Chapter I: Promised Sue

The night is waning—Good-night! Good-night!
—I promised Sue to be home by nine:
A sacred promise, though amber wine
Sparkles and laughs in the crystal bright,
But the hours fly by with an eerie flight
When friends grow mellow and glasses clink,
And I’ll venture not to the tempting brink
When the night is waning—Good-night! Good-night!

No, _not_ another—the hop and vine
May wilt and wither like western grass;
Oh, well, if I must—in a final glass
I will drink a toast to a girl divine,
I will drink a toast to this wife of mine,
A queen, enthroned in the hearts of men!
Eh! What’s that striking? It can’t be ten,
For I promised Sue to be home by nine.

Pshaw! Sue is tucked in the sheets, I guess,
And Towzer guards at my outer gate
With a sleepless eye and a fang-girt pate,
Cruel and callous and pitiless.
Then, what of a night the more or less?
Come, fill up the glasses from heel to brim!
Till daylight nears and the stars grow dim,
And the new day yawns from its drowsiness.

For lives are merry while hearts are true,
Though the sun may wink through the window pane
And she’ll say “Algernon! drunk again!”
With a limpid tear in her eyes of blue,
But I’ll stroke her hair of a flaxen hue,
And I’ll kiss her lips of a rosebud red
And, harness and all, I will flop to bed
And dream of the promise I made to Sue!

CHURNING “COPY” FOR THE PRESS.

Men are rushing through the level, or are delving in the shaft,
Or a-belting like the devil at a moil—
With a bitter curse for Adam, as the pioneer of graft
And the bloke who took a patent out for toil.
But they ought to mark a ticket at a game of pak-a-pu,
Or assume the thankful mien of holiness,
Since the Managing Director found them other work to do
Than that of churning “copy” for the press!

For the misbegotten smudger wends along his inky way,
Haply dodging past the commonplace and trite
As he follows on the faintest scent of ‘incident’ by day,
And he notes it on his washing bill by night;
But what time the Sunday Sun comes out from press, all piping hot,
He is tempted sore to sky the blanky wipe,
When he hears the dullest dunces in the town cry, “Tommyrot!”
And the johnny push abolish it as “Tripe!”

For at times the breath of Life grows cold, the outlook brown and flat,
And without one touch of colour there at all;
And there’s nothing but a vacancy beneath a rhymer’s hat,
And the pictures all are “turned towards the wall.”
Then he reaches for a bottle of Glen Shicker on the shelf,
As a cobber who may share the strain and stress
With a very seedy poet, who pours piffle out for pelf,
In the columns of the western Sunday Press.

And when those two collaborate, a change comes o’er the scene,
(It happens so when kindred spirits meet)
For here and there, a patch of red! and here and there, of green!
And a chirpy crowd goes laughing down the street!
The genial face of Friendship ’gainst the window-pane is pressed,
And an optimist keeps boredom well at bay,
Whilst a maiden comes a-tripping, with a rosebud at her breast,
Adown his mental corridors of grey.

Then the murky fluid splashes, and his flagging pulses swell,
Till a neighbour’s rooster greets the morning star,
And a sound comes floating westward, like the echo of a bell,
Calling men to where the loaves and fishes are.
For crude, unbroken fancies get the bit between their teeth,
While the earth puts on a very different guise,
And even Sorrow’s self assumes a far less sombre wreath
When the poet and the snifter fraternise.

They are rushing through the levels, and are drumming in the stopes,
And a-cursing at the ‘presser’ and the hose;
But they never took to dancing where the Printer pulls the ropes
And the Editor blue-pencils half their prose,
And the proofman designates their airy, fairy verse as ‘slim,’
And the staff guard by the door with broken bricks,
As they tremulously venture to suggest a modest ‘jim’
For a ‘liquid’ poem, costing eight-and-six!

STAR GAZING.

I camped last night in a desert grey
’Neath the eyes of a million stars,
For they all had come in their vestments gay,
Like a laughing host in the wake of day,
To the shrine of the midnight bars.

And satyrs slid on the glinting spars
Of light, through the halls of space,
And Venus served from the vintage jars,
And a blossom shone on the nose of Mars
And a smile on the old Moon’s face.

My castle’s roof was the spangled sky
And its carpet of sea-green moss;
And its walls were curtained with tapestry, ...
And the face of her I had kissed Good-bye
Was enshrined in the Southern Cross.

As I gazed, the stars kept clustering,
And closer and closer crept,
Until I and they, we were all a-swing,
When an owl flew down on a drowsy wing
And we blew out the light ... and slept.

[Decoration: Mining equipment]

RHYMES AND RHYMERS.

Do you know, if a chap could write and write,
As editors pay and pay,
There’d be whips of sport
For the “shingle short”
On the rhymer’s inky way—
If the theme be bright and the hand as light
As the touch of a skeeter’s wing,
There is good red gold
In the Press-ship’s hold
For the songs that the rhymers sing.

There are stacks of room in the ranks of rhyme
For the persifleurs to fill—
There are plums and perks
For the bloke who works
With a tireless, lilting quill—
There are “values,” set in the measured line,
And “jim” in the tuneful scrawl,
Where the ore falls thick
To the light pen-prick,
And the sky is a hanging-wall.

