Faces in the Street
"Faces in the Street" is a poem by Australian poet Henry Lawson.
It was originally published in The Bulletin on 28 July 1888. It was subsequently reprinted in several of the author's other collections, other newspapers and periodicals and a number of Australian poetry anthologies.
Critical reception
A writer in The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature comments: "Written in a stirring rhythm from the perspective of a person whose 'window-sill is level with the faces in the street', the poem focuses on the flotsam and jetsam of the city who pass by from before dawn until after midnight."
In reviewing the author's collection In the Days When the World was Wide and Other Verses a writer in The Daily Telegraph noted: "'Faces In the Street,' 'For'ard,' and 'The Cambaroora Star' touch questions of social reform. Or perhaps it would be better to say that they show the author's sympathy therewith, since he merely rails against the visible wrongs that now exist without seeming to have a constructive policy."
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, 1900Selected Poems of Henry Lawson by Henry Lawson, Angus and Robertson, 1918Freedom on the Wallaby : Poems of the Australian People edited by Marjorie Pizer, Pinchgut Press, 1953Favourite Australian Poems edited by Ian Mudie, Rigby, 1963Poems of Henry Lawson edited by Walter Stone, Ure Smith, 1973The World of Henry Lawson edited by Walter Stone, Hamlyn, 1974The Bulletin, 29 January 1980The Collins Book of Australian Poetry edited by Rodney Hall, Collins, 1981The Essential Henry Lawson : The Best Works of Australia's Greatest Writer edited Brian Kiernan, Currey O'Neil, 1982A Campfire Yarn : Henry Lawson Complete Works 1885-1900 edited by Leonard Cronin, Lansdowne, 1984The Illustrated Treasury of Australian Verse edited by Beatrice Davis, Nelson, 1984My Country : Australian Poetry and Short Stories, Two Hundred Years edited by Leonie Kramer, Lansdowne, 1985The Penguin Book of Australian Ballads edited by Elizabeth Webby and Philip Butterss, Penguin, 1993The Illustrated Treasury of Australian Verse edited by Beatrice Davis, State Library of NSW Press, 1996200 Years of Australian Writing : An Anthology edited by James F. H. Moore, VDL Publications, 1997Harbour City Poems : Sydney in Verse 1788-2008 edited by Martin Langford, Puncher and Wattman, 2009