Henry Lawson Poems

’Tis William Street, the link street,
That seems to stand alone;
’Tis William Street, the vague street,
With terraces of stone:
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In the parlour of the shanty where the lives have all gone wrong,
When a singer or reciter gives a story or a song,
Where the poet’s heart is speaking to their hearts in every line,
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By his paths through the parched desolation,
Hot rides and the terrible tramps;
By the hunger, the thirst, the privation
Of his work in the further most camps.
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AT A POINT where the old road crosses
The river, and turns to the right,
I’d camped with the team; and the hosses
Was all fixed up for the night.
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Oh, the wild black swans fly westward still,
While the sun goes down in glory—
And away o’er lonely plain and hill
Still runs the same old story:
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When you fear the barber’s mirror when you go to get a crop,
Or in sorrow every morning comb your hair across the top:
When you titivate and do the little things you never used—
It is close upon the season when your sins come home to roost.
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“Not from the seas does he draw inspiration,
Not from the rivers that croon on their bars;
But a wide, a world-old desolation –
On a dead land alone with the stars.
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He has notions of Australia from the tales that he’s been told—
Land of leggings and revolvers, land of savages and gold;
So he begs old shirts, and someone patches up his worn-
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If yer gotter corf about yer,
Gotter corf –
Gotter corf –
If yer gotter corf about yer,
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WHEN you drink of what the poets rave about as “sorrer’s cup”,
And yer mouth, in spite of laughin’, gits a curve the wrong way up,
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