The Lonely Crossing And Other Poems

By Louisa Lawson

Across riverbanks, shearing sheds and remote homesteads, solitude is never merely an empty landscape. It belongs to workers far from companionship, families divided by hardship, women confronting suffering and injustice, and mourners carrying memories that cannot be set aside. Rooted in Australian life, these poems bring bush labour, settlement and mining country into close contact with poverty, illness, bereavement and spiritual doubt. Voices rise directly from country roads, bush inns, goldfields and city spaces. Dramatic monologues and passages of dialogue allow lovers, reformers, isolated labourers and grieving families to speak for themselves, while regular rhyme and recurring refrains give many poems the cadence of ballads. Vivid flora and bush vocabulary ground the collection in Australia, yet its national concerns remain inseparable from intimate questions of love, renunciation, alcoholism, compassion and women's resistance. Faith and uncertainty meet in churches and cemeteries, where devotional and elegiac poems consider death, mourning and the endurance demanded by loss. Elsewhere, patriotic feeling is tested against social hardship, and familiar scenes of droving, shearing and mining are viewed through the lives affected by them. Moving between narrative incident and lyric reflection, the collection preserves both public argument and private sorrow, giving equal space to social reform, family memory and the search for spiritual consolation. This book was out of print for decades and is now republished by Alpha Editions. It has been restored for today's and future generations. This edition is not just a reprint - it's a collector's item and a cultural treasure.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 9378418198
• ISBN13: 9789378418198
• Release Date: January 2027
• Publisher: Alpha Edition
• Length: 68 Pages
• Weight: 0.23 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 6.0" x 9.0"