The schools marched in procession in happiness and pride, <br />The city bands before them, the soldiers marched beside; <br />Oh, starched white frocks and sashes and suits that high schools wear, <br />The boy scout and the boy lout and all the rest were there, <br />And all flags save Australia's flag waved high in sun and air! <br /> <br />The Girls' High School, and Grammar School and colleges of stone <br />Flew all flags from their walls and towers – all flags except our own! <br />And down here in the alleys where Premiers never come, <br />Nor candidate, nor delegate, nor sound of fife and drum, <br />They packed them on the lorries, seared children of the slum. <br /> <br />Each face seemed soiled and faded, though scrubbed with household soap, <br />And older than a mother-face, but with less sign of hope: <br />The knowledge of things evil, of drunken wreck and hag, <br />Of sordid sounds and voices, the everlasting "nag" – <br />Oh, men without a battle-song! Oh, men without a flag! <br /> <br />They breed a nation's strength behind each shabby little door, <br />Where rent-collectors knock for aye, and Christ shall knock no more; <br />The sounds that hurt the mother's heart affright the children there – <br />Alarm-clocks on an empty tin, the tin tray on a chair; <br />For weary folk are hard to wake in hot and heavy air. <br /> <br />They sang in Pride's Procession that Mammon might endure – <br />Oh, wistful singing faces, the children of the poor! <br />Oh, hideous fiends of commerce! Oh, ghouls of business strife! <br />I wait the coming of the things to wake the land to life; <br />The flag without a cross or bar, the drum without a fife!<br /><br />Henry Lawson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/victory-2/
