While The Billy BoilsSearchHe wears a yellow hat and buttoned boots,Four more upon his coat-flap and his sleeve;His linen from his laundryman he loots,By racing whoppers he has learned to weave.Invariably he’s slim and ferret-faced,And hollow-chested through eternal fags.His spindle-leggy-ness is plainly tracedBeyond the trivial texture of his bags.He calls most persons “peas” and women “janes,”Rarely with maidens mashful he’ll consort,He has no time for love or leafy lanes,Or rendezvous where sighing swains resort.He cares not so that he remains —A sport!
His place is on the footpath or the kerb,Dodging the Johns that duty up and down;He spits the vimful and vermillion verb,The adjective obscene and nasty noun.He works perhaps by day, and p’r’aps he don’t,His younger brother classes him as king;When chatted as to toil his word is won’tAs long as some poor simpleton will sling.When he has twenty bob he’s “up to cash,”When he is down and out his “weight is short.”A bank-roll unto him the Oscar Ashe,A swindle is to him a “joke,” a “wrought.”He is that contradiction flash —A sport!
His scorn is lofty for the working man,The hefty bloke who toils in wood and wheat,The sort whose sweat secures his bed and scran,Warmth in the winter, coolness in the heat.“A lizard from the land” he calls the covesWho come to town with tenners in their kicks,While he and such as he in dingo drovesHave, if you turned them downside upwards — nix!They dine in cafes, he at coffee stalls,They sleep in linen, he beneath a rug;They see the picture-shows and the music-hallsHe thinks a shilling gall’ry brief — a “slug”;He who has work and wage he calls —“A mug!”
You see him at his best in billiard hallsWhen he is silvery with some borrowed bobs,Straining his suit time-payment as he sprawlsThe table which of decent nap he robs.He pauses in the middle of a shotTo tell you how The Magsman mucked it out,And argues when the pink you want to potHow Glanders never had the race in doubt.The only ones who listen to his yapAre knickered boys who cannot there resort,Unless he slips them in beneath the lapAnd then of course disowns them when they’re caught.You’ll never see within a scrap —A sport!
His most pathetic period of the dayWhen race results are posted on the pubs,His cigarette-soaked visage, thin and grey,Seeking the same old borrowings cadge and subs.He gets his gospel from a gutter gun,Who tells him how to pick a mug at sight,Not understanding he himself is oneBorn every minute of the day and night.He bustles through the crowd that bows its headTo brumby battles on a racecourse fought,Although upon the race he’s not a red,Racing and race-men are his only thought.Alas that lizards long have fed —The sport!
Sometimes he may reform, and sometimes not,For once a waster, often thence a weed,Sometimes a John Hop sour puts on his potAnd steers him to the toil he seems to need.Sometimes he takes a tumble late in lifeAnd weds a barmaid or a laundress strong,And reads in bed what time his weary wifeOver the washtub sings a soapy song.Eftsoons he takes a truncheon to his JillFor which they yank him to a callous court,And in the “Strewth” a column long they fillConcerning what the neighbors heard and thought;But in the nick or not he’s still —A sport!