shuffle and jerk.
’Tis slow starvation in separate cells, and a widow’s son is he,
And the widow, she drank before he was born—(Keep step, One Hundred and Three!)
They shut a man in the four-by-eight, with a six-inch slit for air,
Twenty-three hours of the twenty-four, to brood on his virtues there.
And the dead stone walls and the iron door close in as an iron band
On eyes that followed the distant haze far out on the level land.
Bread and water and hominy, and a scrag of meat and a spud,
A Bible and thin flat book of rules, to cool a strong man’s blood;
They take the spoon from the cell at night—and a stranger might think it odd;
But a man might sharpen it on the floor, and go to his own Great God.
One Hundred and Three, it is hard to believe that you saddled your horse at dawn;
There were girls that rode through the bush at eve, and girls who lolled on the lawn.
There were picnic parties in sunny bays, and ships on the shining sea;
There were foreign ports in the glorious days—(Hold up, One Hundred and Three!)
A man came out at exercise time from one of the cells to-day:
’Twas the ghastly spectre of one I knew, and I thought he was far away;
We dared not speak, but he signed ‘Farewell—fare—well,’ and I knew by this
And the number stamped on his clothes (not sewn) that a heavy sentence was his.
Where five men do the work of a boy, with warders not to see,
It is sad and bad and uselessly mad, it is ugly as it can be,
From the flower-beds laid to fit the gaol, in circle and line absurd,
To the gilded weathercock on the church, agape like a strangled bird.
Agape like a strangled bird in the sun, and I wonder what he could see?
The Fleet come in, and the Fleet go out? (Hold up, One Hundred and Three!)
The glorious sea, and the bays and Bush, and the distant mountains blue
(Keep step, keep step, One Hundred and Three, for my lines are halting too)
The great, round church with its volume of sound, where we dare not turn our eyes—
They take us there from our separate hells to sing of Paradise.
In all the creeds there is hope and doubt, but of this there is no doubt:
That starving prisoners faint in church, and the warders carry them out.
They double-lock at four o’clock and the warders leave their keys,
And the Governor strolls with a friend at eve through his stone conservatories;
Their window slits are like idiot mouths with square stone chins adrop,
And the weather-stains for the dribble, and the dead flat foreheads atop.
No light save the lights in the yard beneath the clustering lights of the Lord—
And the lights turned in to the window slits of the Observation Ward.
(They eat their meat with their fingers there in a madness starved and dull—
Oh! the padded cells and the “O—b—s” are nearly always full.)
Rules, regulations—red-tape and rules; all and alike they bind:
Under ‘separate treatment ’ place the deaf; in the dark cell shut the blind!
And somewhere down in his sandstone tomb, with never a word to save,
One Hundred and Three is keeping step, as he’ll keep it to his grave.
The press is printing its smug, smug lies, and paying its shameful debt—
It speaks of the comforts that prisoners have, and ‘holidays’ prisoners get.
The visitors come with their smug, smug smiles through the gaol on a working day,
And the public hears with its large, large ears what authorities have to say.
They lay their fingers on well-hosed walls, and they tread on the polished floor;
They peep in the generous shining cans with their ration Number Four.
And the visitors go with their smug, smug smiles; the reporters’ work is done;
Stand up! my men, who have done your time on ration Number One!
Speak up, my men! I was never the man to keep my own bed warm,
I have jogged with you round in the Fools’ Parade, and I’ve worn your uniform;
I’ve seen you live, and I’ve seen you die, and I’ve seen your reason fail—
I’ve smuggled tobacco and loosened my tongue—and I’ve been punished in gaol.
Ay! clang the spoon on the iron floor, and shove in the bread with your toe,
And shut with a bang the iron door, and clank the bolt—just so,
With an ignorant oath for a last good-night—or the voice of a filthy thought.
By the Gipsy Blood you have caught a man you’ll be sorry that ever you caught.
He shall be buried alive without meat, for a day and a night unheard
If he speak to a fellow prisoner, though he die for want of a word.
He shall be punished, and he shall be starved, and he shall in darkness rot,
He shall be murdered body and soul—and God said, ‘Thou shalt not!’
I’ve seen the remand-yard men go out, by the subway out of the yard—
And I’ve seen them come in with a foolish grin and a sentence of Three Years Hard.
They send a half-starved man to the court, where the hearts of men they carve—
Then feed him up in the hospital to give him the strength to starve.
You get the gaol-dust in your throat, in your skin the dead gaol-white;
You get the gaol-whine in your voice and in every letter you write.
And in your eyes comes the bright gaol-light—not the glare of the world’s distraught,
Not the hunted look, nor the guilty look, but the awful look of the Caught.
There was one I met—’twas a mate of mine—in a gaol that is known to us;
He died—and they said it was ‘heart disease’; but he died for want of a truss.
I’ve knelt at the head of the pallid dead, where the living dead were we,
And I’ve closed the yielding lids with my thumbs—(Keep step, One Hundred and
Three!)
A criminal face is rare in gaol, where all things else are ripe—
It is higher up in the social scale that you’ll find the criminal type.
But the kindness of man to man is great when penned in a sandstone pen—
The public call us the ‘criminal class,’ but the warders call us ‘the men.’
The brute is a brute, and a kind man kind, and the strong heart does not fail—
A crawler’s a crawler everywhere, but a man is a man in gaol!
For forced ‘desertion’ or drunkenness, or a law’s illegal debt,
While never a man who was a man was ‘reformed’ by punishment yet.
The champagne lady comes home from the course in charge of the criminal swell—
They carry her in from the motor car to the lift in the Grand Hotel.
But armed with the savage Habituals Act they are waiting for you and me,
And the drums, they are beating loud and near. (Keep step, One Hundred and Three!)
The clever scoundrels are all outside, and the moneyless mugs in gaol—
Men do twelve months for a mad wife’s lies or Life for a strumpet’s tale.
If the people knew what the warders know, and felt as the prisoners feel—
If the people knew, they would storm their gaols as they stormed the old Bastile.
And the cackling, screaming half-human hens who were never mothers nor wives
Would send their sisters to such a hell for the term of their natural lives,
Where laws are made in a Female Fit in the Land of the Crazy Fad,
And drunkards in judgment on drunkards sit and the mad condemn the mad.
The High Church service swells and swells where the tinted Christs look down—
It is easy to see who is weary and faint and weareth the thorny crown.
There are swift-made signs that are not to God, and they march us Hellward then.
It is hard to believe that we knelt as boys to ‘for ever and ever, Amen. ’
Warders and prisoners all alike in a dead rot dry and slow—
The author must not write for his own, and the tailor must not sew.
The billet-bound officers dare not speak and discharged men dare not tell
Though many and many an innocent man must brood in this barren hell.
We are most of us criminal, most of us mad, and we do what we can do.
(Remember the Observation Ward and Number Forty-Two.)
There are eyes that see through stone and iron, though the rest of the world be blind—
We are prisoners all in God’s Great Gaol, but the Governor, He is kind.
They crave for sunlight, they crave for meat, they crave for the might-have-been,
But the cruellest thing in the walls of a gaol is the craving for nicotine.
Yet the spirit of Christ is everywhere where the heart of a man can dwell,
It comes like tobacco in prison—or like news to the separate cell.
They have smuggled him out to the Hospital with no one to tell the tale,
But it’s little the doctors and nurses can do for the patient from Starvinghurst Gaol.
