Lawson
© David Judge
Winner, 2024 Scribes Writers Poetry Competition, Geelong, Victoria.
It’s hard to comprehend these days the infinite poetic maze
but Henry Lawson is a special name.
His troubled soul and gifted mind have unified to leave behind
a legacy of cultural acclaim.
His birthplace and his childhood days gave rise to his poetic ways
from Grenfell to the digs at Pipeclay Creek.
The true son of a Norway man, his mother saying yes you can,
just take the path that finds the life you seek.
He was a wordsmith in that time of literary prose and rhyme
and torn between the bush and city life.
He wrote of Faces in the Street and where The Teams of bullocks meet
and how it was to be The Drover’s Wife.
His words in Golden Gully told of days gone by in search of gold
where childhood memories reflect the dread.
The Roaring Days were over for the multitudes who came no more
to places so engraved inside his head.
Those visions of Mt Bukaroo remind us that young Henry knew
how frontier life was challenging and tough.
He chose to wander near and far out west beyond the Talbragar,
a Vagabond, a gypsy living rough.
He wrote in melancholy verse and how his life was always worse
Out Back and in The Army of the Rear.
We heard of When the World Was Wide and how the Cattle-Dog had died
as visions of The Wander-Light appear.
We heard of Harry’s brand three-star and of The Glass left on the bar
belonging to that bushman who had died.
The Lights of Cobb and Co were seen before The Men We Might Have Been
exposed remorse and sadness deep inside.
When Henry took the train to Bourke to find the subjects for his work
he wrote of men and places with disdain.
The Sweeney was a drunken man, The Paroo River rarely ran
and pity those who rode The Great Grey Plain.
He left his readers in no doubt that characters he wrote about
had lives beset by tragedy and pain.
Past Carin’ were so many folk, The Babies of Walloon just broke
the hearts of all his readers yet again.
So much is told of Henry’s mind and what it was he hoped to find
in search of Something Better in the end.
He walked beside The Ghost that came to grapple with his mother’s shame
whose gilded aspirations would not bend.
As grim as Henry’s stories seem we can recall The Shearer’s Dream
and Days When We Went Swimming come to mind.
They show a lighter side of him, like Bill and Tambaroora Jim,
in contrast to those Men Who Come Behind.
And so it was with verse and prose in words that Henry Lawson chose,
we understand his life and what it meant.
Despite what critics write or say, his words are valued to this day
in honour of the times they represent.
Return to 2024 Award-Winning Poetry.
Terms of Use
All rights reserved.
The entire contents of the poetry in the collection on this site
is copyright. Copyright for each individual poem remains with
the poet. Therefore no poem or poems in this collection may be
reproduced, performed, read aloud to any audience at any time,
stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by
any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise without prior written permission of the individual
poet.
Return to 2024 Award-Winning Poetry.