Verses popular and humorous

‘The ladies are coming,’ the super says
To the shearers sweltering there,
And ‘the ladies’ means in the shearing shed:
‘Don’t cut ’em too bad. Don’t swear.’
The ghost of a pause in the shed’s rough heart,
And lower is bowed each head;
And nothing is heard, save a whispered word,
And the roar of the shearing-shed.

The tall, shy rouser has lost his wits,
And his limbs are all astray;
He leaves a fleece on the shearing-board,
And his broom in the shearer’s way.
There’s a curse in store for that jackaroo
As down by the wall he slants—
And the ringer bends with his legs askew
And wishes he’d ‘patched them pants.’

They are girls from the city. (Our hearts rebel
As we squint at their dainty feet.)
And they gush and say in a girly way
That ‘the dear little lambs’ are ‘sweet.’
And Bill, the ringer, who’d scorn the use
Of a childish word like ‘damn,’
Would give a pound that his tongue were loose
As he tackles a lively lamb.

Swift thoughts of homes in the coastal towns—
Or rivers and waving grass—
And a weight on our hearts that we cannot define
That comes as the ladies pass.
But the rouser ventures a nervous dig
In the ribs of the next to him;
And Barcoo says to his pen-mate: ‘Twig
The style of the last un, Jim.’

Jim Moonlight gives her a careless glance—
Then he catches his breath with pain—
His strong hand shakes and the sunlights dance
As he bends to his work again.
But he’s well disguised in a bristling beard,
Bronzed skin, and his shearer’s dress;
And whatever Jim Moonlight hoped or feared
Were hard for his mates to guess.

Jim Moonlight, wiping his broad, white brow,
Explains, with a doleful smile:
‘A stitch in the side,’ and ‘he’s all right now’—
But he leans on the beam awhile,
And gazes out in the blazing noon
On the clearing, brown and bare—
She has come and gone, like a breath of June,
In December’s heat and glare.

The bushmen are big rough boys at the best,
With hearts of a larger growth;
But they hide those hearts with a brutal jest,
And the pain with a reckless oath.
Though the Bills and Jims of the bush-bard sing
Of their life loves, lost or dead,
The love of a girl is a sacred thing
Not voiced in a shearing-shed.

THE BALLAD OF THE ROUSEABOUT

A rouseabout of rouseabouts, from any land—or none—
I bear a nick-name of the bush, and I’m—a woman’s son;
I came from where I camp’d last night, and, at the day-dawn glow,
I rub the darkness from my eyes, roll up my swag, and go.

Some take the track for bitter pride, some for no pride at all—
(But—to us all the world is wide when driven to the wall)
Some take the track for gain in life, some take the track for loss—
And some of us take up the swag as Christ took up the Cross.

Some take the track for faith in men—some take the track for doubt—
Some flee a squalid home to work their own salvation out.
Some dared not see a mother’s tears nor meet a father’s face—
Born of good Christian families some leap, head-long, from Grace.

Oh we are men who fought and rose, or fell from many grades;
Some born to lie, and some to pray, we’re men of many trades;
We’re men whose fathers were and are of high and low degree—
The sea was open to us and we sailed across the sea.

And—were our quarrels wrong or just?—has no place in my song—
We seared our souls in puzzling as to what was right or wrong;
We judge not and we are not judged—’tis our philosophy—
There’s something wrong with every ship that sails upon the sea.

From shearing shed to shearing shed we tramp to make a cheque—
Jack Cornstalk and the ne’er-do-weel—the tar-boy and the wreck.
We learn the worth of man to man—and this we learn too well—
The shanty and the shearing shed are warmer spots in hell!

I’ve humped my swag to Bawley Plain, and further out and on;
I’ve boiled my billy by the Gulf, and boiled it by the Swan—
I’ve thirsted in dry lignum swamps, and thirsted on the sand,
And eked the fire with camel dung in Never-Never Land.

I know the track from Spencer’s Gulf and north of Cooper’s Creek—
Where falls the half-caste to the strong, ‘black velvet’ to the weak—
(From gold-top Flossie in the Strand to half-caste and the gin—
If they had brains, poor animals! we’d teach them how to sin.)

