 | The Poetical Works of Walter C. Smith |  |
Then I: What ails you, Martin? What is wrong?
Have we done aught to vex you, that you sit
Dumb as a moulting raven? My home-bred girls,
Untravelled, when they heard that you were coming,
Donned their best muslins, and their gayest ribbons,
Meaning to show their best, and talk their best,
And listen at their best. For they were all
Eager to hear of pouchèd kangaroos,
And duck-billed quadrupeds, and great emus
Piling their eggs amid the sandy scrub,
Black fellows, and the pig-tailed Chinamen,
Bush-rangers, and the cradling and the crushing,
And nugget-finding in the deep-delved loam,
And other strange adventures of your life,
As they romanced it; for the less they know,
The more their fancy bubbles up and glitters.
Yet there you sat, and stammered curt replies
As frightened at their feather-heads. They'll vow
That my old friends are stupid as myself:
And oh, if they had seen what you had seen!
If girls might only do what men may do,
They would have tongues to tell it.
Have we done aught to vex you, that you sit
Dumb as a moulting raven? My home-bred girls,
Untravelled, when they heard that you were coming,
Donned their best muslins, and their gayest ribbons,
Meaning to show their best, and talk their best,
And listen at their best. For they were all
Eager to hear of pouchèd kangaroos,
And duck-billed quadrupeds, and great emus
Piling their eggs amid the sandy scrub,
Black fellows, and the pig-tailed Chinamen,
Bush-rangers, and the cradling and the crushing,
And nugget-finding in the deep-delved loam,
And other strange adventures of your life,
As they romanced it; for the less they know,
The more their fancy bubbles up and glitters.
Yet there you sat, and stammered curt replies
As frightened at their feather-heads. They'll vow
That my old friends are stupid as myself:
And oh, if they had seen what you had seen!
If girls might only do what men may do,
They would have tongues to tell it.
| The Poetical Works of Walter C. Smith | |