About these poems
Bush Lantern brings classic Australian poems back into print, in large type, free to read, print and recite.
Acknowledgement of Country
Bush Lantern acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of the lands these poems describe, and pays respect to their Elders past and present.
A settler point of view
These poems were written between the 1860s and the 1920s, mostly by settler Australians. They describe the bush as their writers saw it. Many treat the land as empty and waiting to be settled, though Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples had lived on and cared for it for tens of thousands of years. Some use words for Aboriginal people that are offensive.
We keep these poems as they were first published, because they are part of the historical record. We don't soften or change their words.
We don't publish First Nations stories, such as the legends retold by K. Langloh Parker, without the permission of the communities they belong to. The pictures on this site don't show Aboriginal people or cultural objects.
Content notes
A content note appears above any poem that uses racist or otherwise offensive language, so that teachers, families and anyone reading aloud can decide before they start. We would rather show a poem with a note than leave it out.
Where the texts come from
Every poem here is out of copyright in Australia and the United States. We publish a poem only when its author died in 1955 or earlier and it was first printed by 1930, or in the author's lifetime if they died by 1945. We check each poem's dates against sources such as the Australian Dictionary of Biography, and we take the words from early printed editions, never from modern ones with their own notes and changes.
The pictures
The paintings are new. They are made with an AI image model in the style of Tom Roberts and the other Heidelberg School painters of the 1890s, whose work is long out of copyright. They are not paintings by Tom Roberts.
Privacy
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