I’ve tramped, and camped, and ‘shore’ and drunk with many mates Out Back—
And every one to me is Jack because the first was Jack—
A ‘lifer’ sneaked from jail at home—the ‘straightest’ mate I met—
A ‘ratty’ Russian Nihilist—a British Baronet!

I know the tucker tracks that feed—or leave one in the lurch—
The ‘Burgoo’ (Presbyterian) track—the ‘Murphy’ (Roman Church)—
But more the man, and not the track, so much as it appears,
For ‘battling’ is a trade to learn, and I’ve served seven years.

We’re haunted by the past at times—and this is very bad,
And so we drink till horrors come, lest, sober, we go mad—
So much is lost Out Back, so much of hell is realised—
A man might skin himself alive and no one be surprised.

A rouseabout of rouseabouts, above—beneath regard,
I know how soft is this old world, and I have learnt how hard—
A rouseabout of rouseabouts—I know what men can feel,
I’ve seen the tears from hard eyes slip as drops from polished steel.

I learned what college had to teach, and in the school of men
By camp-fires I have learned, or, say, unlearned it all again;
But this I’ve learned, that truth is strong, and if a man go straight
He’ll live to see his enemy struck down by time and fate!

We hold him true who’s true to one however false he be
(There’s something wrong with every ship that lies beside the quay);
We lend and borrow, laugh and joke, and when the past is drowned,
We sit upon our swags and smoke and watch the world go round.

YEARS AFTER THE WAR IN AUSTRALIA

The big rough boys from the runs out back were first where the balls flew free,
And yelled in the slang of the Outside Track: ‘By God, it’s a Christmas spree!’
‘It’s not too rusty’—and ‘Wool away!—stand clear of the blazing shoots!’—
‘Sheep O! Sheep O!’—‘We’ll cut out to-day’—‘Look out for the boss’s boots!’—
‘What price the tally in camp to-night!’—‘What price the boys Out Back!’—
‘Go it, you tigers, for Right or Might and the pride of the Outside Track!’—
‘Needle and thread!’—‘I have broke my comb!’—‘Now ride, you flour-bags, ride!’—
‘Fight for your mates and the folk at home!’—‘Here’s for the Lachlan side!’
Those men of the West would sneer and scoff at the gates of hell ajar,
And oft the sight of a head cut off was hailed by a yell for ‘Tar!’
. . . . . . . . . .
I heard the push in the Red Redoubt, irate at a luckless shot:
‘Look out for the blooming shell, look out!’—‘Gor’ bli’ me, but that’s red-hot!’—
‘It’s Bill the Slogger—poor bloke—he’s done. A chunk of the shell was his;
I wish the beggar that fired that gun could get within reach of Liz.’
‘Those foreign gunners will give us rats, but I wish it was Bill they missed.’
‘I’d like to get at their bleeding hats with a rock in my (something) fist.’

‘Hold up, Billy; I’ll stick to you; they’ve hit you under the belt;
If we get the waddle I’ll swag you through, if the blazing mountains melt;
You remember the night when the traps got me for stoushing a bleeding Chow,
And you went for ’em proper and laid out three, and I won’t forget it now.’
And, groaning and swearing, the pug replied: ‘I’m done ... they’ve knocked me out!
I’d fight them all for a pound a-side, from the boss to the rouseabout.
My nut is cracked and my legs is broke, and it gives me worse than hell;
I trained for a scrap with a twelve-stone bloke, and not with a bursting shell.
You needn’t mag, for I knowed, old chum, I knowed, old pal, you’d stick;
But you can’t hold out till the reg’lars come, and you’d best be nowhere quick.
They’ve got a force and a gun ashore, both of our wings is broke;
They’ll storm the ridge in a minute more, and the best you can do is smoke.’

