'Do you think that I do not know?' By Henry Lawson

They say that I never have written of love,
As a writer of song should do;
They say that I never could touch the strings
With a touch that is firm and true;
They say I know nothing of women and men
In the fields where Love's roses grow,
I must write, they say with a halting pen
Do you think that I do not know?

When the love-burst came, like an English spring,
In the days when our hair was brown,
and the hem of her skirt was a sacred thing
and her hair was an angel's crown.
The shock when another man touched her arm,
where the dancers sat in a row;
The hope and despair, and the false alarm
Do you think that I do not know?

By the amble lights on the western farms,
You remember the question put,
while you held her warm in your quivering arms
And you trembled from head to foot.
The electric shock from her fingers tips,
and the murmuring answer low,
The soft, shy yielding of warm red lips
Do you think that I do not know?

She was buried at Brighton, where Gordon sleeps,
When I was a world away;
And the sad old garden it's secret keeps,
For nobody knows knows to-day
She left a message for me to read
Where the wild wide oceans flow;
Do you know how the heart of a man can bleed
Do you think that I do not know?

I stood by the grave where that dead girl lies,
Where the sunlit scenes were fair,
'neath white clouds high in the autumn skies,
I answered the message there.
But the haunting words of the dead to me
Shall go wherever I go.
She lives in the Marriage that Might Have Been
Do you think that I do not know?

Any Thoughts???

Written,
this sentence exits my control.
Even I will not make it mean the same thing tomorrow.
You are definitely not making it mean the same thing.
Stop reading my poem, you are ruining it.
I wrote this.

'Sweeney' By Henry Lawson

It was somewhere in September, and the sun was going down,
When I came, in search of `copy', to a Darling-River town;
`Come-and-have-a-drink' we'll call it -- 'tis a fitting name, I think --
And 'twas raining, for a wonder, up at Come-and-have-a-drink.

'Neath the pub verandah I was resting on a bunk
When a stranger rose before me, and he said that he was drunk;
He apologised for speaking; there was no offence, he swore;
But he somehow seemed to fancy that he'd seen my face before.

`No erfence,' he said. I told him that he needn't mention it,
For I might have met him somewhere; I had travelled round a bit,
And I knew a lot of fellows in the bush and in the streets --
But a fellow can't remember all the fellows that he meets.

Very old and thin and dirty were the garments that he wore,
Just a shirt and pair of trousers, and a boot, and nothing more;
He was wringing-wet, and really in a sad and sinful plight,
And his hat was in his left hand, and a bottle in his right.

His brow was broad and roomy, but its lines were somewhat harsh,
And a sensual mouth was hidden by a drooping, fair moustache;
(His hairy chest was open to what poets call the `wined',
And I would have bet a thousand that his pants were gone behind).

He agreed: `Yer can't remember all the chaps yer chance to meet,'
And he said his name was Sweeney -- people lived in Sussex-street.
He was campin' in a stable, but he swore that he was right,
`Only for the blanky horses walkin' over him all night.'

He'd apparently been fighting, for his face was black-and-blue,
And he looked as though the horses had been treading on him, too;
But an honest, genial twinkle in the eye that wasn't hurt
Seemed to hint of something better, spite of drink and rags and dirt.

It appeared that he mistook me for a long-lost mate of his --
One of whom I was the image, both in figure and in phiz --
(He'd have had a letter from him if the chap were living still,
For they'd carried swags together from the Gulf to Broken Hill.)

Sweeney yarned awhile and hinted that his folks were doing well,
And he told me that his father kept the Southern Cross Hotel;
And I wondered if his absence was regarded as a loss
When he left the elder Sweeney -- landlord of the Southern Cross.

He was born in Parramatta, and he said, with humour grim,
That he'd like to see the city ere the liquor finished him,
But he couldn't raise the money. He was damned if he could think
What the Government was doing. Here he offered me a drink.

I declined -- 'TWAS self-denial -- and I lectured him on booze,
Using all the hackneyed arguments that preachers mostly use;
Things I'd heard in temperance lectures (I was young and rather green),
And I ended by referring to the man he might have been.

Then a wise expression struggled with the bruises on his face,
Though his argument had scarcely any bearing on the case:
`What's the good o' keepin' sober? Fellers rise and fellers fall;
What I might have been and wasn't doesn't trouble me at all.'

But he couldn't stay to argue, for his beer was nearly gone.
He was glad, he said, to meet me, and he'd see me later on;
He guessed he'd have to go and get his bottle filled again,
And he gave a lurch and vanished in the darkness and the rain.

. . . . .

And of afternoons in cities, when the rain is on the land,
Visions come to me of Sweeney with his bottle in his hand,
With the stormy night behind him, and the pub verandah-post --
And I wonder why he haunts me more than any other ghost.

Still I see the shearers drinking at the township in the scrub,
And the army praying nightly at the door of every pub,
And the girls who flirt and giggle with the bushmen from the west --
But the memory of Sweeney overshadows all the rest.

Well, perhaps, it isn't funny; there were links between us two --
He had memories of cities, he had been a jackeroo;
And, perhaps, his face forewarned me of a face that I might see
From a bitter cup reflected in the wretched days to be.

