In a Lady's Album
WHAT can I write in thee, O dainty book,
About whose daintiness faint perfume lingers—
Into whose pages dainty ladies look,
And turn thy dainty leaves with daintier fingers?
Fitter my ruder muse for ruder song,
My scrawling quill to coarser paper matches;
My voice, in laughter raised too loud and long,
Is hoarse and cracked with singing tavern catches.
No melodies have I for ladies’ ear,
No roundelays for jocund lads and lasses—
But only brawlings born of bitter beer,
And chorussed with the clink and clash of glasses!
So, tell thy mistress, pretty friend, for me,
I cannot do her hest, for all her frowning,
While dust and ink are but polluting thee,
And vile tobacco-smoke thy leaves embrowning.
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poem by Marcus Clarke
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An Australian Paean—1876
The English air is fresh and fair,
The Irish fields are green;
The bright light gleams o’er Scotland’s streams,
And glows her hills between.
The hawthorn is in blossom,
And birds from every bough
Make musical the dewy spring
In April England now.
Our April bears no blossoms,
No promises of spring;
Her gifts are rain and storm and stain,
And surges lash and swing.
No budded wreath doth she bequeath,
Her tempests toss the trees;
No balmy gales—but shivered sails,
And desolated seas.
Yet still we love our April,
For it aids us to bequeath
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poem by Marcus Clarke
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The Wail of the Waiter
All day long, at Scott's or Menzies', I await the gorging crowd,
Panting, penned within a pantry, with the blowflies humming loud,
There at seven in the morning do I count my daily cash,
While the home-returning reveller calls for 'soda and a dash'.
And the weary hansom-cabbies set the blinking sqautters down,
Who, all night, in savage freedom, have been 'knocking round the town'.
Soon the breakfast gong resounding bids the festive meal begin,
And, with appetites like demons, come the gentle public in.
'Toast and butter!' 'Eggs and coffee!' 'Waiter, mutton cops for four!'
'Flatheads!' 'Ham!' 'Beef!' 'Where's the mustard?' 'Steak and onions!' 'Shut the door!'
Here sits bandicoot, the broker, eating in a desparate hurry,
Scowling at his left-hand neighbour, Cornstalk from the Upper Murray,
Who with brandy-nose enpurpled, and with blue lips cracked and dry,
In incipient delirium shoves the eggspoon in his eye.
'Bloater paste!' 'Some tender steak, sir?' 'Here, confound you, where's my chop?'
'Waiter!' 'Yessir!' 'Waiter!' 'Yessir!!' - running till I'm fit to drop.
Then at lunch time - fearful crisis! In by shoals the gorgers pour,
Gobbling, crunching, swilling, munching - ten times hungrier than before.
'Glass of porter!' 'Ale for me, John!' 'Where's my stick?' 'And where's my hat!'
'Oxtal soup!' 'I asked for curry!' 'Cold boiled beef, and cut it fat!'
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poem by Marcus Clarke
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The Song of Tigilau
The song of Tigilau the brave,
Sina's wild lover,
Who across the heaving wave
From Samoa came over:
Came over, Sina, at the setting moon!
The moon shines round and bright;
She, with her dark-eyed maidens at her side,
Watches the rising tide.
While balmy breathes the starry southern night,
While languid heaves the lazy southern tide;
The rising tide, O Sina, and the setting moon!
The night is past, is past and gone,
The moon sinks to the West,
The sea-heart beats opprest,
And Sina's passionate breast
Heaves like the sea, when the pale moon has gone,
Heaves like the passionate sea, Sina, left by the moon alone!
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poem by Marcus Clarke
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