And Jim exclaimed: ‘You can smoke, you chaps, but me—Gor’ bli’ me, no!
The push that ran from the George-street traps won’t run from a foreign foe.
I’ll stick to the gun while she makes them sick, and I’ll stick to what’s left of Bill.’
And they hiss through their blackened teeth: ‘We’ll stick! by the blazing flame, we will!’
And long years after the war was past, they told in the town and bush
How the ridge of death to the bloody last was held by a Sydney push;
How they fought to the end in a sheet of flame, how they fought with their rifle-stocks,
And earned, in a nobler sense, the name of their ancient weapons—‘rocks.’
. . . . . . . . . .
In the western camps it was ever our boast, when ’twas bad for the kangaroo:
‘If the enemy’s forces take the coast, they must take the mountains, too;
They may force their way by the western line or round by a northern track,
But they won’t run short of a decent spree with the men who are left out back!’
When we burst the enemy’s ironclads and won by a run of luck,
We whooped as loudly as Nelson’s lads when a French three-decker struck;
And when the enemy’s troops prevailed the truth was never heard—
We lied like heroes who never failed explaining how that occurred.

You bushmen sneer in the old bush way at the newchum jackeroo,
But ‘cuffs-’n’-collers’ were out that day, and they stuck to their posts like glue;
I never believed that a dude could fight till a Johnny led us then;
We buried his bits in the rear that night for the honour of George-street men.
And Jim the Ringer—he fought, he did. The regiment nicknamed Jim,
‘Old Heads a Caser’ and ‘Heads a Quid,’ but it never was ‘tails’ with him.
The way that he rode was a racing rhyme, and the way that he finished grand;
He backed the enemy every time, and died in a hand-to-hand!
. . . . . . . . . .
I’ll never forget when the ringer and I were first in the Bush Brigade,
With Warrego Bill, from the Live-till-you-Die, in the last grand charge we made.
And Billy died—he was full of sand—he said, as I raised his head:
‘I’m full of love for my native land, but a lot too full of lead.
Tell ’em,’ said Billy, ‘and tell old dad, to look after the cattle pup;’
But his eyes grew bright, though his voice was sad, and he said, as I held him up:
‘I have been happy on western farms. And once, when I first went wrong,
Around my neck were the trembling arms of the girl I’d loved so long.
Far out on the southern seas I’ve sailed, and ridden where brumbies roam,
And oft, when all on the station failed, I’ve driven the outlaw home.
I’ve spent a cheque in a day and night, and I’ve made a cheque as quick;
I struck a nugget when times were tight, and the stores had stopped our tick.
I’ve led the field on the old bay mare, and I hear the cheering still,
When mother and sister and she were there, and the old man yelled for Bill;
But, save for her, could I live my while again in the old bush way,
I’d give it all for the last half-mile in the race we rode to-day!’
And he passed away as the stars came out—he died as old heroes die—
I heard the sound of the distant rout, and the Southern Cross was high.

THE OLD JIMMY WOODSER

The old Jimmy Woodser comes into the bar,
Unwelcomed, unnoticed, unknown,
Too old and too odd to be drunk with, by far;
And he glides to the end where the lunch baskets are
And they say that he tipples alone.

His frock-coat is green and the nap is no more,
And the style of his hat is at rest.
He wears the peaked collar our grandfathers wore,
The black-ribboned tie that was legal of yore,
And the coat buttoned over his breast.

When first he came in, for a moment I thought
That my vision or wits were astray;
For a picture and page out of Dickens he brought,
’Twas an old file dropped in from the Chancery Court
To a wine-vault just over the way.

But I dreamed as he tasted his bitters to-night,
And the lights in the bar-room grew dim,
That the shades of the friends of that other day’s light,
And of girls that were bright in our grandfathers’ sight,
Lifted shadowy glasses to him.

And I opened the door as the old man passed out,
With his short, shuffling step and bowed head;
And I sighed, for I felt as I turned me about,
An odd sense of respect—born of whisky no doubt—
For the life that was fifty years dead.

And I thought—there are times when our memory trends
Through the future, as ’twere, on its own—
That I, out of date ere my pilgrimage ends,
In a new fashioned bar to dead loves and dead friends
Might drink like the old man alone:
While they whisper, ‘He boozes alone.’

THE CHRIST OF THE ‘NEVER’

With eyes that seem shrunken to pierce
To the awful horizons of land,
Through the haze of hot days, and the fierce
White heat-waves that flow on the sand;
Through the Never Land westward and nor’ward,
Bronzed, bearded and gaunt on the track,
Quiet-voiced and hard-knuckled, rides forward
The Christ of the Outer Out-back.

