I long for the streets but the Lord knoweth best, <br />For there I am never a saint; <br />There are lovable characters out in the West, <br />With humour heroic and quaint; <br />And, be it Up Country, or be it Out Back, <br />When I shall have gone to my Home, <br />I trust to be buried 'twixt River and Track <br />Where my lovable characters roam. <br /> <br />There are lovable characters drag through the scrub, <br />Where the Optimist ever prevails; <br />There are lovable characters hang round the pub, <br />There are lovable jokers at sales <br />Where the auctioneer's one of the lovable wags <br />(Maybe from his "order" estranged), <br />And the beer is on tap, and the pigs in the bags <br />Of the purchasing cockies are changed. <br /> <br />There were lovable characters out in the West, <br />Of fifty hot summers, or more, <br />Who could not be proved, when it came to the test, <br />Too old to be sent to the war; <br />They were all forty-five and were orphans, they said, <br />With no one to keep them, or keep; <br />And mostly in France, with the world's bravest dead, <br />Those lovable characters sleep. <br /> <br />I long for the streets, but the Lord knoweth best, <br />For there I am never a saint; <br />There are lovable characters out in the West, <br />With humour heroic and quaint; <br />And, be it Up Country, or be it Out Back, <br />When I shall have gone to my Home, <br />I trust to be buried 'twixt River and Track <br />Where my lovable characters roam.<br /><br />Henry Lawson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-loveable-characters/
