Unpublished Poem II

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WHENEVER you meet with a man from home
Who laughs at the falls and the fences here,
Who tells you of crackers through clay or loam,
And of gallops with Goodman and Olliver,
You may bet your life such a man won't ride
Here it can hardly be worth his while ;
Under a bushel his light he’ll hide,
And we are not worthy to watch his style !

There 's What-do-you-call-him, Old England he
Who worried us with ‘Colonial Bounce,’
Having seen such wonders across the sea,
He might surely show us the way for once.
What a treat to see him in tights and boots,
Careering over a big blue gum '
In the pigskin only we breed such brutes ;
I can hardly hope such a treat will come.

An historian, ‘Bernal Diaz,' who names
One on a white horse seen with his eyes,
Says,
' It might have been the blessed Saint
James,
Whom I was not worthy to recognise'
And I once saw one whom nobody knew,
On a white horse, wearing a horrible hat ;
So, I may have seen Old England too,
And, like Bernal, been no better for that.

© Adam Lindsay Gordon