For the cause that will ne’er be relinquished
Spite of all the great cynics on earth—
In the ranks of the bush undistinguished
By manner or dress—if by birth—
God’s preacher, of churches unheeded—
God’s vineyard, though barren the sod—
Plain spokesman where spokesman is needed—
Rough link ’twixt the bushman and God.

He works where the hearts of all nations
Are withered in flame from the sky,
Where the sinners work out their salvations
In a hell-upon-earth ere they die.
In the camp or the lonely hut lying
In a waste that seems out of God’s sight,
He’s the doctor—the mate of the dying
Through the smothering heat of the night.

By his work in the hells of the shearers,
Where the drinking is ghastly and grim,
Where the roughest and worst of his hearers
Have listened bareheaded to him.
By his paths through the parched desolation
Hot rides and the terrible tramps;
By the hunger, the thirst, the privation
Of his work in the furthermost camps;

By his worth in the light that shall search men
And prove—ay! and justify each—
I place him in front of all churchmen
Who feel not, who know not—but preach!

THE CATTLE-DOG’S DEATH

The plains lay bare on the homeward route,
And the march was heavy on man and brute;
For the Spirit of Drouth was on all the land,
And the white heat danced on the glowing sand.

The best of our cattle-dogs lagged at last,
His strength gave out ere the plains were passed,
And our hearts grew sad when he crept and laid
His languid limbs in the nearest shade.

He saved our lives in the years gone by,
When no one dreamed of the danger nigh,
And the treacherous blacks in the darkness crept
On the silent camp where the drovers slept.

‘The dog is dying,’ a stockman said,
As he knelt and lifted the shaggy head;
‘ ’Tis a long day’s march ere the run be near,
And he’s dying fast; shall we leave him here?’

But the super cried, ‘There’s an answer there!’
As he raised a tuft of the dog’s grey hair;
And, strangely vivid, each man descried
The old spear-mark on the shaggy hide.

We laid a ‘bluey’ and coat across
The camping pack of the lightest horse,
And raised the dog to his deathbed high,
And brought him far ’neath the burning sky.

At the kindly touch of the stockmen rude
His eyes grew human with gratitude;
And though we parched in the heat that fags,
We gave him the last of the water-bags.

The super’s daughter we knew would chide
If we left the dog in the desert wide;
So we brought him far o’er the burning sand
For a parting stroke of her small white hand.

But long ere the station was seen ahead,
His pain was o’er, for the dog was dead;
And the folks all knew by our looks of gloom
’Twas a comrade’s corpse that we carried home.

THE SONG OF THE DARLING RIVER

The only national work of the blacks was a dam or dyke of stones across the Darling River at Brewarrina. The stones they carried from Lord knows where—and the Lord knows how. The people of Bourke kept up navigation for months above the town by a dam of sand-bags. The Darling rises in blazing droughts from the Queensland rains. There are banks and beds of good clay and rock along the river.

The skies are brass and the plains are bare,
Death and ruin are everywhere—
And all that is left of the last year’s flood
Is a sickly stream on the grey-black mud;
The salt-springs bubble and quagmires quiver,
And—this is the dirge of the Darling River:

‘I rise in the drought from the Queensland rain,
I fill my branches again and again;
I hold my billabongs back in vain,
For my life and my peoples the South Seas drain;
And the land grows old and the people never
Will see the worth of the Darling River.

‘I drown dry gullies and lave bare hills,
I turn drought-ruts into rippling rills—
I form fair island and glades all green
Till every bend is a sylvan scene.
I have watered the barren land ten leagues wide!
But in vain I have tried, ah! in vain I have tried
To show the sign of the Great All Giver,
The Word to a people: O! lock your river.

‘I want no blistering barge aground,
But racing steamers the seasons round;
I want fair homes on my lonely ways,
A people’s love and a people’s praise—
And rosy children to dive and swim—
And fair girls’ feet in my rippling brim;
And cool, green forests and gardens ever’—
Oh, this is the hymn of the Darling River.

The sky is brass and the scrub-lands glare,
Death and ruin are everywhere;
Thrown high to bleach, or deep in the mud
The bones lie buried by last year’s flood.
And the Demons dance from the Never Never
To laugh at the rise of the Darling River.

