Sweet
Nangwarry’s desolate, Coonamble wails,
And
Tungkillo Kuito in sables is drest,
For
the Whangerei winds fall asleep in the sails
And
the Booleroo life-breeze is dead in the west.
Mypongo,
Kapunda, O slumber no more
Yankalilla,
Parawirra, be warned
There’s
death in the air!
Killanoola,
wherefore
Shall
the prayer of Penola be scorned?
Cootamundra,
and Takee, and Wakatipu,
Toowoomba,
Kaikoura are lost
From
Onkaparinga to far Oamaru
All
burn in this hell’s holocaust!
Paramatta
and Binnum are gone to their rest
In
the vale of Tapanni Taroom,
Kawakawa,
Deniliquin—all that was best
In
the earth are but graves and a tomb!
Narrandera
mourns, Cameron answers not
When
the roll of the scathless we cry
Tongariro,
Goondiwindi, Woolundunga, the spot
Is
mute and forlorn where ye lie.
Those are good words for poetry. Among the best
I have ever seen. There are 81 in the list.
I did not need them all, but I have knocked down
66 of them; which is a good bag, it seems to me, for
a person not in the business. Perhaps a poet
laureate could do better, but a poet laureate gets
wages, and that is different. When I write poetry
I do not get any wages; often I lose money by it.
The best word in that list, and the most musical
and gurgly, is Woolloomoolloo. It is a place
near Sydney, and is a favorite pleasure-resort.
It has eight O’s in it.
To succeed in the other trades, capacity must be shown;
in the law, concealment of it will do.
—Pudd’nhead
Wilson’s New Calendar.
Monday,—December 23, 1895. Sailed
from Sydney for Ceylon in the P. & O. steamer ‘Oceana’.
A Lascar crew mans this ship—the first
I have seen. White cotton petticoat and pants;
barefoot; red shawl for belt; straw cap, brimless,
on head, with red scarf wound around it; complexion
a rich dark brown; short straight black hair; whiskers
fine and silky; lustrous and intensely black.
Mild, good faces; willing and obedient people; capable,
too; but are said to go into hopeless panics when there
is danger. They are from Bombay and the coast
thereabouts. Left some of the trunks in Sydney,
to be shipped to South Africa by a vessel advertised
to sail three months hence. The proverb says:
“Separate not yourself from your baggage.”
