They're taking the old piano,
They're lifting it from the floor.
A carrier's cant is waiting
Outside the old home door.
And Mother to mutely watching
With tears on her faded cheek;
I wonder of what she's thinking,
Her heart is too full to speak.
Perhaps of the day he brought her,
When out from a wreathed arch
There rang from the old piano
Bright bars of a bridal march.
Or maybe when long years after
It wailed the dead march in Saul,
As slowly he went for ever
Enwrapped in funeral pall.
I know by her pale drawn features
How tightly it's chords entwine,
I know the piano corner
To her is a wasted shrine.
First published in The Sydney Mail, 27 June 1906;
and later in
Louisa Lawson: Collected Poems with Selected Critical Commentaries, edited by L.M. Rutherford, M.E. Roughley and Nigel Spence, 1996; and
100 Australian Poems of Love and Loss edited by Jamie Grant, 2011.
Author reference sites: Austlit, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Australian Poetry Library
See also.
They're lifting it from the floor.
A carrier's cant is waiting
Outside the old home door.
And Mother to mutely watching
With tears on her faded cheek;
I wonder of what she's thinking,
Her heart is too full to speak.
Perhaps of the day he brought her,
When out from a wreathed arch
There rang from the old piano
Bright bars of a bridal march.
Or maybe when long years after
It wailed the dead march in Saul,
As slowly he went for ever
Enwrapped in funeral pall.
I know by her pale drawn features
How tightly it's chords entwine,
I know the piano corner
To her is a wasted shrine.
First published in The Sydney Mail, 27 June 1906;
and later in
Louisa Lawson: Collected Poems with Selected Critical Commentaries, edited by L.M. Rutherford, M.E. Roughley and Nigel Spence, 1996; and
100 Australian Poems of Love and Loss edited by Jamie Grant, 2011.
Author reference sites: Austlit, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Australian Poetry Library
See also.