RAIN IN THE MOUNTAINS

The valley’s full of misty cloud,
Its tinted beauty drowning,
The Eucalypti roar aloud,
The mountain fronts are frowning.

The mist is hanging like a pall
From many granite ledges,
And many a little waterfall
Starts o’er the valley’s edges.

The sky is of a leaden grey,
Save where the north is surly,
The driven daylight speeds away,
And night comes o’er us early.

But, love, the rain will pass full soon,
Far sooner than my sorrow,
And in a golden afternoon
The sun may set to-morrow.

A MAY NIGHT ON THE MOUNTAINS

’Tis a wonderful time when these hours begin,
These long ‘small hours’ of night,
When grass is crisp, and the air is thin,
And the stars come close and bright.
The moon hangs caught in a silvery veil,
From clouds of a steely grey,
And the hard, cold blue of the sky grows pale
In the wonderful Milky Way.

There is something wrong with this star of ours,
A mortal plank unsound,
That cannot be charged to the mighty powers
Who guide the stars around.
Though man is higher than bird or beast,
Though wisdom is still his boast,
He surely resembles Nature least,
And the things that vex her most.

Oh, say, some muse of a larger star,
Some muse of the Universe,
If they who people those planets far
Are better than we, or worse?
Are they exempted from deaths and births,
And have they greater powers,
And greater heavens, and greater earths,
And greater Gods than ours?

Are our lies theirs, and our truth their truth,
Are they cursed for pleasure’s sake,
Do they make their hells in their reckless youth
Ere they know what hells they make?
And do they toil through each weary hour
Till the tedious day is o’er,
For food that gives but the fleeting power
To toil and strive for more?

THE NEW CHUM JACKAROO

Let bushmen think as bushmen will,
And say whate’er they choose,
I hate to hear the stupid sneer
At New Chum Jackaroos.

He may not ride as you can ride,
Or do what you can do;
But sometimes you’d seem small beside
The New Chum Jackaroo.

His share of work he never shirks,
And through the blazing drought,
He lives the old things down, and works
His own salvation out.

When older, wiser chums despond
He battles brave of heart—
’Twas he who sailed of old beyond
The margin of the chart.

’Twas he who proved the world was round—
In crazy square canoes;
The lands you’re living in were found
By New Chum Jackaroos.

He crossed the deserts hot and bare,
From barren, hungry shores—
The plains that you would scarcely dare
With all your tanks and bores.

He fought a way through stubborn hills
Towards the setting sun—
Your fathers all and Burke and Wills
Were New Chums, every one.

When England fought with all the world
In those brave days gone by,
And all its strength against her hurled,
He held her honour high.

By Southern palms and Northern pines—
Where’er was life to lose—
She held her own with thin red lines
Of New Chum Jackaroos.

Through shot and shell and solitudes,
Wherever feet have gone,
The New Chums fought while eye-glass dudes
And Johnnies led them on.

And though he wear a foppish coat,
And these old things forget,
In stormy times I’d give a vote
For Cuffs and Collars yet.

THE DONS OF SPAIN

The Eagle screams at the beck of trade, so Spain, as the world goes round,
Must wrestle the right to live or die from the sons of the land she found;
For, as in the days when the buccaneer was abroad on the Spanish Main,
The national honour is one thing dear to the hearts of the Dons of Spain.

She has slaughtered thousands with fire and sword, as the Christian world might know;
We murder millions, but, thank the Lord! we only starve ’em slow.
The times have changed since the days of old, but the same old facts remain—
We fight for Freedom, and God, and Gold, and the Spaniards fight for Spain.

We fought with the strength of the moral right, and they, as their ships went down,
They only fought with the grit to fight and their armour to help ’em drown.
It mattered little what chance or hope, for ever their path was plain,
The Church was the Church, and the Pope the Pope—but the Spaniards fought for Spain.

If Providence struck for the honest thief at times in the battle’s din—
If ever it struck at the hypocrite—well, that’s where the Turks came in;
But this remains ere we leave the wise to argue it through in vain—
There’s something great in the wrong that dies as the Spaniards die for Spain.

