They were men of many nations, they were men of many stations, <br />They were men in many places, and of high and low degree; <br />Men of many types and faces, but, alike in all the races, <br />They were men I met in trouble, and the men who stuck to me. <br />Some were friends, but most were strangers; some were weary world-wide rangers; <br />Some in freedom were in prison, and in prison some were free, <br />Oh, I have a vivid vision of the men I met in prison— <br />In the craving for tobacco they were men who stuck to me. <br /> <br />Some I never met and never knew their great but vain endeavour, <br />For my sake! And some were old mates whom I never more may see; <br />Never heard me, some I talked with; never saw me, some I walked with; <br />Blind and deaf, and dumb and foreign were the men who stuck to me. <br /> <br />“Yes, I’ll stick!” the words most human, be the trouble man or woman; <br />Stick with money or without it, and whoever you may be; <br />Right or wrong—in drink or sadness—“stick” in sanity or madness— <br />Such as these, the men I stuck to, and the men who stuck to me. <br /> <br />Ah! we see not in our blindness that the world is full of kindness, <br />Kindness to make full atonement for all evil that there be; <br />Oh! my life was deadly fateful, but my heart was always grateful, <br />And I send this song at Christmas to the men who stuck to me.<br /><br />Henry Lawson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-men-who-stuck-to-me/
