Henry Lawson "One Hundred and Three" Poem animation Australian

Heres a virtual movie Henry Lawson (17 June 1867 2 September 1922) an Australian writer and poet . Along with his contemporary Banjo Paterson, Lawson is among the best-known Australian poets and fiction writers of the colonial period, and is often called Australia's "greatest writer" reading one of his best loved poems "One Hundred and Three" . Henry Lawson was born in a town on the Grenfell goldfields of New South Wales. His father was Niels Herzberg Larsen, a Norwegian-born miner who went to sea at 21, arrived in Melbourne in 1855 to join the gold rush.[2] Lawson's parents met at the goldfields of Pipeclay (now Eurunderee, New South Wales) Niels and Louisa married on 7 July 1866; he was 32 and she, 18. On Henry's birth, the family surname was anglicised and Niels became Peter Lawson. Lawson's first published poem was 'A Song of the Republic' which appeared in The Bulletin, 1 October 1887; his mother's radical friends were an influence. This was followed by 'The Wreck of the Derry Castle' and then 'Golden Gully.' In 1890-1891 Lawson worked in Albany.[4] He then received an offer to write for the Brisbane Boomerang in 1891, but he lasted only around 7-8 months as the Boomerang was soon in trouble. He returned to Sydney and continued to write for the Bulletin which, in 1892, paid for an inland trip where he experienced the harsh realities of drought-affected New South Wales.[5] This resulted in his contributions to the Bulletin Debate and became a source for many of his stories in subsequent years.[2] Elder writes of the trek Lawson took between Hungerford and Bourke as "the most important trek in Australian literary history" and says that "it confirmed all his prejudices about the Australian bush. Lawson had no romantic illusions about a 'rural idyll'."[6] As Elder continues, his grim view of the outback was far removed from "the romantic idyll of brave horsemen and beautiful scenery depicted in the poetry of 'The Banjo' [Paterson. His most successful prose collection is While the Billy Boils, published in 1896.[8] In it he "continued his assault on Paterson and the romantics, and in the process, virtually reinvented Australian realism. During his later life, the alcohol-addicted writer was probably Australia's best-known celebrity. At the same time, he was also a frequent beggar on the streets of Sydney, notably at the Circular Quay ferry turnstiles. In 1903 he sought a room at Mrs Isabella Byers' Coffee Palace in North Sydney. This marked the beginning of a 20 year friendship between Mrs Byers and Lawson. Despite his position as the most celebrated Australian writer of the time, Lawson was deeply depressed and perpetually poor. He lacked money due to unfortunate royalty deals with publishers. His ex-wife repeatedly reported him for non-payment of child maintenance, resulting in gaol terms. He was gaoled at Darlinghurst Gaol for drunkenness and non-payment of alimony, and recorded his experience in the haunting poem "One Hundred and Three" - his prison number - which was published in 1908. He refers to the prison as "Starvinghurst Gaol" because of the meagre rations given to the inmates. Kind Regards Jim Clark All rights on video recording are reserved.copyright Jim Clark 2009 One Hundred and Three................ With the frame of a man, and the face of a boy, and a manner strangely wild, And the great, wide, wondering, innocent eyes of a silent-suffering child; With his hideous dress and his heavy boots, he drags to Eternity— And the Warder says, in a softened tone: Keep step, One Hundred and Three. Tis a ghastly travesty of drill—or a ghastly farce of work— But One Hundred and Three, he catches step with a start, a shuffle and jerk. Tis slow starvation in separate cells, and a widows son is he, And the widow, she drank before he was born—(Keep step, One Hundred and Three!) They shut a man in the four-by-eight, with a six-inch slit for air, Twenty-three hours of the twenty-four, to brood on his virtues there. And the dead stone walls and the iron door close in as an iron band On eyes that followed the distant haze far out on the level land. Bread and water and hominy, and a scrag of meat and a spud, A Bible and thin flat book of rules, to cool a strong mans blood; They take the spoon from the cell at night—and a stranger might think it odd; But a man might sharpen it on the floor, and go to his own Great God. One Hundred and Three, it is hard to believe that you saddled your horse at dawn; There were girls that rode through the bush at eve, and girls who lolled on the lawn. There were picnic parties in sunny bays, and ships on the shining sea; There were foreign ports in the glorious days—(Hold up, One Hundred and Three!)