The Elder Son
By Henry Lawson
()
About this ebook
Henry Lawson
Henry Lawson was born in Grenfell, NSW, in 1867. At 14 he became totally deaf, an affliction which many have suggested rendered his world all the more vivid and subsequently enlivened his later writing. After a stint of coach painting, he edited a periodical, The Republican, and began writing verse and short stories. His first work of short fiction appeared in the Bulletin in 1888. He travelled and wrote short fiction and poetry throughout his life and published numerous collections of both even as his marriage collapsed and he descended into poverty and mental illness. He died in 1922, leaving his wife and two children.
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The Elder Son - Henry Lawson
Henry Lawson
The Elder Son
Published by Good Press, 2022
goodpress@okpublishing.info
EAN 4066338081810
Table of Contents
The Ballad of the Elder Son
The Pride That Comes After
A Voice from the City
To-Morrow
The Light on the Wreck
The Secret Whisky Cure
The Alleys
The Scamps
Break o’ Day
The Women of the Town
The Afterglow
Written Out
New Life, New Love
The King and Queen and I
To Hannah
The Water Lily
Barta
To Jim
The Drunkard’s Vision
In the Storm That is to Come
Australian Engineers
The Drovers
Those Foreign Engineers
Skaal
The Firing-Line
Riding Round the Lines
When the Bear Comes Back Again
The Little Czar
The Vanguard
And the Bairns Will Come
The Heart of Australia
The Good Samaritan
Will Yer Write It Down for Me?
Andy’s Return
Pigeon Toes
On the Wallaby
The Brass Well
Eureka
The Last Review
As Good as New
THE END
"
The Ballad of the Elder Son
Table of Contents
Asonof elder sons I am,
Whose boyhood days were cramped and scant,
Through ages of domestic sham
And family lies and family cant.
Come, elder brothers mine, and bring
Dull loads of care that you have won,
And gather round me while I sing
The ballad of the elder son.
’Twas Christ who spake in parables—
To picture man was his intent;
A simple tale He simply tells,
And He Himself makes no comment.
A morbid sympathy is felt
For prodigals—the selfish ones—
The crooked world has ever dealt
Unjustly by the elder sons.
The elder son on barren soil,
Where life is crude and lands are new,
Must share the father’s hardest toil,
And share the father’s troubles too.
With no child-thoughts to meet his own
His childhood is a lonely one:
The youth his father might have known
Is seldom for the eldest son.
It seems so strange, but fate is grim,
And Heaven’s ways are hard to track,
Though ten young scamps come after him
The rod falls heaviest on his back.
And, well I’ll say it might be caused
By a half-sense of injustice done—
That vague resentment parents feel
So oft towards the eldest son.
He, too, must bear the father’s name,
He loves his younger brother, too,
And feels the younger brother’s shame
As keenly as his parents do.
The mother’s prayers, the father’s curse,
The sister’s tears have all been done—
We seldom see in prose or verse
The prayers of the elder son.
But let me to the parable
With eyes on facts but fancy free;
And don’t belie me if I tell
The story as it seems to me—
For, mind, I do not mean to sneer
(I was religious when a child),
I wouldn’t be surprised to hear
That Christ himself had sometimes smiled.
A certain squatter had two sons
Up Canaan way some years ago.
The graft was hard on those old runs,
And it was hot and life was slow.
The younger brother coolly claimed
The portion that he hadn’t earned,
And sought the ‘life’ for which untamed
And high young spirits always yearned.
A year or so he knocked about,
And spent his cheques on girls and wine,
And, getting stony in the drought,
He took a job at herding swine,
And though he is a hog that swigs
And fools with girls till all is blue—
’Twas rather rough to shepherd pigs
And have to eat their tucker too.
When he came to himself,
he said
(I take my Bible from the shelf:
There’s nothing like a feed of husks
To bring a young man to himself.
And when you’re done with wine and girls—
Right here a moral seems to shine—
And are hard up, you’ll find no pearls
Are cast by friends before your swine)—
When he came to himself, he said—
He reckoned pretty shrewdly, too—
‘The rousers in my father’s shed
‘Have got more grub than they can chew;
‘I’ve been a fool, but such is fate—
‘I guess I’ll talk the guv’nor round:
‘I’ve acted cronk,
I’ll tell him straight;
‘(He’s had his time too, I’ll be bound).
‘I’ll tell him straight I’ve had my fling,
‘I’ll tell him "I’ve been on the beer,
‘"But put me on at anything,
‘I’ll graft with any bounder here.
’
He rolled his swag and struck for home—
He was by this time pretty slim
And, when the old man saw him come—
Well, you know how he welcomed him.
They’ve brought the best robe in the house,
The ring, and killed the fatted calf,
And now they hold a grand carouse,
And eat and drink and dance and laugh:
And from the field the elder son—
Whose character is not admired—
Comes plodding home when work is done,
And very hot and very tired.
He