I HATE this grinding poverty—
To toil, and pinch, and borrow,
And be for ever haunted by
The spectre of to-morrow.
It breaks the strong heart of a man,
It crushes out his spirit—
Do what he will, do what he can,
However high his merit!
I hate the praise that Want has got
From preacher and from poet,
The cant of those who know it not
To blind the men who know it.
The greatest curse since man had birth,
An everlasting terror:
The cause of half the crime on earth,
The cause of half the error.
In a published book
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Comments
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How Deep
How deep and meaningful. -
It is odd to look back at this poem describing the poverty of many nascent Australians in the year when the politicians were drafting the constitution for the new nation to be formed only 3 years later. This was a time, 30 years after transportation had been banned in Britain and the various states were almost entirely self governing, when conditions were so bad the colony's Destitute Board was still appointing new members to try to cope with the problem.
Lawson is quite rightly pointing out that there is no nobility in suffering the privations and hardship of poverty however it is represented by other poets. -
Australian convicts, transported from the British Isles were, in the main, within this category. Stealing to feed their families. Poverty, a hard task master for many.
In these few lines i feel that Henry Lawson has captured the feeling of desolation and decay.
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