Explore "Billy of Queensland" by Henry Lawson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"QUEENSLAND," he heads his letters -- that's all: / The date, and the month, and the year in brief; / He often sends me a cheerful scrawl, / With an undertone of ancient grief. / The first seems familiar, but might have changed, / As often the writing of wanderers will; / He seems all over the world to have ranged, / And he signs himself William, or Billy, or Bill.
He might have been an old mate of mine -- / A shearer, or one of the station hands. / (There were some of 'em died, who drop me a line, / Signing other names, and in other hands. / There was one who carried his swag with me / On the western tracks, when the world was young, / And now he is spouting democracy / In another land with another tongue.)