With the best writers of his era Edward Harrington did rate <br />The farmer's son from Shepparton was a poetic great <br />He wrote the stirring ballads that poetry lovers love to recite <br />A poem of his recited at many a poetry night. <br /> <br />As a young man Edward Harrington went off to fight in war <br />And through the remainder of his life he carried the mental scar <br />Of his terrible experiences in Palestine far away <br />And the mental scar remained with him until his dying day. <br /> <br />His great ballads of the Australian bush rangers Dan Morgan and the Kelly gang are sung <br />By ballad singers who heard them when they themselves were young, <br />Australia's most notorious in verse he glorified <br />The men who hid from the law in the rugged country side. <br /> <br />He was one of Australia's last famous men of rhyme <br />The poems of Edward Harrington have withstood the test of time <br />And those who knew the great poet said he was sensitive and shy <br />And fame and adulation he did not seem to enjoy. <br /> <br />In 1965 in his seventieth year Edward Harrington passed away <br />But his poems are still recited and his songs are sung today <br />The farmer's son from Shepparton a prince of poetry <br />One of Australia's finest and few as great as he.<br /><br />Francis Duggan<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/edward-harrington/