He cannot swallow the food they bring, for a gaol-starved man is he,
And the blanket and screen are ready to draw—(Keep step, One Hundred and Three!)
‘What were you doing, One Hundred and Three?’ and the answer is ‘Three years hard,
And a month to go’—and the whisper is low: ‘There’s the moonlight—out in the yard.’
The drums, they are beating far and low, and the footstep’s light and free,
And the angels are whispering over his bed: ‘Keep step, One Hundred and Three!’
With the frame of a man, and the face of a boy, and a manner strangely wild,
And the great, wide, wondering, innocent eyes of a silent-suffering child;
With his hideous dress and his heavy boots, he drags to Eternity—
And the Warder says, in a softened tone: ‘Keep step, One Hundred and Three.’
’Tis a ghastly travesty of drill—or a ghastly farce of work—
But One Hundred and Three, he catches step with a start, a shuffle and jerk.
’Tis slow starvation in separate cells, and a widow’s son is he,
And the widow, she drank before he was born—(Keep step, One Hundred and Three!)
They shut a man in the four-by-eight, with a six-inch slit for air,
Twenty-three hours of the twenty-four, to brood on his virtues there.
And the dead stone walls and the iron door close in as an iron band
On eyes that followed the distant haze far out on the level land.
Bread and water and hominy, and a scrag of meat and a spud,
A Bible and thin flat book of rules, to cool a strong man’s blood;
They take the spoon from the cell at night—and a stranger might think it odd;
But a man might sharpen it on the floor, and go to his own Great God.
One Hundred and Three, it is hard to believe that you saddled your horse at dawn;
There were girls that rode through the bush at eve, and girls who lolled on the lawn.
There were picnic parties in sunny bays, and ships on the shining sea;
There were foreign ports in the glorious days—(Hold up, One Hundred and Three!)
A man came out at exercise time from one of the cells to-day:
’Twas the ghastly spectre of one I knew, and I thought he was far away;
We dared not speak, but he signed ‘Farewell—fare—well,’ and I knew by this
And the number stamped on his clothes (not sewn) that a heavy sentence was his.
Where five men do the work of a boy, with warders not to see,
It is sad and bad and uselessly mad, it is ugly as it can be,
From the flower-beds laid to fit the gaol, in circle and line absurd,
To the gilded weathercock on the church, agape like a strangled bird.
Agape like a strangled bird in the sun, and I wonder what he could see?
The Fleet come in, and the Fleet go out? (Hold up, One Hundred and Three!)
The glorious sea, and the bays and Bush, and the distant mountains blue
(Keep step, keep step, One Hundred and Three, for my lines are halting too)
The great, round church with its volume of sound, where we dare not turn our eyes—
They take us there from our separate hells to sing of Paradise.
In all the creeds there is hope and doubt, but of this there is no doubt:
That starving prisoners faint in church, and the warders carry them out.
They double-lock at four o’clock and the warders leave their keys,
And the Governor strolls with a friend at eve through his stone conservatories;
Their window slits are like idiot mouths with square stone chins adrop,
And the weather-stains for the dribble, and the dead flat foreheads atop.
No light save the lights in the yard beneath the clustering lights of the Lord—
And the lights turned in to the window slits of the Observation Ward.
(They eat their meat with their fingers there in a madness starved and dull—
Oh! the padded cells and the “O—b—s” are nearly always full.)
Rules, regulations—red-tape and rules; all and alike they bind:
Under ‘separate treatment ’ place the deaf; in the dark cell shut the blind!
And somewhere down in his sandstone tomb, with never a word to save,
One Hundred and Three is keeping step, as he’ll keep it to his grave.
The press is printing its smug, smug lies, and paying its shameful debt—
It speaks of the comforts that prisoners have, and ‘holidays’ prisoners get.
The visitors come with their smug, smug smiles through the gaol on a working day,
And the public hears with its large, large ears what authorities have to say.
They lay their fingers on well-hosed walls, and they tread on the polished floor;
They peep in the generous shining cans with their ration Number Four.
And the visitors go with their smug, smug smiles; the reporters’ work is done;
Stand up! my men, who have done your time on ration Number One!
Speak up, my men! I was never the man to keep my own bed warm,
I have jogged with you round in the Fools’ Parade, and I’ve worn your uniform;
I’ve seen you live, and I’ve seen you die, and I’ve seen your reason fail—
I’ve smuggled tobacco and loosened my tongue—and I’ve been punished in gaol.
Ay! clang the spoon on the iron floor, and shove in the bread with your toe,
And shut with a bang the iron door, and clank the bolt—just so,
With an ignorant oath for a last good-night—or the voice of a filthy thought.
By the Gipsy Blood you have caught a man you’ll be sorry that ever you caught.
He shall be buried alive without meat, for a day and a night unheard
If he speak to a fellow prisoner, though he die for want of a word.
He shall be punished, and he shall be starved, and he shall in darkness rot,
He shall be murdered body and soul—and God said, ‘Thou shalt not!’
I’ve seen the remand-yard men go out, by the subway out of the yard—
And I’ve seen them come in with a foolish grin and a sentence of Three Years Hard.
They send a half-starved man to the court, where the hearts of men they carve—
Then feed him up in the hospital to give him the strength to starve.
You get the gaol-dust in your throat, in your skin the dead gaol-white;
You get the gaol-whine in your voice and in every letter you write.
And in your eyes comes the bright gaol-light—not the glare of the world’s distraught,
Not the hunted look, nor the guilty look, but the awful look of the Caught.
There was one I met—’twas a mate of mine—in a gaol that is known to us;
He died—and they said it was ‘heart disease’; but he died for want of a truss.
I’ve knelt at the head of the pallid dead, where the living dead were we,
And I’ve closed the yielding lids with my thumbs—(Keep step, One Hundred and
Three!)
A criminal face is rare in gaol, where all things else are ripe—
It is higher up in the social scale that you’ll find the criminal type.
But the kindness of man to man is great when penned in a sandstone pen—
The public call us the ‘criminal class,’ but the warders call us ‘the men.’
The brute is a brute, and a kind man kind, and the strong heart does not fail—
A crawler’s a crawler everywhere, but a man is a man in gaol!
For forced ‘desertion’ or drunkenness, or a law’s illegal debt,
While never a man who was a man was ‘reformed’ by punishment yet.
The champagne lady comes home from the course in charge of the criminal swell—
They carry her in from the motor car to the lift in the Grand Hotel.
But armed with the savage Habituals Act they are waiting for you and me,
And the drums, they are beating loud and near. (Keep step, One Hundred and Three!)
The clever scoundrels are all outside, and the moneyless mugs in gaol—
Men do twelve months for a mad wife’s lies or Life for a strumpet’s tale.
If the people knew what the warders know, and felt as the prisoners feel—
If the people knew, they would storm their gaols as they stormed the old Bastile.
And the cackling, screaming half-human hens who were never mothers nor wives
Would send their sisters to such a hell for the term of their natural lives,
Where laws are made in a Female Fit in the Land of the Crazy Fad,
And drunkards in judgment on drunkards sit and the mad condemn the mad.
The High Church service swells and swells where the tinted Christs look down—
It is easy to see who is weary and faint and weareth the thorny crown.
There are swift-made signs that are not to God, and they march us Hellward then.
It is hard to believe that we knelt as boys to ‘for ever and ever, Amen. ’
Warders and prisoners all alike in a dead rot dry and slow—
The author must not write for his own, and the tailor must not sew.