There are no high backs in the rhymer’s stope,
No depths in the rhyming vein—
Not a drop of sweat
In the deft coup-let,
Or ache in a whole quatrain;
And editor-men, with their bags of gold,
Come out from their inky lairs,
And they doff their caps
To the rhymer-chaps,
As they bid for the rhymer’s wares.

So we sit aloft in our cushioned chairs
And scrawl for the world below,
And we smile aloud
At the toiling crowd,
As the toilers come and go—
For they say, of all at the desk or mine
Who drudge for a daily wage,
There are scores of men
With a rhymer’s pen
Who could blazon the world’s wide page!

And we glean from the supercilious bard—
The tilt of a scornful nose—
That the joyous call
Of a madrigal,
The voice of a wild red rose,
Awake in his room when the lamp burns low,
And the buzz-flies sink to rest;
And his throbbing brain,
With a mad refrain,
Sings the Soul-Song of the West.

But we of the “Times” and the “Sunday Sin”
Are the recreants of rhyme,
For our hearts won’t thud
And our souls won’t bud
Till the Oof-bird calls the time.
And we write—just so—for the clink of coin
And the incense of a quid,
And the deathless name
On the scroll of fame,
My brothers! awaits your bid.

[Decoration: Black swan]

A SONG OF COMPROMISE.

If you cannot be the needle, be the thread;
If you cannot ride a motor, be a ped.;
If you cannot cut the figure
Of a bloke chockful of vigour,
Please be dead—
’Tis the softest snap of any to be dead.

If you cannot be a hero, be a skunk;
If you cannot be the barman, be the drunk;
If you cannot scale Parnassus
Flop right down among the asses,
Friend! kerplunk—
Like a flapjack on a platter, lob kerplunk.

If you cannot be the ocean, be a drop;
If you cannot be the sergeant, be a cop;
It is not the act of falling
That is said to be appalling,
But the stop—
There’s a prejudice, somehow, against the stop.

If you cannot win the heiress, take the cook;
If a failure as a burglar, be a “hook”;
’Tis the worst of all life’s phases,
If you’re on the road to blazes,
To go crook—
And the world just guys you worse for going crook.

If you can’t get gin and bitters, stick to rum;
If you cannot be a spendthrift, be a hum;
If your credit grows so slender
That you can’t dig up a bender,
Take a thrum—
There’s a dim religious light about the thrum.

If you cannot be the candle, be the moth;
If you cannot be the weaver, be the cloth;
If Life’s waitresses say “Dicken!”
When you reach out for the chicken,
Cop the broth—
There’s a deal of consolation in the broth.

Doesn’t matter if you’re single or you’re wed,
Still the rose-leaves always crumble in your bed;
But the sea ahead is placid,
Just a dose of prussic acid,
And you’re dead—
Those alternatives won’t matter when you’re dead.

A SHATTERED ILLUSION.

No heart-whole songs of the Golden West
Come ever at night to me,
Who suckled not at her broad, brown breast
Nor played at her giant knee,
Nor laughed or cried
By her ingle-side,
As a kid in his ain countree.

I find no warmth in the gleam of gold,
No soul in the West’s expanse;
And actors, cast in a heavy mould,
All people the day’s romance;
And pipe I still
With a right good will,
Yet the fays of the stage won’t dance!

I know full well that the fault is mine—
That the skies are just as blue,
That life is fair, and the lights that shine
In your sweetheart’s eyes are true;
And twilights gray
And the break of day
Have a message to tell to you.

But I hear it not, or only hear
As a dull and prosy theme—
Then drift away to a day somewhere
In the wake of Fancy’s team,
That travels straight
For an old swing gate,
By the side of an oak-girt stream.

’Twas not the lure of a gate that led,
Nor yet of an oak-fringed creek,
But the memory of a gold-thatched head
And a tear-besprinkled cheek—
A stifled sigh,
And a last good-bye
In the language that love can speak!

I pictured Kate at the cottage door,
Like a home-bird by her nest,
With the self-same summer dress she wore
On the day I moved out West—
The self-same shoes
And the same heart-bruise
And the same pink rose at her breast.

I urged my team with a supple wrist,
And they scampered over the grass ...
With Katie Clare I must keep the tryst
Of a lover with a lass ...
Oh, I minded well
Of her eyes’ soft spell;
But forgot how the years may pass!

I drew a rein ... ’Neath the trysting tree
Were a matron and her brood;
And I said, “My sweetheart waits for me
In this half-enchanted wood:
And the fairest fair
Is my Katie Clare,
Of the whole world’s sisterhood!”

Then the matron stared with a puzzled stare
That changed to a gloomy frown
(I marked her looks were the worse for wear,
And her heels were somewhat down),
And she snapped, “Ah! Kate?
She went out of date
When I married old Pigweed Brown.”

Then I thanked my stars, and left the team,
As I gripped the paw of Fate
And air-planed over the oak-girt stream,
And over the old swing gate—
And cried not crack
Till I landed back
In this hub of the Western State.

