Backblock Ballads and Later Verses. Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis
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Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis
Backblock Ballads and Later Verses
Published by Good Press, 2020
EAN 4064066067359
Table of Contents
When the Sun's Behind the Hill
An Old Master
We were cartin' laths and palin's from the slopes of Mount St. Leonard,
With our axles near the road-bed and the mud as stiff as glue;
And our bullocks weren't precisely what you'd call conditioned nicely,
And meself and Messmate Mitchell had our doubts of gettin' through.
It had rained a tidy skyful in the week before we started,
But our tucker-bag depended on the sellin' of our load;
So we punched 'em on by inches, liftin' 'em across the pinches,
Till we struck the final section of the worst part of the road.
We were just congratulatin' one another on the goin',
When we blundered in a pot-hole right within the sight of goal,
Where the bush-track joins the metal. Mitchell, as he saw her settle,
Justified his reputation at the peril of his soul.
We were in a glue-pot, certain—red and stiff and most tenacious;
Over naves and over axles—waggon sittin' on the road.
"'Struth," says I, "they'll never lift her. Take a shot from Hell to shift her.
Nothin' left us but unyoke 'em and sling off the blessed load."
Now, beside our scene of trouble stood a little one-roomed humpy,
Home of an enfeebled party by the name of Dad McGee.
Daddy was, I pause to mention, livin' on an old-age pension
Since he gave up bullock-punchin' at the age of eighty-three.
Startled by our exclamations, Daddy hobbled from the shanty,
Gazin' where the stranded waggon looked like some half-foundered ship.
When the state o' things he spotted, "Looks," he says, "like you was potted,"
And he toddles up to Mitchell. "Here," says he, "gimme that whip."
Well! I've heard of