A Street Ballad (1870)
The pen and ink bring,
Alexandra I'll sing.
Alexandra, the pearl of all places.
Attention then, pray,
For I'm going to day
To trot out, and mount my pegasus.
I walk up and down
In this wonderful town,
The street I keep always admiring,
And so does friend Pat ;
You just ask him that,
If proof you'd be after requiring.
In the street then, I say,
View the beautiful clay
That's mov'd from one place to the other
"And what's that for ?"
Shut up, you blind cur,
Or proceed to inquire of your mother,
For blind you must be
Indeed, not to see
The grandest thing in the creation !
When comes the next flood
We'll have oceans of mud
And rivers of high indignation.
Oh I what a fine go,
When such rivers flow,
To the imminent danger of drowning.
And if there's a row,
The stupid one's vow
They'll blame the affair upon D----g.
The Man with a Nose
(Which no doubt he blows)
Will give us "the rights" of the matter.
Oh, that would be good ;
I wish that he would,
For Pat is as mad as a hatter.
In the meantime we can
Devise some good plan
To mitigate coming disasters,
For if we do not,
We certainly ought
To be-- what you please, my good masters.
I'll order in town,
Next time I go down,
A pair of stout stilts for the season.
I'm thinking that you
Ought to order them too.
There's rhyme--you'll have presently "reason."
To our Councillors praise
For mending our ways,
For they and they only have done it.
Oh ! they are the boys
That nothing annoys
So long as the Shire funds will "run it."
Three cheers for them then,
Our brave Council men,
Ambitious for honor and glory.
Oh I may they live long
In the annals of song,
As they'll live in the " annals of story."
MAB.
Notes
From the Victorian newspaper the Alexandra Times Friday 18 March 1870 p. 3.