Verses popular and humorous

by Henry Lawson

Mac. had noticed that the lodger did a mighty lot of smoking,
And could ‘stow away a long ’un,’ never winking, so he could;
And M‘Carty once, at midnight, came upon the lodger poking
Round about suspicious alleys where the common houses stood.
Yet the constable had seen him in a class above suspicion—
Seen him welcomed with effusion by a dozen ‘toney gents’—
Seen him driving in the buggy of a rising politician
Thro’ the gateway of the member’s toney private residence.

And the constable, off duty, had observed the lodger slipping
Down a lane to where the river opened on the ocean wide,
Where he’d stand for hours gazing at the distant anchor’d shipping,
But he never took his coat off, so it wasn’t suicide.
For the constable had noticed that a man who’s filled with loathing
For his selfish fellow-creatures and the evil things that be,
Will, for some mysterious reason, shed a portion of his clothing,
Ere he takes his first and final plunge into eternity.

And M‘Carty, once at midnight—be it said to his abasement—
Left his beat and climbed a railing of considerable height,
Just to watch the lodger’s shadow on the curtain of his casement
While the little room was lighted in the listening hours of night.
Now, at first the shadow hinted that the substance sat inditing;
Now it indicated toothache, or the headache; and again,
’Twould exaggerate the gestures of a dipsomaniac fighting
Those original conceptions of a whisky-sodden brain.

Then the constable, retreating, scratched his head and muttered ‘Sorra
Wan of me can undershtand it. But Oi’ll keep me Oi on him,
Divil take him and his tantrums; he’s a lunatic, begorra!
Or, if he was up to mischief, he’d be sure to douse the glim.’
But M‘Carty wasn’t easy, for he had a vague suspicion
That a ‘skame’ was being plotted; and he thought the matter down
Till his mind was pretty certain that the business was sedition,
And the man, in league with others, sought to overthrow the Crown.

But, in spite of observation, Mac. received no information
And was forced to stay inactive, being puzzled for a charge.
That the lodger was a madman seemed the only explanation,
Tho’ the house would scarcely harbour such a lunatic at large.
His appearance failed to warrant apprehension as a vagrant,
Tho’ ’twas getting very shabby, as the constable could see;
But M‘Carty in the meantime hoped to catch him in a flagrant
Breach of peace, or the intention to commit a felony.

(For digression there is leisure, and it is the writer’s pleasure
Just to pause a while and ponder on a painful legal fact,
Being forced to say in sorrow, and a line of doubtful measure,
That there’s nothing so elastic as the cruel Vagrant Act)
Now, M‘Carty knew his duty, and was brave as any lion,
But he dreaded being ‘landed’ in an influential bog—
As the chances were he would be if the man he had his eye on
Was a person of importance who was travelling incog.

Want of sleep and over-worry seemed to tell upon M‘Carty:
He was thirsty more than ever, but his appetite resigned;
He was previously reckoned as a jolly chap and hearty,
But the mystery was lying like a mountain on his mind.
Tho’ he tried his best, he couldn’t get a hold upon the lodger,
For the latter’s antecedents weren’t known to the police—
They considered that the ‘devil’ was a dark and artful dodger
Who was scheming under cover for the downfall of the peace.

’Twas a simple explanation, though M‘Carty didn’t know it,
Which with half his penetration he might easily have seen,
For the object of his dangerous suspicions was a poet,
Who was not so widely famous as he thought he should have been.
And the constable grew thinner, till one morning, ‘little dhramin’
Av the sword of revelation that was leapin’ from its sheath,’
He alighted on some verses in the columns of the Frayman,
‘Wid the christian name an’ surname av the lodger onderneath!’

Now, M‘Carty and the poet are as brother is to brother,
Or, at least, as brothers should be; and they very often meet
On the lonely block at midnight, and they wink at one another—
Disappearing down the by-way of a shanty in the street.
And the poet’s name you’re asking?—well, the ground is very tender,
You must wait until the public put the gilt upon the name,
Till a glorious, sorrow-drowning, and, perhaps, a final ‘bender,’
Heralds his triumphant entrance to the thunder-halls of Fame.