The billet-bound officers dare not speak and discharged men dare not tell
Though many and many an innocent man must brood in this barren hell.
We are most of us criminal, most of us mad, and we do what we can do.
(Remember the Observation Ward and Number Forty-Two.)
There are eyes that see through stone and iron, though the rest of the world be blind—
We are prisoners all in God’s Great Gaol, but the Governor, He is kind.
They crave for sunlight, they crave for meat, they crave for the might-have-been,
But the cruellest thing in the walls of a gaol is the craving for nicotine.
Yet the spirit of Christ is everywhere where the heart of a man can dwell,
It comes like tobacco in prison—or like news to the separate cell.
They have smuggled him out to the Hospital with no one to tell the tale,
But it’s little the doctors and nurses can do for the patient from Starvinghurst Gaol.
He cannot swallow the food they bring, for a gaol-starved man is he,
And the blanket and screen are ready to draw—(Keep step, One Hundred and Three!)
‘What were you doing, One Hundred and Three?’ and the answer is ‘Three years hard,
And a month to go’—and the whisper is low: ‘There’s the moonlight—out in the yard.’
The drums, they are beating far and low, and the footstep’s light and free,
And the angels are whispering over his bed: ‘Keep step, One Hundred and Three!’
239
Henry Lawson
One Hundred and Three
One Hundred and Three
With the frame of a man, and the face of a boy, and a manner strangely wild,
And the great, wide, wondering, innocent eyes of a silent-suffering child;
With his hideous dress and his heavy boots, he drags to Eternity—
And the Warder says, in a softened tone: ‘Keep step, One Hundred and Three.’
’Tis a ghastly travesty of drill—or a ghastly farce of work—
But One Hundred and Three, he catches step with a start, a shuffle and jerk.
’Tis slow starvation in separate cells, and a widow’s son is he,
And the widow, she drank before he was born—(Keep step, One Hundred and Three!)
They shut a man in the four-by-eight, with a six-inch slit for air,
Twenty-three hours of the twenty-four, to brood on his virtues there.
And the dead stone walls and the iron door close in as an iron band
On eyes that followed the distant haze far out on the level land.
Bread and water and hominy, and a scrag of meat and a spud,
A Bible and thin flat book of rules, to cool a strong man’s blood;
They take the spoon from the cell at night—and a stranger might think it odd;
But a man might sharpen it on the floor, and go to his own Great God.
One Hundred and Three, it is hard to believe that you saddled your horse at dawn;
There were girls that rode through the bush at eve, and girls who lolled on the lawn.
There were picnic parties in sunny bays, and ships on the shining sea;
There were foreign ports in the glorious days—(Hold up, One Hundred and Three!)
A man came out at exercise time from one of the cells to-day:
’Twas the ghastly spectre of one I knew, and I thought he was far away;
We dared not speak, but he signed ‘Farewell—fare—well,’ and I knew by this
And the number stamped on his clothes (not sewn) that a heavy sentence was his.
Where five men do the work of a boy, with warders not to see,
It is sad and bad and uselessly mad, it is ugly as it can be,
From the flower-beds laid to fit the gaol, in circle and line absurd,
To the gilded weathercock on the church, agape like a strangled bird.
Agape like a strangled bird in the sun, and I wonder what he could see?
The Fleet come in, and the Fleet go out? (Hold up, One Hundred and Three!)
The glorious sea, and the bays and Bush, and the distant mountains blue
(Keep step, keep step, One Hundred and Three, for my lines are halting too)
The great, round church with its volume of sound, where we dare not turn our eyes—
They take us there from our separate hells to sing of Paradise.
In all the creeds there is hope and doubt, but of this there is no doubt:
That starving prisoners faint in church, and the warders carry them out.
They double-lock at four o’clock and the warders leave their keys,
And the Governor strolls with a friend at eve through his stone conservatories;
Their window slits are like idiot mouths with square stone chins adrop,
And the weather-stains for the dribble, and the dead flat foreheads atop.
No light save the lights in the yard beneath the clustering lights of the Lord—
And the lights turned in to the window slits of the Observation Ward.
(They eat their meat with their fingers there in a madness starved and dull—
Oh! the padded cells and the “O—b—s” are nearly always full.)
Rules, regulations—red-tape and rules; all and alike they bind:
Under ‘separate treatment ’ place the deaf; in the dark cell shut the blind!
And somewhere down in his sandstone tomb, with never a word to save,
One Hundred and Three is keeping step, as he’ll keep it to his grave.
The press is printing its smug, smug lies, and paying its shameful debt—
It speaks of the comforts that prisoners have, and ‘holidays’ prisoners get.
The visitors come with their smug, smug smiles through the gaol on a working day,
And the public hears with its large, large ears what authorities have to say.
They lay their fingers on well-hosed walls, and they tread on the polished floor;
They peep in the generous shining cans with their ration Number Four.
And the visitors go with their smug, smug smiles; the reporters’ work is done;
Stand up! my men, who have done your time on ration Number One!
Speak up, my men! I was never the man to keep my own bed warm,
I have jogged with you round in the Fools’ Parade, and I’ve worn your uniform;
I’ve seen you live, and I’ve seen you die, and I’ve seen your reason fail—
I’ve smuggled tobacco and loosened my tongue—and I’ve been punished in gaol.
Ay! clang the spoon on the iron floor, and shove in the bread with your toe,
And shut with a bang the iron door, and clank the bolt—just so,
With an ignorant oath for a last good-night—or the voice of a filthy thought.
By the Gipsy Blood you have caught a man you’ll be sorry that ever you caught.
He shall be buried alive without meat, for a day and a night unheard
If he speak to a fellow prisoner, though he die for want of a word.
He shall be punished, and he shall be starved, and he shall in darkness rot,
He shall be murdered body and soul—and God said, ‘Thou shalt not!’
I’ve seen the remand-yard men go out, by the subway out of the yard—
And I’ve seen them come in with a foolish grin and a sentence of Three Years Hard.
They send a half-starved man to the court, where the hearts of men they carve—
Then feed him up in the hospital to give him the strength to starve.
You get the gaol-dust in your throat, in your skin the dead gaol-white;
You get the gaol-whine in your voice and in every letter you write.
And in your eyes comes the bright gaol-light—not the glare of the world’s distraught,
Not the hunted look, nor the guilty look, but the awful look of the Caught.
There was one I met—’twas a mate of mine—in a gaol that is known to us;
He died—and they said it was ‘heart disease’; but he died for want of a truss.
I’ve knelt at the head of the pallid dead, where the living dead were we,
And I’ve closed the yielding lids with my thumbs—(Keep step, One Hundred and
Three!)
A criminal face is rare in gaol, where all things else are ripe—
It is higher up in the social scale that you’ll find the criminal type.
But the kindness of man to man is great when penned in a sandstone pen—
The public call us the ‘criminal class,’ but the warders call us ‘the men.’
The brute is a brute, and a kind man kind, and the strong heart does not fail—
A crawler’s a crawler everywhere, but a man is a man in gaol!
For forced ‘desertion’ or drunkenness, or a law’s illegal debt,
While never a man who was a man was ‘reformed’ by punishment yet.
The champagne lady comes home from the course in charge of the criminal swell—
They carry her in from the motor car to the lift in the Grand Hotel.
But armed with the savage Habituals Act they are waiting for you and me,
And the drums, they are beating loud and near. (Keep step, One Hundred and Three!)
The clever scoundrels are all outside, and the moneyless mugs in gaol—
Men do twelve months for a mad wife’s lies or Life for a strumpet’s tale.
