Faces in the Street

They lie, the men who tell us in a loud decisive tone
That want is here a stranger, and that misery’s unknown;
For where the nearest suburb and the city proper meet
My window-sill is level with the faces in the street—
         Drifting past, drifting past,
         To the beat of weary feet—
While I sorrow for the owners of those faces in the street.

And cause I have to sorrow, in a land so young and fair,
To see upon those faces stamped the marks of Want and Care;
I look in vain for traces of the fresh and fair and sweet
In sallow, sunken faces that are drifting through the street—
         Drifting on, drifting on,
         To the scrape of restless feet;
I can sorrow for the owners of the faces in the street.

In hours before the dawning dims the starlight in the sky
The wan and weary faces first begin to trickle by,
Increasing as the moments hurry on with morning feet,
Till like a pallid river flow the faces in the street—
         Flowing in, flowing in,
         To the beat of hurried feet—
Ah! I sorrow for the owners of those faces in the street.

The human river dwindles when ’tis past the hour of eight,
Its waves go flowing faster in the fear of being late;
But slowly drag the moments, whilst beneath the dust and heat
The city grinds the owners of the faces in the street—
         Grinding body, grinding soul,
         Yielding scarce enough to eat—
Oh! I sorrow for the owners of the faces in the street.

And then the only faces till the sun is sinking down
Are those of outside toilers and the idlers of the town,
Save here and there a face that seems a stranger in the street,
Tells of the city’s unemployed upon his weary beat—
         Drifting round, drifting round,
         To the tread of listless feet—
Ah! My heart aches for the owner of that sad face in the street.

And when the hours on lagging feet have slowly dragged away,
And sickly yellow gaslights rise to mock the going day,
Then flowing past my window like a tide in its retreat,
Again I see the pallid stream of faces in the street—
         Ebbing out, ebbing out,
         To the drag of tired feet,
While my heart is aching dumbly for the faces in the street.

And now all blurred and smirched with vice the day’s sad pages end,
For while the short ‘large hours’ toward the longer ‘small hours’ trend,
With smiles that mock the wearer, and with words that half entreat,
Delilah pleads for custom at the corner of the street—
         Sinking down, sinking down,
         Battered wreck by tempests beat—
A dreadful, thankless trade is hers, that Woman of the Street.

But, ah! to dreader things than these our fair young city comes,
For in its heart are growing thick the filthy dens and slums,
Where human forms shall rot away in sties for swine unmeet,
And ghostly faces shall be seen unfit for any street—
         Rotting out, rotting out,
         For the lack of air and meat—
In dens of vice and horror that are hidden from the street.

I wonder would the apathy of wealthy men endure
Were all their windows level with the faces of the Poor?
Ah! Mammon’s slaves, your knees shall knock, your hearts in terror beat,
When God demands a reason for the sorrows of the street,
         The wrong things and the bad things
         And the sad things that we meet
In the filthy lane and alley, and the cruel, heartless street.

I left the dreadful corner where the steps are never still,
And sought another window overlooking gorge and hill;
But when the night came dreary with the driving rain and sleet,
They haunted me—the shadows of those faces in the street,
         Flitting by, flitting by,
         Flitting by with noiseless feet,
And with cheeks but little paler than the real ones in the street.

Once I cried: ‘Oh, God Almighty! if Thy might doth still endure,
Now show me in a vision for the wrongs of Earth a cure.’
And, lo! with shops all shuttered I beheld a city’s street,
And in the warning distance heard the tramp of many feet,
         Coming near, coming near,
         To a drum’s dull distant beat,
And soon I saw the army that was marching down the street.

Then, like a swollen river that has broken bank and wall,
The human flood came pouring with the red flags over all,
And kindled eyes all blazing bright with revolution’s heat,
And flashing swords reflecting rigid faces in the street.
         Pouring on, pouring on,
         To a drum’s loud threatening beat,
And the war-hymns and the cheering of the people in the street.

And so it must be while the world goes rolling round its course,
The warning pen shall write in vain, the warning voice grow hoarse,
But not until a city feels Red Revolution’s feet
Shall its sad people miss awhile the terrors of the street—
         The dreadful everlasting strife
         For scarcely clothes and meat
In that pent track of living death—the city’s cruel street.

Background and Analysis of This Poem

Henry Lawson's Faces in the Street is one of his strongest poems of social protest, and one of the clearest examples of his sympathy for working people and the urban poor. Lawson is often thought of as a bush writer, but his imagination was never confined to the outback. The State Library of New South Wales describes him as a writer with a keen, honest eye for hardship in both the bush and the city, and this poem turns that eye directly onto the streets of Sydney. The poem was later included in In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses, published in 1896, with Representative Poetry Online noting that collection as the source for its text Representative Poetry Online.

The poem begins by calling out a lie: the claim that poverty and misery are unknown in this young, promising country. Lawson's anger is immediate, but it is not abstract. He does not begin with statistics, policy or theory. He begins with faces. The speaker's window-sill is level with the people passing in the street, which is one of the poem's most important images. He is not looking down from a comfortable height. He is physically and morally close to the crowd. Their hardship is not a distant social problem; it is passing directly before his eyes.

That repeated image of faces "drifting" through the street gives the poem much of its sorrow. The people seem carried along by forces larger than themselves: work, hunger, fatigue, unemployment, the fear of being late, the grinding machinery of the city. Lawson does not sentimentalise them into noble sufferers, but he refuses to let them become faceless either. The irony, of course, is that the poem's title speaks of "faces" because society has failed to see the people behind them. Poverty has marked them visibly, yet public conscience still looks away.

The city in the poem is almost industrial in its cruelty. It "grinds" body and soul, turning people into part of its daily motion. The rhythm reinforces that sense of repetition. The poem's refrains and driving beat evoke feet on pavement, the rush towards work, and the weary return after labour has given scarcely enough to eat. Lawson's language is plain, but it gathers moral pressure through repetition. Each return to the "faces in the street" feels like another witness statement, another refusal to let the reader escape.

There is also a strong democratic and nationalist argument beneath the poem. Lawson writes of "a land so young and fair", implying that Australia's promise is being betrayed by the poverty visible in its cities. This is not merely pity; it is accusation. A young nation that prides itself on opportunity cannot honestly ignore people crushed by want and care. The Australian Dictionary of Biography notes Lawson's association with democratic and nationalist feeling, and Faces in the Street shows that nationalism at its most morally demanding. Love of country, for Lawson, should make injustice harder to tolerate, not easier to excuse.

For modern readers, Faces in the Street remains disturbingly familiar. Its streets belong to the nineteenth century, but its central question has not aged: how does a prosperous society train itself not to see suffering in plain view? Lawson's answer is to keep looking, and to make the reader look with him. The poem's compassion is not soft. It is restless, accusatory and public-minded. By the end, the passing crowd has become more than a city scene. It is a moral test, and Lawson's sorrow for the owners of those faces becomes a challenge to anyone tempted to walk past too quickly.