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Henry Lawson - The Never-Never Country
Work rating: Medium

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 the 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 drought 
       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 steep 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 sank 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 communion 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, 
       While 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 the Never-Never Land.
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