Works in the Herald 1933
COLAC
A lady plump and pleasing
   And generous and free,
Her life is spent in sleek content
   Beside her inland sea;
And, round its pleasant waters,
   Her pastures, rich and green,
Their treasures yield from  many a field
   To make her way serene.
 
A placid, laughing lady,
   And prone to placid ways;
But yet, withal, she heeds the call
   0f labor all her days --
Of kind, congenial labor,
   That holds nor fret nor stress --
A farmer's wife whose busy life
   Brings full, free happiness.
 
Men say the ocean covered
   These fields in some dim age;
And seas, long fled, vast riches spread
   To be the heritage
Of this plump Aphrodite,
   Now risen from the wave
To thrive apace and wax in grace
   On all the wealth they gave.
 
A happy, hearty lady,
   She turns the gift to good,
And wins in toil from this rich soil
   A fine fat livelihood.
Now, where seas long since thundered,
   Her cars ply up and down
To evidence sound thrift and sense
   In Colac's smiling town.
 
Her land of lakes and pastures
   Could never harbor here,
In this lush place, a dour, hard race
   Wed to an outlook drear.
And so she smiles and prospers,
   A happy, hearty wife,
Whose ample charms, whose thriving farms
   Reveal her zest in life.

"Den"
Herald, 4 December 1933, p6

Copyright © Perry Middlemiss 2002