The door of some old stable --
We'd borrowed for a drink --
A page of rhymes and sketches,
And stained with beer and ink;
A dead hand drew the portraits --
And, say, should I be shamed,
To seek it out in Manly
And get the old door framed?
They left the masterpieces
The artist dreamed of long;
They could not take the gardens
From Victor Daley's song;
They left his summer islands
And fairy ships at sea,
They could not take my mountains
And western plains from me.
One bailiff was our brother,
No better and no worse --
And, oh! the yarns he told us
To put in prose and verse,
And sorry we to lose him,
And sorry he to go --
(Oh! skeletons of Pott's Point,
How many things we know)!
The very prince of laughter,
With brains and sympathy;
And with us on the last night
He spent his bailiff's fee.
He banished Durkin's gruffness,
He set my soul afloat,
And drew till day on Daley's
Bright store of anecdote.
He said he'd stick to business --
Though he could well be free --
If but to save poor devils
From harder "bums" than he,
Now artist, bard and bailiff
Have left this vale of sin --
I trust, if they reach Heaven,
They'll take that bailiff in.
The bards that lived in Manly
Have vanished one and one;
But do not think in Manly
Bohemian days are done.
They bled me white in Manly
When rich and tempest-tossed --
I'll leave some bills in Manly
To pay for what I lost.
They'd grab and grind in Manly,
Then slander, sneer, and flout.
The shocked of moral Manly!
They starved my brothers out.
The miserable village,
Set in a scene so fair,
Were honester and cleaner
If some of us were there!
But one went with December --
These last lines seem to-night
Like some song I remember,
And not a song I write.
With vision strangely clearer
My old chums seem to be,
In death and absence, nearer
Than e'er they were to me.
Alone, and still not lonely --
When tears will not be shed --
I wish that I could only
Believe that they were dead.
With hardly curbed emotion,
I can't but think, somehow,
In Manly by the ocean
They're waiting for me now.
First published in For Australia and Other Poems by Henry Lawson, 1913
(The first part of this poem was published last week.)
