VARIOUS VERSE.

Evening Post, Volume LV, Issue 137, 11 June 1898, Page 3 (Supplement)

VARIOUS VERSE.

SOLILOQUY OF A SUNDOWNER ON CANTERBURY PLAINS DURING A NOR'-WESTER. [Fob thr Post.] You are tired, little dog, so am I. Let's rest ; though the tussooks are not very m, high They'll proteot us a hit from this aephyr that's blowing Like a blast from the damned. Whon the sunlight is throwing Our shadows a decent longth over the plain, We'll get up and go on with our journey again. • Just lie you down there till I light my old briar, It's the last jolly smoke I have got. He's a liar That parson who preached np at Brady's With his soft-spoken tongue, and his hands liko a lady's, When ho says that a man is the better and purer Without drinking and smoking, and always the surer Of Heaven. Lot him tramp with his swag on his back Over those plains, where the Devil's own track Is marked with groat craoks in the sun-dried earth Liko the mouth of Hell, where the demons give birth To the soreeching blast that whistles and howls Like the cries of the wretohes confined in the bowels Of Beelzebub's kingdom below. Let him tramp, I say, till his throat is as dry As that creek I loft not an hour gone by, And his head feels ablaze with the burning Him And no shelter but tussocks. I'll wager not one Of his bloomin' texts or his sermons you'd hear If his lips could come nigh a good glass of beer, And for smoking — why — let him tramp day by day. From station to station, alone all the day, Looking for work first at this place, tiien that, And always refused, with a meal of a sprat Thrown in. Then to tramp it again Over miles of tussocks, and dreary plain With only a dog for companion and thought, That curse of the wanderer. (I reckon it ought To be one of the laws of this nature of ours That a man can lock up his mind for hours And do so without thinking. Be one's mind what it may There are thoughts that will come, and ye ■ can't say them nay, From a past that is perhaps full of roses and laughter To the future which points to a hopeless hereafter. 'Tis hopeless to me ; to the parson I 'spose It seems playing on a harp, with two wings and no clothes). Well, just lot him change places with me fotf a while, And.swag it 'cross country, I reokon he'd smile To think he had preached agin' drinking and smoking. 'Specially the smoking. Grannie.