If the people knew what the warders know, and felt as the prisoners feel—
If the people knew, they would storm their gaols as they stormed the old Bastile.
And the cackling, screaming half-human hens who were never mothers nor wives
Would send their sisters to such a hell for the term of their natural lives,
Where laws are made in a Female Fit in the Land of the Crazy Fad,
And drunkards in judgment on drunkards sit and the mad condemn the mad.
The High Church service swells and swells where the tinted Christs look down—
It is easy to see who is weary and faint and weareth the thorny crown.
There are swift-made signs that are not to God, and they march us Hellward then.
It is hard to believe that we knelt as boys to ‘for ever and ever, Amen. ’
Warders and prisoners all alike in a dead rot dry and slow—
The author must not write for his own, and the tailor must not sew.
The billet-bound officers dare not speak and discharged men dare not tell
Though many and many an innocent man must brood in this barren hell.
We are most of us criminal, most of us mad, and we do what we can do.
(Remember the Observation Ward and Number Forty-Two.)
There are eyes that see through stone and iron, though the rest of the world be blind—
We are prisoners all in God’s Great Gaol, but the Governor, He is kind.
They crave for sunlight, they crave for meat, they crave for the might-have-been,
But the cruellest thing in the walls of a gaol is the craving for nicotine.
Yet the spirit of Christ is everywhere where the heart of a man can dwell,
It comes like tobacco in prison—or like news to the separate cell.
They have smuggled him out to the Hospital with no one to tell the tale,
But it’s little the doctors and nurses can do for the patient from Starvinghurst Gaol.
He cannot swallow the food they bring, for a gaol-starved man is he,
And the blanket and screen are ready to draw—(Keep step, One Hundred and Three!)
‘What were you doing, One Hundred and Three?’ and the answer is ‘Three years hard,
And a month to go’—and the whisper is low: ‘There’s the moonlight—out in the yard.’
The drums, they are beating far and low, and the footstep’s light and free,
And the angels are whispering over his bed: ‘Keep step, One Hundred and Three!’
With the frame of a man, and the face of a boy, and a manner strangely wild,
And the great, wide, wondering, innocent eyes of a silent-suffering child;
With his hideous dress and his heavy boots, he drags to Eternity—
And the Warder says, in a softened tone: ‘Keep step, One Hundred and Three.’
’Tis a ghastly travesty of drill—or a ghastly farce of work—
But One Hundred and Three, he catches step with a start, a shuffle and jerk.
’Tis slow starvation in separate cells, and a widow’s son is he,
And the widow, she drank before he was born—(Keep step, One Hundred and Three!)
They shut a man in the four-by-eight, with a six-inch slit for air,
Twenty-three hours of the twenty-four, to brood on his virtues there.
And the dead stone walls and the iron door close in as an iron band
On eyes that followed the distant haze far out on the level land.
Bread and water and hominy, and a scrag of meat and a spud,
A Bible and thin flat book of rules, to cool a strong man’s blood;
They take the spoon from the cell at night—and a stranger might think it odd;
But a man might sharpen it on the floor, and go to his own Great God.
One Hundred and Three, it is hard to believe that you saddled your horse at dawn;
There were girls that rode through the bush at eve, and girls who lolled on the lawn.
There were picnic parties in sunny bays, and ships on the shining sea;
There were foreign ports in the glorious days—(Hold up, One Hundred and Three!)
A man came out at exercise time from one of the cells to-day:
’Twas the ghastly spectre of one I knew, and I thought he was far away;
We dared not speak, but he signed ‘Farewell—fare—well,’ and I knew by this
And the number stamped on his clothes (not sewn) that a heavy sentence was his.
Where five men do the work of a boy, with warders not to see,
It is sad and bad and uselessly mad, it is ugly as it can be,
From the flower-beds laid to fit the gaol, in circle and line absurd,
To the gilded weathercock on the church, agape like a strangled bird.
Agape like a strangled bird in the sun, and I wonder what he could see?
The Fleet come in, and the Fleet go out? (Hold up, One Hundred and Three!)
The glorious sea, and the bays and Bush, and the distant mountains blue
(Keep step, keep step, One Hundred and Three, for my lines are halting too)
The great, round church with its volume of sound, where we dare not turn our eyes—
They take us there from our separate hells to sing of Paradise.
In all the creeds there is hope and doubt, but of this there is no doubt:
That starving prisoners faint in church, and the warders carry them out.
They double-lock at four o’clock and the warders leave their keys,
And the Governor strolls with a friend at eve through his stone conservatories;
Their window slits are like idiot mouths with square stone chins adrop,
And the weather-stains for the dribble, and the dead flat foreheads atop.
No light save the lights in the yard beneath the clustering lights of the Lord—
And the lights turned in to the window slits of the Observation Ward.
(They eat their meat with their fingers there in a madness starved and dull—
Oh! the padded cells and the “O—b—s” are nearly always full.)
Rules, regulations—red-tape and rules; all and alike they bind:
Under ‘separate treatment ’ place the deaf; in the dark cell shut the blind!
And somewhere down in his sandstone tomb, with never a word to save,
One Hundred and Three is keeping step, as he’ll keep it to his grave.
The press is printing its smug, smug lies, and paying its shameful debt—
It speaks of the comforts that prisoners have, and ‘holidays’ prisoners get.
The visitors come with their smug, smug smiles through the gaol on a working day,
And the public hears with its large, large ears what authorities have to say.
They lay their fingers on well-hosed walls, and they tread on the polished floor;
They peep in the generous shining cans with their ration Number Four.
And the visitors go with their smug, smug smiles; the reporters’ work is done;
Stand up! my men, who have done your time on ration Number One!
Speak up, my men! I was never the man to keep my own bed warm,
I have jogged with you round in the Fools’ Parade, and I’ve worn your uniform;
I’ve seen you live, and I’ve seen you die, and I’ve seen your reason fail—
I’ve smuggled tobacco and loosened my tongue—and I’ve been punished in gaol.
Ay! clang the spoon on the iron floor, and shove in the bread with your toe,
And shut with a bang the iron door, and clank the bolt—just so,
With an ignorant oath for a last good-night—or the voice of a filthy thought.
By the Gipsy Blood you have caught a man you’ll be sorry that ever you caught.
He shall be buried alive without meat, for a day and a night unheard
If he speak to a fellow prisoner, though he die for want of a word.
He shall be punished, and he shall be starved, and he shall in darkness rot,
He shall be murdered body and soul—and God said, ‘Thou shalt not!’
I’ve seen the remand-yard men go out, by the subway out of the yard—
And I’ve seen them come in with a foolish grin and a sentence of Three Years Hard.
They send a half-starved man to the court, where the hearts of men they carve—
Then feed him up in the hospital to give him the strength to starve.
You get the gaol-dust in your throat, in your skin the dead gaol-white;
You get the gaol-whine in your voice and in every letter you write.
And in your eyes comes the bright gaol-light—not the glare of the world’s distraught,
Not the hunted look, nor the guilty look, but the awful look of the Caught.
There was one I met—’twas a mate of mine—in a gaol that is known to us;
He died—and they said it was ‘heart disease’; but he died for want of a truss.
I’ve knelt at the head of the pallid dead, where the living dead were we,
And I’ve closed the yielding lids with my thumbs—(Keep step, One Hundred and
Three!)
A criminal face is rare in gaol, where all things else are ripe—
It is higher up in the social scale that you’ll find the criminal type.
