While The Billy BoilsSearch(The Boxing Stadium was crowded on Christmas Day)
Nigh twenty centuries agoA star arose o’er Bethlehem;The East with gloried gold aglow,A diamond in a diadem.The wise men came the Babe to view,With golden offerings rich and rare,Three kings His pathway to bestrew,With perfume sweet arid flowers fair.But here to-day Australia keepsFor Christ the chronic sneer and shrug,And gold and greetings piles in heapsUpon th’ unpretty pug.
Nigh twenty centuries agoThey gathered where He raised His voice,He preached to mighty, meek and lowAnd bade the ailing poor rejoice.Within the temple and the mart,He taught His democratic creed,He soothed the widow’s aching heart,He gave the thirsty milk and mead.Upon His birthday now they throngWhere raucous hoodlums howl and hoot,And listen while a brazen gongBeats o’er a bleeding brute!
Dead Lazarus He raised anewTo walk again the sunlit earth,The children to His side He drew,He chid the men of gold and girth.Poor Magdalene He stooped to save,And at a word her hunters fled,He stilled the storm upon the wave,He fed the multitude with bread.In mans own image here He came,Yet here while bells His message call,That image we assault and maim,Where man-gorillas brawl!
“Peace, peace on earth,” the bells ring out,To all men greetings good and glad;What time we hear the blinding cloutThat makes the seconds mad or sad.While deep cathedral organs peal,In praise of Him they nailed on high,We see a battered human reel,With nose askew and closing eye,And while God’s glorious anthems swell,The earth reels underneath the row;The backers of the victor yell“Why don’t yer corpse the cow?”
Carry the carrion from the ring,Wash up the bloodstains from the floor.Relate the savage swat and swing,The fractured rib, the splintered jaw.The winner crown with bloody bays,While in a ward severe and whiteThe loser in a mental haze,Repeats his down-and-outed fight.The resting barmaid coyly bitesThe winner’s cauliflower ear,His foe in long, delirious nights,Drinks blood instead of beer.