NO MORE VERSES IN PRAISE OF WINE!

No more verses in praise of Wine!
No more gauds for the gods of Woe!
Better by far to sit supine
Watching the current of strong life flow,
Crouched by a hearth where the false fires glow;
Conning the comedy, line by line—
No more gauds for the gods of Woe!
No more verses in praise of Wine!

Shirking the fight that a man should fight,
Dodging the joys that a man should know,
Scorning the breath of a plumed thought’s flight,
Down with the swine and the husks below—
’Tis thus we reap from the seed we sow!
Hearts grow withered and locks grow white,
Dodging the joys that a man should know,
Shirking the fight that a man should fight.

No more verses in praise of Wine!
Where are the glorious days we knew
Touched with the rays of a light divine,
Decked with a garland of thyme and rue?
Where is their glamour for yours and you?
Where is their laughter for me and mine?
Where are the glorious days we knew
Ere knees were bent to the gods of Wine?

See our boat, with a broken mast,
Cleaving a sea that is rough and grey!
Cargoes come to the port at last:
Ashes and Dead Sea fruit are they.
The climax this of a soul-less play—
We were the stars of a soul-less cast—
Over a sea that is rough and grey
Drifts our boat, with a broken mast.

No more verses in praise of Wine!
Yet, through a tangle of years and strife,
Constant still do her true eyes shine—
Mother, or sweetheart, or child, or wife.
Is there a haven where Hope is rife,
Holding a remnant of life’s design?
Is there a light on the shores of life,
Pointing a course from the sea of Wine?

OUR LIMITATIONS.

We singers standing on the outer rim,
Who touch the fringe of poesy at times
With half-formed thoughts, rough-set in halting rhymes,
Through which no airy flights of fancy skim—
We write just so, an hour to while away,
And turn the well-thumbed stock still o’er and o’er,
As men have done a thousand times before,
And will again, just as we do to-day.

We have no fire to set men’s brains aglow;
We have no tune to set the world a-swing;
There is no throb within the songs we sing
To flush the heart where passions ebb and flow.
We have no master’s hand to strike the keys;
We lay no claim at all to bardic bays,
But write (for coin) our topic-tinctured lays
And come, and go, like any evening breeze.

But I, for one, would never weep the lack
Of monumental works, and noble themes,
But rest content by slopes where Demos dreams
And leave Parnassus’ heights upon my back,
If I could write (as any man should write)
About the world within my garden wall,
And never dream inspired dreams at all
To live still on when I had sought the night.

If I could take that rosebud from its stem
And weave its petals in a simple rhyme,
So you could hear the bells of springtime chime,
And you could see the flower-soul in them—
Or else, we’ll say, a magpie on a limb,
Greeting the sunrise with its matin song—
To catch the music as it floats along,
And link its spirit to a bush-child’s hymn.

Or if—but, then, the limitations rise
Like barriers across the mental plain,
And mists and things obscure the rhymer’s brain
And dull his ears, and cloud his blinking eyes.
And so we write as Nature sets her gauge—
No worse than most, and better, p’raps, than some,
But should a man remain for ever dumb
When _only_ rhythm fills his aimless page?

YOUR LEVEL BEST.

When you stand within Life’s limelight to declaim your little piece—
Let your hearers chip and chivvy as they may—
And you go on nigh despairing, ’neath your mummer-paint and grease,
As you massacre the part you have to play:
_You may come before the curtain
And erect your ragged crest,
If you’re absolutely certain
That you’ve done your level best!_

If you’re put away like lumber, on the very topmost shelf,
And the phalanx of Success’s pets condemn,
Just remember most approval worth a cent comes from yourself,
And heave brick for brick, “Old Failure!” back at them:
_For no matter how they mutter,
You are worthy as the rest,
When you’re lying in the gutter,
If the gutter is your best!_

Mark the “pity for a failure!” as the motor-hog whisks by,
And the derelict steps quickly from his path:
See the supercilious patronage that lights the preacher’s eye!
As he maunders of a glowing aftermath,
_Where no scallywag or sinner
May be counted as a guest
When the trumpet sounds for dinner—
Though he did his level best!_

Never mind, old Rags and Tatters! when you reach the “golden stairs,”
You may meet a Godlike cobber, who will say,
“Though you’ve hobnobbed with the Devil, and forgot your vesper prayers,
You were only as I fashioned forth your clay—
_Whether scoffer who denied Me,
Or a saint who beat his breast,
Only he may stand beside me
Who has done his level best!”_

FINIS

* * * * *

Morton’s Limited, Printers, 75 Ultimo Road, Sydney.

Transcriber’s Note

Inconsistent hyphenation (cocky patch/cocky-patch, fantods/fan-tod, flower-soul/flower soul, Glory rose/glory-rose, hobby-horse/hobby horse, inmost soul/inmost-soul, maiden hair/maidenhair, outback/out-back, rose-leaves/rose leaves/roseleaf, springtime/spring-time, taproom/tap-room, tempest tossed/tempest-tossed, window pane/window-pane) and non-standard spelling (smoothes, cris-crossed) retained.