Verse is more than pleasant, jingling rhyme. It can document history, heroics and current events, tell stories, comment on social issues and satirise. At best it can be a subtle and satisfying form of literature, but its primary purpose is entertainment - for reading, writing, performance or listening. To compile this collection, Jim Haynes has gone to many previously neglected sources, including old magazines, manuscripts and books now out of print. The result is not just a compendium of well loved and often brilliant verse, but a portrait of Australia during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.