Confusing

We talk,
We flirt.
You act like you're into me,
like without me you would crumble,
like your entire existence depends on me,
but how do you do that thing?
That thing were in you treat me so awful after that.

( http://hellopoetry.com/words/19824/confusing/poems/ )

my face is blue
my feet say boo
my face says shoo
my belly says WHO?

... That is my good poem for you!

"My Old Kentucky Home" is a minstrel song by Stephen Foster, probably composed in 1852.[1] It was published as "My Old Kentucky Home, Good Night" in January 1853 by Firth, Pond, & Co. of New York.

Oh, The sun shines bright on my old Kentucky home
'Tis summer, and the darkies are gay
The corn top's ripe and the meadow's in bloom
and the birds make music all the day,
The young folks roll on the little cabin floor,
All merry, all happy and bright
By 'n by hard times come a-knocking at the door
Then my old Kentucky home good night

Weep no more, my lady
Oh, weep no more, today
We will sing one song, for the old Kentucky home
For my old Kentucky home far away.

They hunt no more for the 'possum and the coon,
On the meadow, the hill and the shore,
They sing no more by the glimmer of the moon,
On the bench by that old cabin door.

Weep no more, my lady
Oh, weep no more, today
We will sing one song for the old Kentucky home
For my old Kentucky home far away.

Two little girls in blue

An old man gazed on a photograph, in the locket he'd worn for years;
His nephew then asked him the reason, Why that picture had cost him tears.
"Come listen," he said, "I will tell you, my lad, A story that's strange but true;
Your Father & I, at the school one day, met two little girls in blue.

Chorus
Two little girls in blue, lad,
two little girls in blue,
They were sisters, we were brothers,
and learned to love the two;
And one little girls in blue, lad,
who won your Father's heart,
became your Mother, I married the other,
but now we have drifted apart.

"That picture is one of those girls," he said, "And to me she once was a wife,
thought her unfaithful, we quarrelled, lad, And we parted that night for life.
My fancy of jealousy wronged a heart, A heart that was good & true,
For two better girls never lived than they, those two little girls in blue."

Two little girls in blue, lad,
two little girls in blue,
They were sisters, we were brothers,
and learned to love the two;
And one little girls in blue, lad,
who won your Father's heart,
became your Mother, I married the other,
but now we have drifted apart.

THE MAN FROM IRONBARK by A.B. "Banjo" Paterson

It was the man from Ironbark who struck the Sydney town,
He wandered over street and park, he wandered up and down.
He loitered here, he loitered there, till he was like to drop,
Until at last in sheer despair he sought a barber's shop.
"'Ere! shave my beard and whiskers off, I'll be a man of mark,
I'll go and do the Sydney toff up home in Ironbark."


The barber man was small and flash, as barbers mostly are,
He wore a strike-your-fancy sash, he smoked a huge cigar;
He was a humorist of note and keen at repartee,
He laid the odds and kept a "tote", whatever that may be,
And when he saw our friend arrive, he whispered, "Here's a lark!
Just watch me catch him all alive, this man from Ironbark."


There were some gilded youths that sat along the barber's wall.
Their eyes were dull, their heads were flat, they had no brains at all;
To them the barber passed the wink, his dexter eyelid shut,
"I'll make this bloomin' yokel think his bloomin' throat is cut."
And as he soaped and rubbed it in he made a rude remark:
"I s'pose the flats is pretty green up there in Ironbark."


A grunt was all reply he got; he shaved the bushman's chin,
Then made the water boiling hot and dipped the razor in.
He raised his hand, his brow grew black, he paused awhile to gloat,
Then slashed the red-hot razor-back across his victim's throat:
Upon the newly-shaven skin it made a livid mark -
No doubt it fairly took him in - the man from Ironbark.


He fetched a wild up-country yell might wake the dead to hear,
And though his throat, he knew full well, was cut from ear to ear,
He struggled gamely to his feet, and faced the murd'rous foe:
"You've done for me! you dog, I'm beat! one hit before I go!
I only wish I had a knife, you blessed murdering shark!
But you'll remember all your life the man from Ironbark."


He lifted up his hairy paw, with one tremendous clout
He landed on the barber's jaw, and knocked the barber out.
He set to work with nail and tooth, he made the place a wreck;
He grabbed the nearest gilded youth, and tried to break his neck.
And all the while his throat he held to save his vital spark,
And "Murder! Bloody murder!" yelled the man from Ironbark.


A peeler man who heard the din came in to see the show;
He tried to run the bushman in, but he refused to go.
And when at last the barber spoke, and said "'Twas all in fun—
'Twas just a little harmless joke, a trifle overdone."
"A joke!" he cried, "By George, that's fine; a lively sort of lark;
I'd like to catch that murdering swine some night in Ironbark."


And now while round the shearing floor the list'ning shearers gape,
He tells the story o'er and o'er, and brags of his escape.
"Them barber chaps what keeps a tote, By George, I've had enough,
One tried to cut my bloomin' throat, but thank the Lord it's tough."
And whether he's believed or no, there's one thing to remark,
That flowing beards are all the go way up in Ironbark.

The Bulletin, 17 December 1892.