Henry Lawson Poems

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Henry Lawson
Henry Lawson(17 June 1867 - 2 September 1922) was an Australian writer and poet. Along with his contemporary Banjo Paterson, Lawson is among the best-known Australian poets and fiction writers of the colonial period. Lawson was born in a town on the Grenfell goldfields of New South Wales. His mother was Louisa Lawson (née Albury), a prominent suffragist and owner/editor of The Dawn journal which was partly responsible for Australia becoming one of the first countries to introduce adult female suffrage. His father was Niels Herzberg Larsen, a Norwegian-born miner who went to sea at 21, arrived in Melbourne in 1855 and joined the gold rush. Larsen travelled to different goldfields, and at Pipeclay (now Eurunderee, New South Wales) met Louisa and married her on 7 July 1866; he was 32 and she, 18. On Henry's birth, the family surname was anglicised and Niels became Peter Lawson. The newly-married couple were to have an unhappy marriage. Henry Lawson attended school at Eurunderee from 2 October 1876 but suffered an ear infection at around this time that left him with partial deafness and by the age of fourteen he had lost his hearing entirely. He later attended a Catholic school at Mudgee, New South Wales around 8 km away; the master there, Mr. Kevan, would talk to Lawson about poetry. He was a keen reader of Dickens and Marryat and serialised novels such as Robbery under Arms and For the Term of his Natural Life; an aunt had also given him a volume by Bret Harte. Reading became a major source of his education because, due to his deafness, he had trouble learning in the classroom. In 1883, after working on building jobs with his father and in the Blue Mountains, Lawson joined his mother in Sydney at her request. Louisa was then living with Henry's sister and brother. Lawson studied for his matriculation, but failed.

faces in the street
 
 
They lie, the men who tell us for reasons of their own
That want is here a stranger, and that m... [read poem]
a grave
 
 
Man looking into the sea,
taking the view from those who have as much right
to it as
... [read poem]
to his friend master r. l., in praise of music and poetry
 
 
If music and sweet poetry agree,
As they must needs (the sister and the brother),
Then mus... [read poem]
no swan so fine
 
 
"No water so still as the
dead fountains of Versailles." No swan,
with swart blind look... [read poem]
andy's gone with cattle
 
 
Our Andy's gone to battle now
'Gainst Drought, the red marauder:
Our Andy's done with ... [read poem]
poetry
 
 
I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond
all this fiddle.
R... [read poem]
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