A Smuggler’s Song
By Rudyard Kipling
If you wake at midnight, and hear a horse’s feet,
Don’t go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street,
Them that ask no questions isn’t told a lie.
Watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!
Five and twenty ponies,
Trotting through the dark –
Brandy for the Parson,
‘Baccy for the Clerk.
Laces for a lady; letters for a spy,
And watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!
Running round the woodlump if you chance to find
Little barrels, roped and tarred, all full of brandy-wine,
Don’t you shout to come and look, nor use ’em for your play.
Put the brishwood back again – and they’ll be gone next day!
If you see the stable-door setting open wide;
If you see a tired horse lying down inside;
If your mother mends a coat cut about and tore;
If the lining’s wet and warm – don’t you ask no more!
If you meet King George’s men, dressed in blue and red,
You be careful what you say, and mindful what is said.
If they call you “pretty maid,” and chuck you ‘neath the chin,
Don’t you tell where no one is, nor yet where no one’s been!
Knocks and footsteps round the house – whistles after dark –
You’ve no call for running out till the house-dogs bark.
Trusty’s here, and Pincher’s here, and see how dumb they lie –
They don’t fret to follow when the Gentlemen go by!
If you do as you’ve been told, ‘likely there’s a chance,
You’ll be give a dainty doll, all the way from France,
With a cap of Valenciennes, and a velvet hood –
A present from the Gentlemen, along ‘o being good!
Five and twenty ponies
Trotting through the dark –
Brandy for the Parson,
‘Baccy for the Clerk.
Them that asks no questions isn’t told a lie –
Watch the wall, my darling, while the Gentlemen go by!
Weary Will the Wombat
By Banjo Paterson
The strongest creature for his size
But least equipped for combat
That dwells beneath Australian skies
Is Weary Will the Wombat.
He digs his homestead underground,
He’s neither shrewd nor clever;
For kangaroos can leap and bound
But wombats dig forever.
The boundary rider’s netting fence
Excites his irritation;
It is to his untutored sense
His pet abomination.
And when to pass it he desires,
Upon his task he’ll centre
And dig a hole beneath the wires
Through which the dingoes enter.
And when to block the hole they strain
With logs and stones and rubble,
Bill Wombat digs it out again
Without the slightest trouble.
The boundary rider bows to fate,
Admits he’s made a blunder
And rigs a little swinging gate
To let Bill Wombat under.
So most contentedly he goes
Between his haunt and burrow:
He does the only thing he knows,
And does it very thorough.
Omar Khayyam
Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and saint and heard great argument
About it and about, but evermore
Came out by that same door as in I went
W.J. Couthope
By all the Dodos! These are thoughts of weight,
Most venerable, wise, and out of date
