I came down here from the ’Back, last year,
For a spell and a high-toned drunk,
But I back and fill with a palsied will
As I lounge on a kapok bunk.
I laze and laze where a man’s life pays
For a kiss and a pint of squirt,
Like a weak-kneed slop in a draper’s shop—
’Neath the curse of a laundried shirt!
I tire to death of the town’s close breath—
Of the pave, and the lighted street:
Its silken tiles, and its threadbare smiles—
Of the patter of kid-shod feet;
And thoughts tramp back where I lost the track
Of a “leader” of five-ounce dirt,
Before I knelt with a “Scheme”-cleansed pelt
At the shrine of a laundried shirt!
I came down here for a spell, last year,
And a brush with the town-bred folk—
For a bit of a change from my “moated grange”
(A camp by an outback soak):
But drift I still with a flagging will
And a spirit that grows inert—
A sagging jaw and a bleaching paw—
’Neath the curse of a laundried shirt!
I’ve lit my camp with the moon’s soft lamp
And the light of the outback stars,
And drunk my fill of the Out-Back swill,
As I breasted the shanty bars:
I’ve made my bit, and have squandered it
In an island of dreams, rum-girt—
To fall at last with my flag half-mast,
’Neath the curse of a laundried shirt!
The stampers roar to the tune no more
Of “Aboard for the Sydney-side!”
The merry hum of the windlass drum
’S like the song of the swan—that died:
My mulga maid, in whose eyes hope played—
With jewels adown her skirt,
She’s sailed a trip on some desert ship
From the chap in a laundried shirt!