"The Song of Old Joe Swallow"
by Henry Lawson
Written	1890
First published in	The Bulletin
Country	Australia
Language	English
Preceded by	The Third Murder : A New South Wales tale
Followed by	Skeleton Flat
Full text
The Song of Old Joe Swallow at Wikisource

"The Song of Old Joe Swallow" (1890) is a poem by Australian poet Henry Lawson.^[1]

It was originally published in The Bulletin on 24 May 1890 and subsequently reprinted in several of the author's other collections, other newspapers and periodicals and a number of Australian poetry anthologies.^[1]

Critical reception

Writing in The Australian Town and Country Journal about the author's collection, In the Days When the World was Wide and Other Verses, a reviewer noted that this poem has "a swinging, haunting refrain, a melodious simplicity and pathos which rival his contemporary on the other side of the globe, Rudyard Kipling."^[2]

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 by Henry Lawson, Angus and Robertson, 1900
• Humorous Verses by Henry Lawson, Angus and Robertson, 1941^[3]
• The Penguin Book of Australian Verse edited by Harry Heseltine, Penguin Books, 1972^[4]
• Poems of Henry Lawson edited by Walter Stone, Ure Smith, 1973^[5]
• A Campfire Yarn : Henry Lawson Complete Works 1885-1900 edited by Leonard Cronin, Lansdowne, 1984^[6]
• A Collection of Australian Bush Verse Peter Antill-Rose, 1989^[7]
• Our Country : Classic Australian Poetry : From Colonial Ballads to Paterson & Lawson edited by Michael Cook, Little Hills Press, 2002^[8]

Note

Henry Lawson used the name "Joe Swallow" as a pseudonym under which he published two poems: "The Water-Lilies" in 1891, and "A Stranger on the Darling" in 1892.^[9]