But the kindness of man to man is great when penned in a sandstone pen—
The public call us the ‘criminal class,’ but the warders call us ‘the men.’
The brute is a brute, and a kind man kind, and the strong heart does not fail—
A crawler’s a crawler everywhere, but a man is a man in gaol!
For forced ‘desertion’ or drunkenness, or a law’s illegal debt,
While never a man who was a man was ‘reformed’ by punishment yet.
The champagne lady comes home from the course in charge of the criminal swell—
They carry her in from the motor car to the lift in the Grand Hotel.
But armed with the savage Habituals Act they are waiting for you and me,
And the drums, they are beating loud and near. (Keep step, One Hundred and Three!)
The clever scoundrels are all outside, and the moneyless mugs in gaol—
Men do twelve months for a mad wife’s lies or Life for a strumpet’s tale.
If the people knew what the warders know, and felt as the prisoners feel—
If the people knew, they would storm their gaols as they stormed the old Bastile.
And the cackling, screaming half-human hens who were never mothers nor wives
Would send their sisters to such a hell for the term of their natural lives,
Where laws are made in a Female Fit in the Land of the Crazy Fad,
And drunkards in judgment on drunkards sit and the mad condemn the mad.
The High Church service swells and swells where the tinted Christs look down—
It is easy to see who is weary and faint and weareth the thorny crown.
There are swift-made signs that are not to God, and they march us Hellward then.
It is hard to believe that we knelt as boys to ‘for ever and ever, Amen. ’
Warders and prisoners all alike in a dead rot dry and slow—
The author must not write for his own, and the tailor must not sew.
The billet-bound officers dare not speak and discharged men dare not tell
Though many and many an innocent man must brood in this barren hell.
We are most of us criminal, most of us mad, and we do what we can do.
(Remember the Observation Ward and Number Forty-Two.)
There are eyes that see through stone and iron, though the rest of the world be blind—
We are prisoners all in God’s Great Gaol, but the Governor, He is kind.
They crave for sunlight, they crave for meat, they crave for the might-have-been,
But the cruellest thing in the walls of a gaol is the craving for nicotine.
Yet the spirit of Christ is everywhere where the heart of a man can dwell,
It comes like tobacco in prison—or like news to the separate cell.
They have smuggled him out to the Hospital with no one to tell the tale,
But it’s little the doctors and nurses can do for the patient from Starvinghurst Gaol.
He cannot swallow the food they bring, for a gaol-starved man is he,
And the blanket and screen are ready to draw—(Keep step, One Hundred and Three!)
‘What were you doing, One Hundred and Three?’ and the answer is ‘Three years hard,
And a month to go’—and the whisper is low: ‘There’s the moonlight—out in the yard.’
The drums, they are beating far and low, and the footstep’s light and free,
And the angels are whispering over his bed: ‘Keep step, One Hundred and Three!’
239
Henry Lawson
On the Summit of Mt. Clarence
On the Summit of Mt. Clarence
On the summit of Mount Clarence rotting slowly in the air
Stands a tall and naked flagstaff, relic of the Russian scare—
Russian scare that scares no longer, for the cry is “All is well”—
Yet the flagstaff still is standing like a lonely sentinel.
And it watches through the seasons—winter’s cold and summer’s heat,
Watches seaward, watches ever for the phantom Russian fleet.
In a cave among the ridges, where the scrub is tall and thick
With no human being near him dwells a wretched lunatic:
On Mount Clarence in the morning he will fix his burning eyes,
And he scans the sea and watches for the signal flag to rise;
In his ears the roar of cannon and the sound of battle drums
While he cleans his gun and watches for the foe that never comes.
And they say, at dreary nightfall, when the storms are howling round
Comes a phantom ship to anchor in the waters of the “Sound”,
And the lunatic who sees it wakes the landscape with his whoops,
Loads his gun and marches seaward at the head of airy troops—
To the summit of Mount Clarence leads them on with martial tread,
Fires his gun and sends the Russians to the mustering of the dead.
On the summit of Mount Clarence rotting slowly in the air
Stands a tall and naked flagstaff, relic of the Russian scare—
Russian scare that scares no longer, for the cry is “All is well”—
Yet the flagstaff still is standing like a lonely sentinel.
And it watches through the seasons—winter’s cold and summer’s heat,
Watches seaward, watches ever for the phantom Russian fleet.
In a cave among the ridges, where the scrub is tall and thick
With no human being near him dwells a wretched lunatic:
On Mount Clarence in the morning he will fix his burning eyes,
And he scans the sea and watches for the signal flag to rise;
In his ears the roar of cannon and the sound of battle drums
While he cleans his gun and watches for the foe that never comes.
And they say, at dreary nightfall, when the storms are howling round
Comes a phantom ship to anchor in the waters of the “Sound”,
And the lunatic who sees it wakes the landscape with his whoops,
Loads his gun and marches seaward at the head of airy troops—
To the summit of Mount Clarence leads them on with martial tread,
Fires his gun and sends the Russians to the mustering of the dead.
260
Henry Lawson
On the March
On the March
So the time seems come at last,
And the drums go rolling past,
And above them in the sunlight Labour's banners float and flow;
They are marching with the sun,
But I look in vain for one
Of the men who fought for freedom more than fifteen years ago.
They were men who did the work
Out at Blackall, Hay, and Bourke –
They were men who fought the battle that the world shall never know;
And they vanished one by one
When their bitter task was done –
Men who worked and wrote for freedom more than fifteen years ago.
Some are scattered, some are dead,
By the shanty and the shed,
In the lignum and the mulga, by the river running low;
And I often wish in vain
I could call them back again –
Mates of mine who fought for freedom more than fifteen years ago.
From the country of their birth
Some have sailed and proved their worth;
Some have died on distant deserts, some have perished in the snow.
Some are gloomy, bitter men,
And I meet them now and then –
Men who'd give their lives for Labour more than fifteen years ago.
Oh, the drums come back to me,
And they beat for victory,
But my heart is scarcely quickened, and I never feel the glow;
For I've learnt the world since then,
And the hopelessness of men,
And the fire it burnt too fiercely more than fifteen years ago.
Lucky you who still are young,
When the rebel war-hymn's sung,
And the sons of slaves are marching with their faces all aglow,
When the revolution comes
And the blood is on the drums –
Oh! I wish the storm had found me more than fifteen years ago!
Bear the olden banner still!
Let the nations fight who will!
'Tis the flag of generations – the flag that all the peoples know;
And they'll bear it, brave and red,
Over ancient rebel dead,
In the future to the finish as a thousand years ago!
So the time seems come at last,
And the drums go rolling past,
And above them in the sunlight Labour's banners float and flow;
They are marching with the sun,
But I look in vain for one
Of the men who fought for freedom more than fifteen years ago.
They were men who did the work
Out at Blackall, Hay, and Bourke –
They were men who fought the battle that the world shall never know;
And they vanished one by one
When their bitter task was done –
Men who worked and wrote for freedom more than fifteen years ago.
Some are scattered, some are dead,
By the shanty and the shed,
In the lignum and the mulga, by the river running low;
And I often wish in vain
I could call them back again –
Mates of mine who fought for freedom more than fifteen years ago.
From the country of their birth
Some have sailed and proved their worth;
Some have died on distant deserts, some have perished in the snow.
Some are gloomy, bitter men,
And I meet them now and then –
Men who'd give their lives for Labour more than fifteen years ago.