The foes of Spain may be kin to us who are English heart and soul,
And proud of our national righteousness and proud of the lands we stole;
But we yet might pause while those brave men die and the death-drink pledge again—
For the sake of the past, if you’re doomed, say I, may your death be a grand one, Spain!

Then here’s to the bravest of Freedom’s foes who ever with death have stood—
For the sake of the courage to die on steel as their fathers died on wood;
And here’s a cheer for the flag unfurled in a hopeless cause again,
For the sake of the days when the Christian world was saved by the Dons of Spain.

THE BURSTING OF THE BOOM

The shipping-office clerks are ‘short,’ the manager is gruff—
‘They cannot make reductions,’ and ‘the fares are low enough.’
They ship us West with cattle, and we go like cattle too;
And fight like dogs three times a day for what we get to chew....
We’ll have the pick of empty bunks and lots of stretching room,
And go for next to nothing at the Bursting of the Boom.

So wait till the Boom bursts!—we’ll all get a show:
Then when the Boom bursts is our time to go.
We’ll meet ’em coming back in shoals, with looks of deepest gloom,
But we’re the sort that battle through at the Bursting of the Boom.

The captain’s easy-going when Fremantle comes in sight;
He can’t say when you’ll get ashore—‘perhaps to-morrow night;’
Your coins are few, the charges high; you must not linger here—
You’ll get your boxes from the hold ‘when she’s ’longside the pier.’ ...
The launch will foul the gangway, and the trembling bulwarks loom
Above a fleet of harbour craft—at the Bursting of the Boom.

So wait till the Boom bursts!—we’ll all get a show;
He’ll ‘take you for a bob, sir,’ and where you want to go.
He’ll ‘take the big portmanteau, sir, if he might so presume’—
You needn’t hump your luggage at the Bursting of the Boom.

It’s loafers—Customs-loafers—and you pay and pay again;
They hinder you and cheat you from the gangway to the train;
The pubs and restaurants are full—they haven’t room for more;
They charge us each three shillings for a shakedown on the floor;
But, ‘Show this gentleman upstairs—the first front parlour room.
We’ll see about your luggage, sir’—at the Bursting of the Boom.

So wait till the Boom bursts!—we’ll all get a show;
And wait till the Boom bursts, and swear mighty low.
‘We mostly charge a pound a week. How do you like the room?’
And ‘Show this gentleman the bath’—at the Bursting of the Boom.

I go down to the timber-yard (I cannot face the rent)
To get some strips of oregon to frame my hessian tent;
To buy some scraps of lumber for a table or a shelf:
The boss comes up and says I might just look round for myself;
The foreman grunts and turns away as silent as the tomb—
The boss himself will wait on me at the Bursting of the Boom.

So wait till the Boom bursts!—we’ll all get a load.
‘You had better take those scraps, sir, they’re only in the road.’
‘Now, where the hell’s the carter?’ you’ll hear the foreman fume;
And, ‘Take that timber round at once!’ at the Bursting of the Boom.

Each one-a-penny grocer, in his box of board and tin,
Will think it condescending to consent to take you in;
And not content with twice as much as what is just and right,
They charge and cheat you doubly, for the Boom is at its height.
It’s ‘Take it now or leave it now;’ ‘your money or your room;’—
But ‘Who’s attending Mr. Brown?’ at the Bursting of the Boom.

So wait till the Boom bursts!—and take what you can get,
‘There’s not the slightest hurry, and your bill ain’t ready yet.’
They’ll call and get your orders until the crack o’ doom,
And send them round directly, at the Bursting of the Boom.
. . . . . . . . . .
No Country and no Brotherhood—such things are dead and cold;
A camp from all the lands or none, all mad for love of gold;
Where T’othersider number one makes slave of number two,
And the vilest women of the world the vilest ways pursue;
And men go out and slave and bake and die in agony
In western hells that God forgot, where never man should be.
I feel a prophet in my heart that speaks the one word ‘Doom!’
And aye you’ll hear the Devil laugh at the Bursting of the Boom.

ANTONY VILLA

A Ballad of Ninety-three

Over there, above the jetty, stands the mansion of the Vardens,
With a tennis ground and terrace, and a flagstaff in the gardens:
They are gentlemen and ladies—they’ve been ‘toffs’ for generations,
But old Varden’s been unlucky—lost a lot in speculations.

