Famous Shearer Poems by Famous Poets
These are examples of famous Shearer poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous shearer poems. These examples illustrate what a famous shearer poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).
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by
Paterson, Andrew Barton
...terms prophetic of a revolution's heat,
When the world should hear the clamour of those people in the street;
But the shearer chaps who start it -- why, he rounds on them the blame,
And he calls 'em "agitators who are living on the game".
Bur I "over-write" the bushmen! Well, I own without a doubt
That I always see the hero in the "man from furthest out".
I could never contemplate him through an atmosphere of gloom,
And a bushman never struck me as a subject fo...Read more of this...
by
Paterson, Andrew Barton
...rson seized a bucket,
Every head he saw he struck it --
Struck in earnest, too;
And a man from Lower Wattle,
Whom a shearer tried to throttle,
Hit out freely with a bottle
There in Dandaloo.
Skin and hair were flying thickly,
When a light was fetched, and quickly
Brought a fact to view --
On the scene of the diversion
Every single, solid person
Come along to help Macpherson --
All were Dandaloo!
When the list of slain was tabled --
Some were drunk and som...Read more of this...
by
Paterson, Andrew Barton
...n man,
With shovel in your hand,
To dig your little homestead out
From underneath the sand.
It's grand to be a shearer
Along the Darling-side,
And pluck the wool from stinking sheep
That some days since have died.
It's grand to be a rabbit
And breed till all is blue,
And then to die in heaps because
There's nothing left to chew.
It's grand to be a Minister
And travel like a swell,
And tell the Central District folk
To go to -- Inverell.
It'...Read more of this...
by
Lawson, Henry
...The old year went, and the new returned, in the withering weeks of drought,
The cheque was spent that the shearer earned,
and the sheds were all cut out;
The publican's words were short and few,
and the publican's looks were black --
And the time had come, as the shearer knew, to carry his swag Out Back.
For time means tucker, and tramp you must,
where the scrubs and plains are wide,
With seldom a track that a man can trust, or a mountain peak to gui...Read more of this...
by
Lawson, Henry
...uld do without --
Sort of BRITISH WORKMAN nonsense that shall perish in the scorn
Of the drover who is driven and the shearer who is shorn,
Of the struggling western farmers who have little time for rest,
And are ruined on selections in the sheep-infested West;
Droving songs are very pretty, but they merit little thanks
From the people of a country in possession of the Banks.
And the `rise and fall of seasons' suits the rise and fall of rhyme,
But we know that we...Read more of this...
by
Lawson, Henry
...uture as they roost on Australia's rim:
Where the farmer works with the lumpers and the drover drives a dray,
And the shearer on Garden Island is shifting a hill to-day.
Had we used the wealth we have squandered and the land that we kept from the plough,
A prosperous Federal City would be over the mountains now,
With farms that sweep to horizons and gardens where plains lay bare,
And the bulk of the population and the Heart of Australia there.
Had we used the...Read more of this...
by
Paterson, Andrew Barton
...e goes on shearing just the same.
I never rightly knew his name --
We always call him 'Gundagai!'"
Our flashest shearer then had gone
To train a racehorse for a race;
And, while his sporting fit was on
He couldn't be relied upon,
So Gundagai shore in his place.
Alas for man's veracity!
For reputations false and true!
This Gundagai turned out to be
For strife and all-round villainy
The very worst I ever knew!
He started racing Jack Devine,
And grumbled...Read more of this...
by
Paterson, Andrew Barton
...ow,
Without any conversation,
Was a man that worked on The Overflow,
The butt of the shed and the station.
The shearers christened him Noisy Ned,
With an alias "Silent Waters",
But never a needless word he said
In the hut or the shearers' quarters.
Which caused annoyance to Big Barcoo,
The shed's unquestioned ringer,
Whose name was famous Australia through
As a dancer, fighter and singer.
He was fit for the ring, if he'd had his rights
As an agent ...Read more of this...
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