Henry Lawson

Born in a tent in the gold fields of New South Wales Australia's greatest writer many say And in his life time he had thousands of readers and he has millions of readers today Afflicted by deafness and mental illness and cursed by alcoholism one well might say his life a tragedy And like many good writers before and after he spent his last years in utter poverty. Today Henry Lawson is an Australian idol and his works the literary critics highly rate He left behind a legacy of beauty and his poems will always live as something great Self educated he never was in college nor he could not boast of a literary degree Yet his name lives on as a renowned Australian and few if any were as great as he. His mother Louisa too a renowned writer his dad left the family when Henry was a boy And nothing in life for him did come easy the good life he was not born to enjoy He worked as a labourer and as a sheep shearer and he truly lived the life of which he wrote And from his pen came marvellous poems and stories and he became a major Aussie poet. Born in a tent in Grenfell in New South Wales and for him it was a long hard road to fame And his talent of a greater financial reward more worthy still his lives on as an idolized name His poems in pubs and clubs are still recited and though for non payment of maintenance to his estranged wife Bertha he served jail time He penned great poems as well as marvellous stories and he is remembered as a prince of rhyme.