by Henry Lawson
The Never-Never Country.
By homestead, hut, and shearing-shed, By railroad, coach, and track-- By lonely graves of our brave dead, Up-Country and Out-Back: To where 'neath glorious clustered stars The dreamy plains expand-- My home lies wide a thousand miles In the Never-Never Land.
It lies beyond the farming belt, Wide wastes of scrub and plain, A blazing desert in the drought, A lake-land after rain; To the sky-line sweeps the waving grass, Or whirls the scorching sand-- A phantom land, a mystic land! The Never-Never Land.
Where lone Mount Desolation lies, Mounts Dreadful and Despair-- 'Tis lost beneath the rainless skies In hopeless deserts there; It spreads nor'-west by No-Man's Land-- Where clouds are seldom seen-- To where the cattle-stations lie Three hundred miles between.
The drovers of the Great Stock Routes The strange Gulf country know-- Where, travelling from the southern droughts, The big lean bullocks go; And camped by night where plains lie wide, Like some old ocean's bed, The watchmen in the starlight ride Round fifteen hundred head.
And west of named and numbered days The shearers walk and ride-- Jack Cornstalk and the Ne'er-do-well, And the grey-beard side by side; They veil their eyes from moon and stars, And slumber on the sand-- Sad memories sleep as years go round In Never-Never Land.
By lonely huts north-west of Bourke, Through years of flood and drought, The best of English black-sheep work Their own salvation out: Wild fresh-faced boys grown gaunt and brown-- Stiff-lipped and haggard-eyed-- They live the Dead Past grimly down! Where boundary-riders ride.
The College Wreck who sunk beneath, Then rose above his shame, Tramps West in mateship with the man Who cannot write his name. 'Tis there where on the barren track No last half-crust's begrudged-- Where saint and sinner, side by side, Judge not, and are not judged.
Oh rebels to society! The Outcasts of the West-- Oh hopeless eyes that smile for me, And broken hearts that jest! The pluck to face a thousand miles-- The grit to see it through! The communism perfected!-- And--I am proud of you!
The Arab to true desert sand, The Finn to fields of snow; The Flax-stick turns to Maoriland, Where the seasons come and go; And this old fact comes home to me-- And will not let me rest-- However barren it may be, Your own land is the best!
And, lest at ease I should forget True mateship after all, My water-bag and billy yet Are hanging on the wall; And if my fate should show the sign, I'd tramp to sunsets grand With gaunt and stern-eyed mates of mine In Never-Never Land.
[End of original text.]
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A Note on the Author and the Text:
Henry Lawson was born near Grenfell, New South Wales, Australia on 17June 1867. Although he has since become the most acclaimed Australianwriter, in his own lifetime his writing was often "on the side"--his"real" work was whatever he could find, often painting houses, ordoing rough carpentry. His writing was often taken from memories of hischildhood, especially at Pipeclay/Eurunderee. In his autobiography, hestates that many of his characters were taken from the better class ofdiggers and bushmen he knew there. His experiences at this timedeeply influenced his work, for it is interesting to note a number ofdescriptions and phrases that are identical in his autobiography and inhis stories and poems. He died in Sydney, 2 September 1922. Much of hiswriting was for periodicals, and even his regular publications wereso varied, including books originally released as one volume beingreprinted as two, and vice versa, that the multitude of permutationscannot be listed here. However, the following should give a basicoutline of his major works.
Books of Short Stories: While the Billy Boils (1896) On the Track (1900) Over the Sliprails (1900) The Country I Come From (1901) | These works were first published Joe Wilson and His Mates (1901) | in England, during or shortly after Children of the Bush (1902) | Lawson's stay there. Send Round the Hat (1907) | These two books were first published The Romance of the Swag (1907) | as "Children of the Bush". The Rising of the Court (1910)
Poetry: In the Days When the World Was Wide (1896) Verses Popular and Humorous (1900) When I Was King and Other Verses (1905) The Skyline Riders (1910) Selected Poems of Henry Lawson (1918)
Joe Wilson and His Mates was later published as two separate volumes,"Joe Wilson" and "Joe Wilson's Mates", which correspond to Parts I & IIin Joe Wilson and His Mates. This work was first published in England,which may be evident from some of Lawson's comments in the text whichare directed at English readers. For example, Lawson writes in 'TheGolden Graveyard': "A gold washing-dish is a flat dish--nearer the shapeof a bedroom bath-tub than anything else I have seen in England, or thedish we used for setting milk--I don't know whether the same is usedhere...."
Alan Light, Monroe, North Carolina, June 1997.
