[152]
“Come, sink another pot to her!
“Come, sink another pot to her!
A wizened soul and white
Would falter in its tracks by day,
And in its core by night.
For I, too, twenty years ago,
Beneath a luckless star,
Left, in a rage,
Life’s heritage
Behind at Mullingar!”
“Oh, yes,” he chortled with a sneer,
“I know, I know your kind
Of out-back bloke who babbles of
The girl he left behind—
Her face was quite a beauty show,
Her voice like a guitar.
I guess,” he grinned,
“The kind of wind
Blew you from Mullingar!
“For city men, like me, may read
The lying lines between,
Of blokes who bruise with hob-nailed feet
Love’s field of evergreen—
The car wherein your goddess drives
May be Aspasia’s car!”
I hit him solid, fair and square,
And left the wastrel lying there—
That bloke from Mullingar.
[153]
ONLY A KISS.
“I shan’t,” cried the maiden, “I shan’t!”
With a dear little petulant cry;
But the Moon, the old Moon, looked aslant,
With a comical twist in her eye;
And the mulga bush, lingering near,
Caught up the defiant refrain,
And “I shan’t! Oh, I shan’t!”
In a musical chant,
Was re-echoed again and again.
“But Lucretia, my dearest, you will!”
Our Superbus persisted—and soon
His soft accents came back from the hill,
In the mellowing light of the moon;
And the salmon-gums, clustering round,
Sent the melody dancing along,
And “You will! Oh, you will!”
Was repeated, until
They were all out of breath with their song.
[154]
But the maiden was adamant still,
But the maiden was adamant still,
Though her lips were an edible red;
And when Tarquin insisted, “You will!”
“Oh, I shan’t! you deceiver!” she said.
And the mulga and salmon-gums all,
In this star-gazing argument caught,
Sang, “You will!” “Oh, I shan’t!”
In a soul-wrecking chant—
But they thought in their hearts that she ought.
[Decoration: Mining with a windsail]
[155]
A BENDER AND SOME OF THE MOODS
THAT LEAD UP TO IT.
When days are long and nights are dull,
And life seems deathly still,
And wretched insects buzz and buzz
Against the window sill,
One balances the force of “Won’t”
Against the force of Will.
I live upon the outer edge,
And on the desert’s rim,
And sometimes query, in a tone
Quite humourless and grim,
Is life, indeed, a mere burlesque?
Some Potent Joker’s whim?
I give the Desert stare for stare,
We never fraternise;
For me the siren has no voice,
For her I have no eyes,
And whipcord couldn’t link us twain
In peaceful marriage ties.
She’s clothed in desolation’s garb,
And visaged like the Sphinx;
Too close communion oft begets
Those tortured mental kinks
[156]
That populate the upper end
Of men who mix their drinks.
She brings no help to sling a rhyme
That sniggers as it goes ...
Sometimes a thought comes limping in
With sand between its toes,
A well-developed polypus
Somewhere within its nose.
But when its wares are spread upon
The operating sheet
I mostly find them shadow hash,
With very little meat,
And so I shoot them out the door
To give the dog a treat.
There’s something in the very air
Of torture, finely spun;
The weight of care that bears me down
Weighs mighty near a ton;
The breakfast steak tastes like a brick,
The spuds are underdone.
The whole world’s badly out of joint,
And shaky at the knees;
And that old trouble with my back
It hints of Bright’s disease,
And barley-water in a ward,
And thumping doctors’ fees.
[157]
The touch of ’flu I caught last month
The touch of ’flu I caught last month
Grows daily worse and worse:
’Tis sure my plan to keep afloat
Till time and tide reverse,
Is, Take a load of beer aboard,
And jettison my purse!
For one must never count the cost
When health is in the scales
And dull-eyed devils roost upon
One’s mental boundary rails,
Nor bend an over-fearful ear
To timid travellers’ tales.
The same old wild and woolly whirl
Along the same old track,
Outpacing sundry ills I have,
To garner those I lack!
—And so, I slither down to hell
(But have to hoof it back).
