Henry Lawson: Verses about Summer

Tall, and stout, and solid-looking,
Yet a wreck;
None would think Death's finger's hooking
Him from deck.
Cause of half the fun that's started --
`Hard-case' Dan --
Isn't like a broken-hearted,
Ruined man.

Walking-coat from tail to throat is
Frayed and greened --
Like a man whose other coat is
Being cleaned;
Gone for ever round the edging
Past repair --
Waistcoat pockets frayed with dredging
After `sprats' no longer there.

Wearing summer boots in June, or
Slippers worn and old --
Like a man whose other shoon are
Getting soled.
Pants? They're far from being recent --
But, perhaps, I'd better not --
Says they are the only decent
Pair he's got.

And his hat, I am afraid, is
Troubling him --
Past all lifting to the ladies
By the brim.
But, although he'd hardly strike a
Girl, would Dan,
Yet he wears his wreckage like a
Gentleman!

Once -- no matter how the rest dressed --
Up or down --
Once, they say, he was the best-dressed
Man in town.
Must have been before I knew him --
Now you'd scarcely care to meet
And be noticed talking to him
In the street.

Drink the cause, and dissipation,
That is clear --
Maybe friend or kind relation
Cause of beer.
And the talking fool, who never
Reads or thinks,
Says, from hearsay: `Yes, he's clever;
But, you know, he drinks.'

Been an actor and a writer --
Doesn't whine --
Reckoned now the best reciter
In his line.
Takes the stage at times, and fills it --
`Princess May' or `Waterloo'.
Raise a sneer! -- his first line kills it,
`Brings 'em', too.

Where he lives, or how, or wherefore
No one knows;
Lost his real friends, and therefore
Lost his foes.
Had, no doubt, his own romances --
Met his fate;
Tortured, doubtless, by the chances
And the luck that comes too late.

Now and then his boots are polished,
Collar clean,
And the worst grease stains abolished
By ammonia or benzine:
Hints of some attempt to shove him
From the taps,
Or of someone left to love him --
Sister, p'r'aps.

After all, he is a grafter,
Earns his cheer --
Keeps the room in roars of laughter
When he gets outside a beer.
Yarns that would fall flat from others
He can tell;
How he spent his `stuff', my brothers,
You know well.

Manner puts a man in mind of
Old club balls and evening dress,
Ugly with a handsome kind of
Ugliness.

. . . . .

One of those we say of often,
While hearts swell,
Standing sadly by the coffin:
`He looks well.'

. . . . .

We may be -- so goes a rumour --
Bad as Dan;
But we may not have the humour
Of the man;
Nor the sight -- well, deem it blindness,
As the general public do --
And the love of human kindness,
Or the GRIT to see it through!

I am back from up the country -- very sorry that I went --
Seeking for the Southern poets' land whereon to pitch my tent;
I have lost a lot of idols, which were broken on the track,
Burnt a lot of fancy verses, and I'm glad that I am back.
Further out may be the pleasant scenes of which our poets boast,
But I think the country's rather more inviting round the coast.
Anyway, I'll stay at present at a boarding-house in town,
Drinking beer and lemon-squashes, taking baths and cooling down.

`Sunny plains'! Great Scott! -- those burning
wastes of barren soil and sand
With their everlasting fences stretching out across the land!
Desolation where the crow is! Desert where the eagle flies,
Paddocks where the luny bullock starts and stares with reddened eyes;
Where, in clouds of dust enveloped, roasted bullock-drivers creep
Slowly past the sun-dried shepherd dragged behind his crawling sheep.
Stunted peak of granite gleaming, glaring like a molten mass
Turned from some infernal furnace on a plain devoid of grass.

Miles and miles of thirsty gutters -- strings of muddy water-holes
In the place of `shining rivers' -- `walled by cliffs and forest boles.'
Barren ridges, gullies, ridges! where the ever-madd'ning flies --
Fiercer than the plagues of Egypt -- swarm about your blighted eyes!
Bush! where there is no horizon! where the buried bushman sees
Nothing -- Nothing! but the sameness of the ragged, stunted trees!
Lonely hut where drought's eternal, suffocating atmosphere
Where the God-forgotten hatter dreams of city life and beer.

Treacherous tracks that trap the stranger,
endless roads that gleam and glare,
Dark and evil-looking gullies, hiding secrets here and there!
Dull dumb flats and stony rises, where the toiling bullocks bake,
And the sinister `gohanna', and the lizard, and the snake.
Land of day and night -- no morning freshness, and no afternoon,
When the great white sun in rising bringeth summer heat in June.
Dismal country for the exile, when the shades begin to fall
From the sad heart-breaking sunset, to the new-chum worst of all.

