So you-ve seen at last what we have seen so long through scalding tears:
You have found what we-the People-we have known for twenty years:
And Australia-s hymn is swelling till the furthest fence-wires hum-
Save your country, Legislators-and the bairns will come.
You would put the blame upon us-we are women, we are men;
And our fathers and our mothers gave the country nine and ten.
They had honest work and wages, and the ways to win a home-
Give us half the chances they had-and the bairns will come.
Try the ranks of wealth and fashion, ask the rich and well-to-do,
With their nurseries and their nurses and their children one and two,
Will they help us bear the burden?-but their purse-proud lips are dumb.
Let us earn a decent living-and the bairns will come.
Young men, helpless in the city-s wheel of greed that never stops,
Tramp the streets for work while sweethearts slave in factories and shops.
Shall they marry and bear children to their parents- martyrdom?
Make the city what it should be-and the bairns will come.
Shall we give you sons and daughters to a life of never-rest,
Sacrificing all for nothing in the desert of the West,
To be driven to the city-s squalid suburb and the slum?
Make the city what it should be-and the bairns will come.
Don-t you hear Australia calling for her children unconceived?
Don-t you hear them calling to her while her heart is very grieved?
Give the best land to the farmers, make the barren West a home,
Save the rainfall, lock the rivers-and the bairns will come.
And The Bairns Will Come
Henry Lawson
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Poem topics: greed, heart, life, people, women, wealth, young, long, fashion, fence, slave, wheel, desert, home, never, work, hear, country, save, children, Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
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