Then Reason riots wild awhile,
With bells upon her cap,
Until the last resource is sped
Of coin, or kid, or strap;
And then—I come back smiling, a
Rejuvenated chap!
[158]
WILD CATS AND HOURIS.
My worthy friend, if you’d list to me,
I’d teach you the way of a millionaire:
Advice costs nothing; the class is free;
And the road is smooth and the game is fair
Where dame Fortune smiles
With a woman’s wiles,
And a golden comb in the jade’s back hair.
Pray listen to me as you love your life;
The old world trips to the Oof-bird’s song:
’Tis poverty cuts like a butcher’s knife,
And the stabs of the butcher rankle long—
Say are you, at most,
Like a chap on toast,
Held over the fire on the toaster’s prong?
The prizes are not for the swift alone:
There’s small demand on your brawn or brain:
Just a cast-steel chiv, and a hunk of stone,
And a thirst that can cut and come again—
A trifle of salt,
A barrel of malt,
And four good stout pegs in a mulga plain.
[159]
My worldly friend! if you’d list to me,
My worldly friend! if you’d list to me,
You’d cease to worry of duns and bills,
And practice the one philanthropy
That works the ranch that your ego fills—
For the mugs await
At your outer gate,
And the world is crying for gilded pills.
’Tis thus the prizes are lost or won,
And thus the guerdon is bought or sold;
For the game is fair when the coins are spun,
And the “heads” show up in the aureate mould—
And where is the sin,
When the flats chip in,
In flying a “nob” for their good red gold?
Well, that is the lore that I wish to teach,
And such is the way that I want to show,
For Daphne lies on the sanded beach
’Way down by the ocean at Cottesloe,
With a barrel of “fat”
And a tall silk hat,
And a tip-top time where the houris grow.
[160]
[Illustration: Man outside bar]
THE LAST SPRAT.
I’ve nursed it all a sultry summer night
This buffer ’twixt a rocky shore and me:
I elbow through the crowd upon my right
Of solvency.
Life still holds some potentialities!
I feel myself a unit amongst men!
But know, should thirst prevail, there wilts and dies
A citizen.
[161]
The clink of glasses floats upon the air—
The clink of glasses floats upon the air—
Thirst’s fingers gripe me round the neck and choke—
One beerward step: and then a voice, “Beware!
Dead broke! Dead broke!”
Shallows to windward, breakers on the lee,
I weigh and weigh the question, cons and pros,
Till (wracked by indecision’s pangs) I see
The last pub close.
[Decoration: Horse-powered mining]
[162]
SAY, WHAT DO YOU THINK OF IT NOW?
Ye comrades in shicker and cobbers in sin,
Ye wrecks from the ranks of life’s crew,
Who’ve tickled each barmaid under the chin
And frivolled with nymphs in the Rue;
Who’ve painted the town a magnificent red
(All impressionist artists, I trow),
Look here, in the light of the aftermath shed,
Say, what do you think of it now?
Oh, you’ve had a gay and a festive debauch
In regions where sanity reels,
With Bacchus, wine-laden, ahead with his torch,
And Nemesis close at your heels.
And little you recked, as the glamour of wine
Smoothed the lines of Life’s puckering brow—
But own up and tell me, old cobbers of mine,
Say, what do you think of it now?
You’ve made the pace willing in numberless bars,
You have sung, and recited, and yapped;
You have slept a drunk’s sleep ’neath the pitying stars,
You have squandered and borrowed and strapped—
[163]
You have struck every note, the sublime to the lewd,
But, alas, from Despondency’s slough,
May I ask in a friendly and brotherly mood,
Say, what do you think of it now?
You have played the pied piper and danced the fool’s dance
’Mid the smiles of well-ballasted men
(By-and-by, when the devil is better perchance
You will cut the same caper again.)
But now, as you bare your scant locks to the blast,
And re-register vow upon vow,
May I ask, as a brother—the month that is past—
Say, what do you think of it now?
[Decoration: Gold miner with dolly pot]