VAGRANT VERSE

Southland Times, Issue 19859, 3 May 1926, Page 6

VAGRANT VERSE

THE ORETI ANTHOLOGY. (Written for the Southland Times.) 17.—Andrew Kinross. For forty years they called me “The Bard of My roes Bush.” Yet my life was not all rhyme But had a good deal of reason in it.fr Born Glasgow 1829, Gabriel’s Gully 1862, Then Invercargill and Queenstown, And the Myross Bush farm 1865, Southland Provincial Council 1869 Was a fitting climax, But I was a candidate for Mataura 1878, And Awurua in 1884, unsuccessfully. I was a Liberal and supported Sir Geo. Grey Before the days of Seddon and Ward, And single-tax was my fad. To talk and to write were my hobbies, And Tom Bracken was my friend. Finally 1 retired from the farm Settled down in Bowmont street, Published “My Life and Lays” And waited for fame to crown my years, But in vain—the book fell flat, My autobiography was not taken seriously, I was asked to recite my own verse at gatherings, And give step-dances at socials, At eighty years of age I could walk forty miles in a day. I celebrated the rich fields of Southland When butter was still sixpence a pound* Milk three pence a gallon, oats ten-pence a bushel, And was told that my lines “My own true love is beautiful But better still is kind,” Were peal poetry, as good as Bums. Frank Morton called my book “honest” And referred to me as “a man,” Superior to a generation of rhymstere, But when I died no civic representative Attended my funeral officially, And as for my book—the dream of a life-time, It is thrown from sale to sale—unread. —Southerner. May 3.