Dreary land in rainy weather, with the endless clouds that drift
O'er the bushman like a blanket that the Lord will never lift --
Dismal land when it is raining -- growl of floods, and, oh! the woosh
Of the rain and wind together on the dark bed of the bush --
Ghastly fires in lonely humpies where the granite rocks are piled
In the rain-swept wildernesses that are wildest of the wild.

Land where gaunt and haggard women live alone and work like men,
Till their husbands, gone a-droving, will return to them again:
Homes of men! if home had ever such a God-forgotten place,
Where the wild selector's children fly before a stranger's face.
Home of tragedy applauded by the dingoes' dismal yell,
Heaven of the shanty-keeper -- fitting fiend for such a hell --
And the wallaroos and wombats, and, of course, the curlew's call --
And the lone sundowner tramping ever onward through it all!

I am back from up the country, up the country where I went
Seeking for the Southern poets' land whereon to pitch my tent;
I have shattered many idols out along the dusty track,
Burnt a lot of fancy verses -- and I'm glad that I am back.
I believe the Southern poets' dream will not be realised
Till the plains are irrigated and the land is humanised.
I intend to stay at present, as I said before, in town
Drinking beer and lemon-squashes, taking baths and cooling down.

The Other Night I got the blues and tried to smile in vain.
I couldn’t chuck a chuckle at the foolery of Twain;
When Ward and Billings failed to bring a twinkle to my eye,
I turned my eyes to Hansard of the fifteenth of July.
I laughed and roared until I thought that I was growing fat,
And all the boarders came to see what I was laughing at:
It rose the risibility of some, I grieve to state—
That foolish speech of Brentnall’s in the Vote of Thanks debate.

O Brentnall, of the olden school and cold sarcastic style!
You’ll take another WORKER now and stick it on your file;
“We’re very fond of poetry,”—we hope that this is quite
As entertaining as the lines you read the other night.
We know that you are honest, but ’twas foolish to confess
You read and file the WORKER; we expected something less.
We think an older member would have told the people, so—
“My attention was directed to a certain print” (—you know).

The other night in Parliament you quoted something true,
Where truth is very seldom heard except from one or two.
You know that when the people rise the other side must fall,
And you are on the other side, and that explains it all.
You hate the Cause by instinct, the instinct of your class,
And fear the reformation that shall surely come to pass;
Your nest is feathered by the “laws” which you of course defend,
Your daily bread is buttered on the upper crust, my friend.

“We aim at broader interests,” you say, and so we do;
We aim at “vested interests” (the gun is loaded too).
We hate the wrongs we write against. We’ve felt the curse of Greed.
There’s little nonsense in the school where Labour earns its creed.
But you know little of the Cause that you are running down.
You would deny there’s misery and hardship in the town;
Yet I could take you through the hells where Poverty holds sway,
And show you things you’d not forget until your dying day.

O Brentnall! Have you ever tramped the city streets within?
And felt the pavement wearing through the leather, sock, and skin;
And looked for work, and asked for work, and begged for work in vain,
Until you cared not though you ne’er might touch your tools again.
O Brentnall! Have you ever felt the summer sun and dirt?
And wore the stiffened socks for weeks, for weeks the single shirt?
And shunned your friends like small-pox—passing on the other side—
And crept away in shadows with your misery and pride?

Another solemn member rose encouraged by the cheers,
And talked of serving medals to our gallant volunteers,
And extra uniforms, that they might hand the old ones on
“As heirlooms in the family” when they are dead and gone.
But since the state of future times is very much in doubt,
They’d better wear their uniforms, they’d better wear them out;
They may some day be sorry for the front that they have shown,
And, e’er the nap is worn away, they mightn’t like it known.

The children of a future time shall read, with awe profound,
How goslings did the goose-step while a gander led ’em round.
O Brentnall! Speak your periods into a phonograph,
That generations yet to rise may lay them down and laugh.
I wouldn’t trust the future much; Posterity might own
That sense of the ridiculous that you have never shown;
And not the smiles of Mammon, nor the pride of place and pelf,
Can soothe the thought that one has made a jackass of one’s self.

We’re low, but we would teach you if you’re willing to be taught,
That in the wilderness of print are tartars still uncaught;
And if you hunt in such a way—believe we do not jest—
Your chance to catch one is as good, and better than the best.
Be very sure about the mark before you cast the stone,
And, well, perhaps ’twould be as well to leave the muse alone.
You’ll call it egotism? Yes: but still I think that I
Might hit a little harder if I only liked to try.