Oh, the drums come back to me,
And they beat for victory,
But my heart is scarcely quickened, and I never feel the glow;
For I've learnt the world since then,
And the hopelessness of men,
And the fire it burnt too fiercely more than fifteen years ago.
Lucky you who still are young,
When the rebel war-hymn's sung,
And the sons of slaves are marching with their faces all aglow,
When the revolution comes
And the blood is on the drums –
Oh! I wish the storm had found me more than fifteen years ago!
Bear the olden banner still!
Let the nations fight who will!
'Tis the flag of generations – the flag that all the peoples know;
And they'll bear it, brave and red,
Over ancient rebel dead,
In the future to the finish as a thousand years ago!
267
Henry Lawson
On the March
On the March
So the time seems come at last,
And the drums go rolling past,
And above them in the sunlight Labour's banners float and flow;
They are marching with the sun,
But I look in vain for one
Of the men who fought for freedom more than fifteen years ago.
They were men who did the work
Out at Blackall, Hay, and Bourke –
They were men who fought the battle that the world shall never know;
And they vanished one by one
When their bitter task was done –
Men who worked and wrote for freedom more than fifteen years ago.
Some are scattered, some are dead,
By the shanty and the shed,
In the lignum and the mulga, by the river running low;
And I often wish in vain
I could call them back again –
Mates of mine who fought for freedom more than fifteen years ago.
From the country of their birth
Some have sailed and proved their worth;
Some have died on distant deserts, some have perished in the snow.
Some are gloomy, bitter men,
And I meet them now and then –
Men who'd give their lives for Labour more than fifteen years ago.
Oh, the drums come back to me,
And they beat for victory,
But my heart is scarcely quickened, and I never feel the glow;
For I've learnt the world since then,
And the hopelessness of men,
And the fire it burnt too fiercely more than fifteen years ago.
Lucky you who still are young,
When the rebel war-hymn's sung,
And the sons of slaves are marching with their faces all aglow,
When the revolution comes
And the blood is on the drums –
Oh! I wish the storm had found me more than fifteen years ago!
Bear the olden banner still!
Let the nations fight who will!
'Tis the flag of generations – the flag that all the peoples know;
And they'll bear it, brave and red,
Over ancient rebel dead,
In the future to the finish as a thousand years ago!
So the time seems come at last,
And the drums go rolling past,
And above them in the sunlight Labour's banners float and flow;
They are marching with the sun,
But I look in vain for one
Of the men who fought for freedom more than fifteen years ago.
They were men who did the work
Out at Blackall, Hay, and Bourke –
They were men who fought the battle that the world shall never know;
And they vanished one by one
When their bitter task was done –
Men who worked and wrote for freedom more than fifteen years ago.
Some are scattered, some are dead,
By the shanty and the shed,
In the lignum and the mulga, by the river running low;
And I often wish in vain
I could call them back again –
Mates of mine who fought for freedom more than fifteen years ago.
From the country of their birth
Some have sailed and proved their worth;
Some have died on distant deserts, some have perished in the snow.
Some are gloomy, bitter men,
And I meet them now and then –
Men who'd give their lives for Labour more than fifteen years ago.
Oh, the drums come back to me,
And they beat for victory,
But my heart is scarcely quickened, and I never feel the glow;
For I've learnt the world since then,
And the hopelessness of men,
And the fire it burnt too fiercely more than fifteen years ago.
Lucky you who still are young,
When the rebel war-hymn's sung,
And the sons of slaves are marching with their faces all aglow,
When the revolution comes
And the blood is on the drums –
Oh! I wish the storm had found me more than fifteen years ago!
Bear the olden banner still!
Let the nations fight who will!
'Tis the flag of generations – the flag that all the peoples know;
And they'll bear it, brave and red,
Over ancient rebel dead,
In the future to the finish as a thousand years ago!
267
Henry Lawson
On the March
On the March
So the time seems come at last,
And the drums go rolling past,
And above them in the sunlight Labour's banners float and flow;
They are marching with the sun,
But I look in vain for one
Of the men who fought for freedom more than fifteen years ago.
They were men who did the work
Out at Blackall, Hay, and Bourke –
They were men who fought the battle that the world shall never know;
And they vanished one by one
When their bitter task was done –
Men who worked and wrote for freedom more than fifteen years ago.
Some are scattered, some are dead,
By the shanty and the shed,
In the lignum and the mulga, by the river running low;
And I often wish in vain
I could call them back again –
Mates of mine who fought for freedom more than fifteen years ago.
From the country of their birth
Some have sailed and proved their worth;
Some have died on distant deserts, some have perished in the snow.
Some are gloomy, bitter men,
And I meet them now and then –
Men who'd give their lives for Labour more than fifteen years ago.
Oh, the drums come back to me,
And they beat for victory,
But my heart is scarcely quickened, and I never feel the glow;
For I've learnt the world since then,
And the hopelessness of men,
And the fire it burnt too fiercely more than fifteen years ago.
Lucky you who still are young,
When the rebel war-hymn's sung,
And the sons of slaves are marching with their faces all aglow,
When the revolution comes
And the blood is on the drums –
Oh! I wish the storm had found me more than fifteen years ago!
Bear the olden banner still!
Let the nations fight who will!
'Tis the flag of generations – the flag that all the peoples know;
And they'll bear it, brave and red,
Over ancient rebel dead,
In the future to the finish as a thousand years ago!
So the time seems come at last,
And the drums go rolling past,
And above them in the sunlight Labour's banners float and flow;
They are marching with the sun,
But I look in vain for one
Of the men who fought for freedom more than fifteen years ago.
They were men who did the work
Out at Blackall, Hay, and Bourke –
They were men who fought the battle that the world shall never know;
And they vanished one by one
When their bitter task was done –
Men who worked and wrote for freedom more than fifteen years ago.
Some are scattered, some are dead,
By the shanty and the shed,
In the lignum and the mulga, by the river running low;
And I often wish in vain
I could call them back again –
Mates of mine who fought for freedom more than fifteen years ago.
From the country of their birth
Some have sailed and proved their worth;
Some have died on distant deserts, some have perished in the snow.
Some are gloomy, bitter men,
And I meet them now and then –
Men who'd give their lives for Labour more than fifteen years ago.
Oh, the drums come back to me,
And they beat for victory,
But my heart is scarcely quickened, and I never feel the glow;
For I've learnt the world since then,
And the hopelessness of men,
And the fire it burnt too fiercely more than fifteen years ago.
Lucky you who still are young,
When the rebel war-hymn's sung,
And the sons of slaves are marching with their faces all aglow,
When the revolution comes
And the blood is on the drums –
Oh! I wish the storm had found me more than fifteen years ago!
Bear the olden banner still!
Let the nations fight who will!
'Tis the flag of generations – the flag that all the peoples know;
And they'll bear it, brave and red,
Over ancient rebel dead,
In the future to the finish as a thousand years ago!
267
Henry Lawson
Never, Never Land
Never, Never Land
By hut, homestead and shearing shed,
By railroad, coach and track-
By lonely graves where rest the dead,
Up-Country and Out-Back:
To where beneath the clustered stars
The dreamy plains expand-
My home lies wide a thousand miles
In Never-Never Land.
It lies beyond the farming belt,
Wide wastes of scrub and plain,
A blazing desert in the drought,
A lake-land after rain;
To the skyline sweeps the waving grass,
Or whirls the scorching sand-
A phantom land, a mystic realm!
The Never-Never Land.
