"The Roaring Days" (1889) is a poem by Australian poet Henry Lawson.
It was originally published in The Bulletin on 21 December 1889, and subsequently reprinted in a collection of the author's poems, other newspapers and periodicals and a number of Australian poetry anthologies.
Critical reception When reviewing Lawson's poetry collection In the Days when the World was Wide and Other Verses, a writer in The Evening News (Sydney) noted: "Mr. Lawson is not, indeed, likely to be ever revealed in the character of a master singer, but so far as he goes he is really a minstrel of native fire, and not like a good many who pretend to that character, a merely ingenious imitator or adaptor of other people's ideas."
The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature states that "The Roaring Days" is "a phrase referring nostalgically to the gold rushes. Its best-known literary use is in Henry Lawson's poem, 'The Roaring Days', written from Lawson's boyhood memories of Gulgong and Pipeclay."The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature edited by Wilde, Hooton and Andrews, 2nd edition, p591
Publication history
After the poem's initial publication in The Bulletin it was reprinted as follows:
In the Days When the World was Wide and Other Verses, 1900 Selected Poems of Henry Lawson by Henry Lawson, Angus and Robertson, 1918 Winnowed Verse by Henry Lawson, Angus and Robertson, 1924 Selections from Australian Poets edited by Bertram Stephens and George Mackaness, Cornstalk Publishing, 1925 Australian Bush Songs and Ballads edited by Will Lawson, Frank Johnson, 1944 An Anthology of Australian Verse edited by George Mackaness, Angus & Robertson, 1952 A Book of Australian Verse edited by Judith Wright, Oxford University Press, 1956 New Land, New Language : An Anthology of Australian Verse edited by Judith Wright, Oxford University Press, 1957 Favourite Australian Poems edited by Ian Mudie, Rigby, 1963 Silence Into Song : An Anthology of Australian Verse edited by Clifford O'Brien, Rigby, 1968 Australian Kaleidoscope edited by Barbara Ker Wilson, Collins, 1968 This Land : An Anthology of Australian Poetry for Young People edited by M. M. Flynn and J. Groom, Pergamon Press, 1968 Poems of Henry Lawson edited by Walter Stone, Ure Smith, 1973 The World of Henry Lawson edited by Walter Stone, Hamlyn, 1974 The Essential Henry Lawson : The Best Works of Australia's Greatest Writer edited Brian Kiernan, Currey O'Neil, 1982 A Campfire Yarn : Henry Lawson Complete Works 1885-1900 edited by Leonard Cronin, Lansdowne, 1984 Cross-Country : A Book of Australian Verse edited by John Barnes and Brian MacFarlane, Heinemann, 1984 The Penguin Book of Australian Ballads edited by Elizabeth Webby and Philip Butterss, Penguin, 1993 Classic Australian Verse edited by Maggie Pinkney, Five Mile Press, 2001 Australian Poetry Since 1788 edited by Geoffrey Lehmann and Robert Gray, University of NSW Press, 2011
See also 1889 in Australian literature 1889 in poetry
References