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!