While The Billy BoilsSearchI’m writing this rhyme on an East-bound ship(The pilot will bear it back);I’m taking a once-in-seven years’ trip,And in seven days’ time the Queenscliff RipWill punch this passenger smack.For a month, maybe, my pen will pauseAnd my muse neglected dose,But the average bloke and his average ribWill say as they miss my nom-de-nib —“Shicker, I s’pose!”
Your average bloke is a knowing cove;He knows what the poets are;He “wunce knoo a bard on the ‘Bullerteen’”Who over in Noo South used to leanOn his old man’s shanty bar.And he’d always say, when a week went by,And this Byron didn’t compose,When there wasn’t a line from his pal McSpreeHe’d say, as he opened his empty “B,”“Shicker, I s’pose!”
The household butcher can go on the jag,And nobody misses his meat.If you’re short of sausages, steak or chops,There are plenty of excellent rival shopsFarther along the street.But the man who on Sunday reels his rhymes,Voicing your weals and woes,As the vacant space on the page they eyeHears in their smug, Sabbatical sigh,“Shicker, I s’pose!”
You can’t have the measles, you can’t have the mumps,You can’t get maimed in a mine;You can’t pay a tenner to Dr. BungTo feel your pulse and test your tongue,Without there’s a wowser whine.If into your room for a workless weekA trained nurse comes and goes,The same cocksure, suburban sageSighs, as he peeps at your verseless page —“Shicker, I s’pose!”
The publican sells his beers and wines,Whiskies, gins, and rums,And now and again he takes a spellWhere schnapper and gar expire and smellAnd the prawn long-perished, hums.Nobody cares when he trips from townIn crayfish-smelling clothes,And nobody says in a sermon sleek,“Dear me, he hasn’t been seen for a week —“Shicker. I s’pose!”
Nobody cares if a grocer sailsAfar on the bounding blue,His substitute will sprinkle sandAnd tickle the till with a good right hand,As substitutes will do.But the Sunday poet who longs for restWhere the girl mixed-bathing glows,Can be perfectly sure the public say“I don’t see his name in the paper to-day —Shicker, I s’pose!”
So this, O, reader’s the reason IOn the grey Dimboola’s deck,Write you a rhyme as the pilot waitsBumping against our Plimsoll plates,A salt-encrusted speck.You’ve substitutes and pubstitutesAnd prettily they compose,So, till I return from the holiday seas,Will you kindly stifle that ancient wheeze —“Shicker, I s’pose!”