In English literature, an elegy is a poem of serious reflection, typically a lament for the dead.
Henry Lawson was born on June 17, 1867, in Grenfell, Australia. He wrote short stories and ballad-like poems, illuminating the lives of rural, working Australians. Lawson is often called Australia's greatest writer..
In 1884, Lawson was apprenticed as a coach-painter to a railway carriage-works company at Clyde, in the Western suburbs of Sydney, at the same time attending night school to improve his education. It was about this time that Lawson began writing his first poems. From 1887, while supporting himself with odd jobs, Lawson began publishing his verse in the Sydney press, especially the Bulletin and Australian Town and Country Journal.