Explore "The Spirits of our Fathers" by Henry Lawson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The spirits of our fathers rise not from every wave, / They left the sea behind them long ago; / It was many years of "slogging," where strong men must be brave, / For the sake of unborn children, and, maybe, a soul to save, / And the end a tidy homestead, and four panels round a grave, / And -- the bones of poor old Someone down below.
Some left happy homes in old lands when they heard the New Land call / (Some were gentlemen and some were social wrecks) / Some left squalor and starvation -- they were soldiers one and all, / And their weapons were the cross-cut and the wedges and the maul. / (How we used to run as children when we heard the big trees fall! / While they paused to wipe their faces and their necks.)