Where lone Mount Desolation lies
Mounts Dreadful and Despair'
Tis lost beneath the rainless skies
In hopeless deserts there;
It spreads nor-west by No-Man's Land
Where clouds are seldom seen
To where the cattle stations lie
Three hundred miles between.
The drovers of the Great Stock Routes
The strange Gulf country Know
Where, travelling from the southern droughts,
The big lean bullocks go;
And camped by night where plains lie wide,
Like some old ocean's bed,
The watchmen in the starlight ride
Round fifteen hundred head.
Lest in the city I forget
True mateship after all,
My water-bag and billy yet
Are hanging on the wall;
And I, to save my soul again,
Would tramp to sunsets grand
With sad-eyed mates across the plain
In Never-Never Land.
By hut, homestead and shearing shed,
By railroad, coach and track-
By lonely graves where rest the dead,
Up-Country and Out-Back:
To where beneath the clustered stars
The dreamy plains expand-
My home lies wide a thousand miles
In Never-Never Land.
It lies beyond the farming belt,
Wide wastes of scrub and plain,
A blazing desert in the drought,
A lake-land after rain;
To the skyline sweeps the waving grass,
Or whirls the scorching sand-
A phantom land, a mystic realm!
The Never-Never Land.
Where lone Mount Desolation lies
Mounts Dreadful and Despair'
Tis lost beneath the rainless skies
In hopeless deserts there;
It spreads nor-west by No-Man's Land
Where clouds are seldom seen
To where the cattle stations lie
Three hundred miles between.
The drovers of the Great Stock Routes
The strange Gulf country Know
Where, travelling from the southern droughts,
The big lean bullocks go;
And camped by night where plains lie wide,
Like some old ocean's bed,
The watchmen in the starlight ride
Round fifteen hundred head.
Lest in the city I forget
True mateship after all,
My water-bag and billy yet
Are hanging on the wall;
And I, to save my soul again,
Would tramp to sunsets grand
With sad-eyed mates across the plain
In Never-Never Land.
203
Henry Lawson
Next Door
Next Door
Whenever I’m moving my furniture in
Or shifting my furniture out—
Which is nearly as often and risky as Sin
In these days of shifting about—
There isn’t a stretcher, there isn’t a stick,
Nor a mat that belongs to the floor;
There isn’t a pot (Oh, my heart groweth sick!)
That escapes from the glare of Next Door!
The Basilisk Glare of Next Door.
Be it morn, noon or night—be it early or late;
Be it summer or winter or spring,
I cannot sneak down just to list at the gate
For the song that the bottle-ohs sing;
With some bottles to sell that shall bring me a beer,
And lead up to one or two more;
But I feel in my backbone the serpentine sneer,
And the Basilisk Glare of Next Door.
The political woman Next Door.
I really can’t say, being no one of note,
Why she glares at my odds and my ends,
Excepting, maybe, I’m a frivolous Pote,
With one or two frivolous friends,
Who help me to shift and to warm up the house
For three or four glad hours or more,
In a suburb that hasn’t the soul of a louse;
And they’ve got no respect for Next Door!
They don’t give a damn for Next Door
.
Whenever I’m moving my furniture in
Or shifting my furniture out—
Which is nearly as often and risky as Sin
In these days of shifting about—
There isn’t a stretcher, there isn’t a stick,
Nor a mat that belongs to the floor;
There isn’t a pot (Oh, my heart groweth sick!)
That escapes from the glare of Next Door!
The Basilisk Glare of Next Door.
Be it morn, noon or night—be it early or late;
Be it summer or winter or spring,
I cannot sneak down just to list at the gate
For the song that the bottle-ohs sing;
With some bottles to sell that shall bring me a beer,
And lead up to one or two more;
But I feel in my backbone the serpentine sneer,
And the Basilisk Glare of Next Door.
The political woman Next Door.
I really can’t say, being no one of note,
Why she glares at my odds and my ends,
Excepting, maybe, I’m a frivolous Pote,
With one or two frivolous friends,
Who help me to shift and to warm up the house
For three or four glad hours or more,
In a suburb that hasn’t the soul of a louse;
And they’ve got no respect for Next Door!
They don’t give a damn for Next Door
.
314
Henry Lawson
Next Door
Next Door
Whenever I’m moving my furniture in
Or shifting my furniture out—
Which is nearly as often and risky as Sin
In these days of shifting about—
There isn’t a stretcher, there isn’t a stick,
Nor a mat that belongs to the floor;
There isn’t a pot (Oh, my heart groweth sick!)
That escapes from the glare of Next Door!
The Basilisk Glare of Next Door.
Be it morn, noon or night—be it early or late;
Be it summer or winter or spring,
I cannot sneak down just to list at the gate
For the song that the bottle-ohs sing;
With some bottles to sell that shall bring me a beer,
And lead up to one or two more;
But I feel in my backbone the serpentine sneer,
And the Basilisk Glare of Next Door.
The political woman Next Door.
I really can’t say, being no one of note,
Why she glares at my odds and my ends,
Excepting, maybe, I’m a frivolous Pote,
With one or two frivolous friends,
Who help me to shift and to warm up the house
For three or four glad hours or more,
In a suburb that hasn’t the soul of a louse;
And they’ve got no respect for Next Door!
They don’t give a damn for Next Door
.
Whenever I’m moving my furniture in
Or shifting my furniture out—
Which is nearly as often and risky as Sin
In these days of shifting about—
There isn’t a stretcher, there isn’t a stick,
Nor a mat that belongs to the floor;
There isn’t a pot (Oh, my heart groweth sick!)
That escapes from the glare of Next Door!
The Basilisk Glare of Next Door.
Be it morn, noon or night—be it early or late;
Be it summer or winter or spring,
I cannot sneak down just to list at the gate
For the song that the bottle-ohs sing;
With some bottles to sell that shall bring me a beer,
And lead up to one or two more;
But I feel in my backbone the serpentine sneer,
And the Basilisk Glare of Next Door.
The political woman Next Door.
I really can’t say, being no one of note,
Why she glares at my odds and my ends,
Excepting, maybe, I’m a frivolous Pote,
With one or two frivolous friends,
Who help me to shift and to warm up the house
For three or four glad hours or more,
In a suburb that hasn’t the soul of a louse;
And they’ve got no respect for Next Door!
They don’t give a damn for Next Door
.
314
Henry Lawson
Ned’s Delicate Way
Ned’s Delicate Way
Ned knew I was short of tobacco one day,
And that I was too proud to ask for it;
He hated such pride, but his delicate way
Forbade him to take me to task for it.
I loathed to be cadging tobacco from Ned,
But, when I was just on the brink of it;
‘I’ve got a new brand of tobacco”, he said –
“Try a smoke, and let’s know what you think of it.”
Ned knew I was short of tobacco one day,
And that I was too proud to ask for it;
He hated such pride, but his delicate way
Forbade him to take me to task for it.
I loathed to be cadging tobacco from Ned,
But, when I was just on the brink of it;
‘I’ve got a new brand of tobacco”, he said –
“Try a smoke, and let’s know what you think of it.”
203
Henry Lawson
My Father-in-Law and I
My Father-in-Law and I
MY father-in-law is a careworn man,
And a silent man is he;
But he summons a smile as well as he can
Whenever he meets with me.
The sign we make with a silent shake
That speaks of the days gone by—
Like men who meet at a funeral—
My father-in-law and I.
