Nhill's Most Famous Person Poem by Francis Duggan

Nhill's most famous person will always be John Shaw Neilson the poet who was born in Penola Town
But it was in Nhill in the Mallee that he became famous and claimed his place in literary renown
He was the greatest poet of his part of Victoria not anyone with him for to compare
Though financially he died a very poor man poets such as he was does remain as rare
There will never be another John Shaw Neilson with words he was one who did have a way
A marvelous poet his poems did outlive him and many of them famed and known today
Native Companions Dancing and Granny Sullivan, Beauty Be Delicate and The Orange Tree
These are the sort of poems that live forever that are not born to mortality
He worked for many years as a road worker for him in life never an easy pay
There will never again be a John Shaw Neilson at least not in the Mallee anyway
He never married never fathered children a batchelor till the day he did die
To say by many as a poet he has been under-rated would be a fact and fact does never lie
He died a poor man on his seventieth year one who never did play sports or football
Yet he is one who has made Nhill quite famous the Mallee's greatest writer of them all.