Troubles gathered fast upon him when the mining bubble ‘busted,’
Then the bank suspended payment, where his little all he trusted;
And the butcher and the baker sent their bills in when they read it,
Even John, the Chow that served him, has refused to give him ‘cledit.’

And the daughters of the Vardens—they are beautiful as Graces—
But the balcony’s deserted, and they rarely show their faces;
And the swells of their acquaintance never seem to venture near them,
And the bailiff says they seldom have a cup of tea to cheer them.

They were butterflies—I always was a common caterpillar,
But I’m sorry for the ladies over there in ’Tony Villa,
Shut up there in ’Tony Villa with the bailiff and their trouble;
And the dried-up reservoir, where my tears were seems to bubble.

Mrs. Rooney thinks it nothing when she sends a brat to ‘borry’
Just a pinch of tea and sugar till the grocer comes temorry;’
But it’s dif’rent with the Vardens—they would starve to death as soon as
Knuckle down. You know, they weren’t raised exactly like the Rooneys!
. . . . . . . . . .
There is gossip in the ‘boxes’ and the drawing-rooms and gardens—
‘Have you heard of Varden’s failure? Have you heard about the Vardens?’
And no doubt each toney mother on the Point across the water’s
Mighty glad about the downfall of the rivals of her daughters.

(Tho’ the poets and the writers say that man to man’s inhuman,
I’m inclined to think it’s nothing to what woman is to woman,
More especially, the ladies, save perhaps a fellow’s mother;
And I think that men are better—they are kinder to each other.)
. . . . . . . . . .
There’s a youngster by the jetty gathering cinders from the ashes,
He was known as ‘Master Varden’ ere the great financial crashes.
And his manner shows the dif’rence ’twixt the nurs’ry and gutter—
But I’ve seen him at the grocer’s buying half a pound of butter.

And his mother fights her trouble in the house across the water,
She is just as proud as Varden, though she was a ‘cocky’s’ daughter;
And at times I think I see her with the flick’ring firelight o’er her,
Sitting pale and straight and quiet, gazing vacantly before her.

There’s a slight and girlish figure—Varden’s youngest daughter, Nettie—
On the terrace after sunset, when the boat is near the jetty;
She is good and pure and pretty, and her rivals don’t deny it,
Though they say that Nettie Varden takes in sewing on the quiet.

(How her sister graced the ‘circle,’ all unconscious of a lover
In the seedy ‘god’ who watched her from the gallery above her!
Shade of Poverty was on him, and the light of Wealth upon her,
But perhaps he loved her better than the swells attending on her.)
. . . . . . . . . .
There’s a white man’s heart in Varden, spite of all the blue blood in him,
There are working men who wouldn’t stand and hear a word agin’ him;
But his name was never printed by the side of his ‘donations,’
Save on hearts that have—in this world—very humble circulations.

He was never stiff or hoggish—he was affable and jolly,
And he’d always say ‘Good morning’ to the deck hand on the ‘Polly;’
He would ‘barrack’ with the newsboys on the Quay across the ferry,
And he’d very often tip ’em coming home a trifle merry.

But his chin is getting higher, and his features daily harden
(He will not ‘give up possession’—there’s a lot of fight in Varden);
And the way he steps the gangway! oh, you couldn’t but admire it!
Just as proud as ever hero walked the plank aboard a pirate!

He will think about the hardships that his girls were never ‘useter,’
And it must be mighty heavy on the thoroughbred old rooster;
But he’ll never strike his colours, and I tell a lying tale if
Varden’s pride don’t kill him sooner than the bankers or the bailiff.

You remember when we often had to go without our dinners,
In the days when Pride and Hunger fought a finish out within us;
And how Pride would come up groggy—Hunger whooping loud and louder—
And the swells are proud as we are; they are just as proud—and prouder.

Yes, the toffs have grit, in spite of all our sneering and our scorning—
What’s the crowd? What’s that? God help us!— Varden shot himself this morning!...
There’ll be gossip in the ‘circle,’ in the drawing-rooms and gardens;
But I’m sorry for the family; yes—I’m sorry for the Vardens.