The Lovable Characters by Henry Lawson

I long for the streets but the Lord knoweth best,
   For there I am never a saint;
There are lovable characters out in the West,
   with humour heroic and quaint;
And, be it Up Country, or be it Out Back,
   When I shall have gone to my Home,
I trust to be buried 'twixt River and Track
   Where my lovable characters roam.
 
There are lovable characters drag through the scrub,
   Where the Optimist ever prevails;
There are lovable characters hang round the pub,
   There are lovable jokers at sales
Where the auctioneer's one of the lovable wags
   (Maybe from his "order" estranged),
And the beer is on tap, and the pigs in the bags
  Of the purchasing cockies are changed.

There are lovable characters out in the West,
   Of fifty hot summers, or more,
Who could not be proved, when it came to the test,
   Too old to be sent to the war;
They were all forty-five and were orphans, they said,
   With no one to keep them, or keep;
And mostly in France, with the world's bravest dead,
   Those lovable characters sleep.

I long for the streets but the Lord knoweth best,
   For there I am never a saint;
There are lovable characters out in the West,
   with humour heroic and quaint;
And, be it Up Country, or be it Out Back,
   When I shall have gone to my Home,
I trust to be buried 'twixt River and Track
   Where my lovable characters roam.

First published in The Bulletin, 8 February 1917 ;
and later in
A Fantasy of Man: Henry Lawson Complete Works 1901-22 edited by Leonard Cronin, 1984

Author reference sites: Austlit, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Australian Poetry Library, The Poetry of Henry Lawson website

See also.