Page:A New Zealand verse (1906).pdf/112
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76
While the Billy Boils.
I mind the time when the snow was drifting and Billy
and me was out for the night—
We lay in the lee of a rock, and waited, hungry and cold,
for the morning light.
Then he went one way and I the other—we’d been like
brothers for half a year;
He said: “I’ll see you again in town, mate, and we’ll
blow the froth off a pint of beer.”
and me was out for the night—
We lay in the lee of a rock, and waited, hungry and cold,
for the morning light.
Then he went one way and I the other—we’d been like
brothers for half a year;
He said: “I’ll see you again in town, mate, and we’ll
blow the froth off a pint of beer.”
He went to a job on the plain he knowed of and I went
poisoning out at the back,
And I missed him somehow—for all my looking I never
could knock across his track.
The same with Harry, the bloke I worked with the time
I was over upon the coast,
He went for a fly-round over to Sydney, to stay for a
fortnight—a month at most!
poisoning out at the back,
And I missed him somehow—for all my looking I never
could knock across his track.
The same with Harry, the bloke I worked with the time
I was over upon the coast,
He went for a fly-round over to Sydney, to stay for a
fortnight—a month at most!
He never came back, and he never wrote me—I wonder
how blokes like him forget;
We had been where no one had been before us, we had
starved for days in the cold and wet;
We had sunk a hundred holes that was duffers, till at last
we came on a fairish patch,
And we worked in rags in the dead of winter while the
ice bars hung from the frozen thatch.
how blokes like him forget;
We had been where no one had been before us, we had
starved for days in the cold and wet;
We had sunk a hundred holes that was duffers, till at last
we came on a fairish patch,
And we worked in rags in the dead of winter while the
ice bars hung from the frozen thatch.
Yes, them was two, and I can’t help mind them—good
mates as ever a joker had;
But there’s plenty more as I’d like to be with, for half of
the blokes on the road is bad.
It sets me a-thinking the world seems wider, for all we
fancy it’s middling small,
When a chap like me makes friends in plenty and they
slip away and he loses them all.
mates as ever a joker had;
But there’s plenty more as I’d like to be with, for half of
the blokes on the road is bad.
It sets me a-thinking the world seems wider, for all we
fancy it’s middling small,
When a chap like me makes friends in plenty and they
slip away and he loses them all.