My father-in-law is a sober man
(And a virtuous man, I think);
But we spare a shilling whenever we can,
And we both drop in for a drink.
Our pints they fill, and we say, “Ah, well!”
With the sound of the world-old sigh—
Like the drink that comes after a funeral—
My father-in-law and I.
My father-in-law is a kindly man—
A domestic man is he.
He tries to look cheerful as well as he can
Whenever he meets with me.
But we stand and think till the second drink
In a silence that might imply
That we’d both get over a funeral,
My father-in-law and I.
MY father-in-law is a careworn man,
And a silent man is he;
But he summons a smile as well as he can
Whenever he meets with me.
The sign we make with a silent shake
That speaks of the days gone by—
Like men who meet at a funeral—
My father-in-law and I.
My father-in-law is a sober man
(And a virtuous man, I think);
But we spare a shilling whenever we can,
And we both drop in for a drink.
Our pints they fill, and we say, “Ah, well!”
With the sound of the world-old sigh—
Like the drink that comes after a funeral—
My father-in-law and I.
My father-in-law is a kindly man—
A domestic man is he.
He tries to look cheerful as well as he can
Whenever he meets with me.
But we stand and think till the second drink
In a silence that might imply
That we’d both get over a funeral,
My father-in-law and I.
305
Henry Lawson
Mary Called Him 'Mister'
Mary Called Him 'Mister'
They'd parted but a year before—she never thought he’d come,
She stammer’d, blushed, held out her hand, and called him ‘Mister Gum.’
How could he know that all the while she longed to murmur ‘John.’
He called her ‘Miss le Brook,’ and asked how she was getting on.
They’d parted but a year before; they’d loved each other well,
But he’d been to the city, and he came back such a swell.
They longed to meet in fond embrace, they hungered for a kiss—
But Mary called him ‘Mister,’ and the idiot called her ‘Miss.’
He stood and lean’d against the door—a stupid chap was he—
And, when she asked if he’d come in and have a cup of tea,
He looked to left, he looked to right, and then he glanced behind,
And slowly doffed his cabbage-tree, and said he ‘didn’t mind.’
She made a shy apology because the meat was tough,
And then she asked if he was sure his tea was sweet enough;
He stirred the tea and sipped it twice, and answer’d ‘plenty, quite;’
And cut the smallest piece of beef and said that it was ‘right.’
She glanced at him at times and cough’d an awkward little cough;
He stared at anything but her and said, ‘I must be off.’
That evening he went riding north—a sad and lonely ride—
She locked herself inside her room, and there sat down and cried.
They’d parted but a year before, they loved each other well—
But she was such a country girl and he was such a swell ;
They longed to meet in fond embrace, they hungered for a kiss—
But Mary called him ‘Mister’ and the idiot called her ‘Miss.
They'd parted but a year before—she never thought he’d come,
She stammer’d, blushed, held out her hand, and called him ‘Mister Gum.’
How could he know that all the while she longed to murmur ‘John.’
He called her ‘Miss le Brook,’ and asked how she was getting on.
They’d parted but a year before; they’d loved each other well,
But he’d been to the city, and he came back such a swell.
They longed to meet in fond embrace, they hungered for a kiss—
But Mary called him ‘Mister,’ and the idiot called her ‘Miss.’
He stood and lean’d against the door—a stupid chap was he—
And, when she asked if he’d come in and have a cup of tea,
He looked to left, he looked to right, and then he glanced behind,
And slowly doffed his cabbage-tree, and said he ‘didn’t mind.’
She made a shy apology because the meat was tough,
And then she asked if he was sure his tea was sweet enough;
He stirred the tea and sipped it twice, and answer’d ‘plenty, quite;’
And cut the smallest piece of beef and said that it was ‘right.’
She glanced at him at times and cough’d an awkward little cough;
He stared at anything but her and said, ‘I must be off.’
That evening he went riding north—a sad and lonely ride—
She locked herself inside her room, and there sat down and cried.
They’d parted but a year before, they loved each other well—
But she was such a country girl and he was such a swell ;
They longed to meet in fond embrace, they hungered for a kiss—
But Mary called him ‘Mister’ and the idiot called her ‘Miss.
274
Henry Lawson
Middleton's Rouseabout
Middleton's Rouseabout
Tall and freckled and sandy,
Face of a country lout;
This was the picture of Andy,
Middleton's Rouseabout.
Type of a coming nation,
In the land of cattle and sheep,
Worked on Middleton's station,
`Pound a week and his keep.'
On Middleton's wide dominions
Plied the stockwhip and shears;
Hadn't any opinions,
Hadn't any `idears'.
Swiftly the years went over,
Liquor and drought prevailed;
Middleton went as a drover,
After his station had failed.
Type of a careless nation,
Men who are soon played out,
Middleton was: -- and his station
Was bought by the Rouseabout.
Flourishing beard and sandy,
Tall and robust and stout;
This is the picture of Andy,
Middleton's Rouseabout.
Now on his own dominions
Works with his overseers;
Hasn't any opinions,
Hasn't any `idears'.
Tall and freckled and sandy,
Face of a country lout;
This was the picture of Andy,
Middleton's Rouseabout.
Type of a coming nation,
In the land of cattle and sheep,
Worked on Middleton's station,
`Pound a week and his keep.'
On Middleton's wide dominions
Plied the stockwhip and shears;
Hadn't any opinions,
Hadn't any `idears'.
Swiftly the years went over,
Liquor and drought prevailed;
Middleton went as a drover,
After his station had failed.
Type of a careless nation,
Men who are soon played out,
Middleton was: -- and his station
Was bought by the Rouseabout.
Flourishing beard and sandy,
Tall and robust and stout;
This is the picture of Andy,
Middleton's Rouseabout.
Now on his own dominions
Works with his overseers;
Hasn't any opinions,
Hasn't any `idears'.
293
Henry Lawson
Middleton's Rouseabout
Middleton's Rouseabout
Tall and freckled and sandy,
Face of a country lout;
This was the picture of Andy,
Middleton's Rouseabout.
Type of a coming nation,
In the land of cattle and sheep,
Worked on Middleton's station,
`Pound a week and his keep.'
On Middleton's wide dominions
Plied the stockwhip and shears;
Hadn't any opinions,
Hadn't any `idears'.
Swiftly the years went over,
Liquor and drought prevailed;
Middleton went as a drover,
After his station had failed.
Type of a careless nation,
Men who are soon played out,
Middleton was: -- and his station
Was bought by the Rouseabout.
Flourishing beard and sandy,
Tall and robust and stout;
This is the picture of Andy,
Middleton's Rouseabout.
Now on his own dominions
Works with his overseers;
Hasn't any opinions,
Hasn't any `idears'.
Tall and freckled and sandy,
Face of a country lout;
This was the picture of Andy,
Middleton's Rouseabout.
Type of a coming nation,
In the land of cattle and sheep,
Worked on Middleton's station,
`Pound a week and his keep.'
On Middleton's wide dominions
Plied the stockwhip and shears;
Hadn't any opinions,
Hadn't any `idears'.
Swiftly the years went over,
Liquor and drought prevailed;
Middleton went as a drover,
After his station had failed.
Type of a careless nation,
Men who are soon played out,
Middleton was: -- and his station
Was bought by the Rouseabout.
Flourishing beard and sandy,
Tall and robust and stout;
This is the picture of Andy,
Middleton's Rouseabout.
Now on his own dominions
Works with his overseers;
Hasn't any opinions,
Hasn't any `idears'.
293