Read "The Fossicker" by Edward Dyson online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
A straight old fossicker was Lanky Mann, / Who clung to that in spite of friends' advising: / A grim and grizzled worshipper of 'pan,' / All other arts and industries despising.
Bare-boned and hard, with thin long hair and beard, / With horny hands that gripped like iron pliers; / A clear, quick eye, a heart that nothing feared, / A soul full simple in its few desires.
No hot, impatient amateur was Jo, / Sweating to turn the slides up every minute -- / He knew beforehand how his stuff would go, / Could tell by instinct almost what was in it.
I've known him stand for hours, and rock, and rock, / A-swinging now the shovel, now the ladle, / So sphinx-like that at Time he seemed to mock, / Resolved to run creation through his cradle.
No sun-shafts pricked him through his seasoned hide, / Nor cold nor damp could bend his form heroic; / Bare-breasted Jo the elements defied, / And met all fortunes like a hoary Stoic.
Where there were tailings, tips, and mangled fields, / And sluggish, sloven creeks meandering slowly, / Where puddlers old and sluice-sites promised yields, / There Lanky might be found, contented wholly.
Even though they'd worked the field, as Chinkies do, / Had 'bulled' each shaft, and scraped out every gutter, / Burnt every stick, and put the ashes through -- / Yet Jo contrived to knock out bread and butter,
And something for a dead-broke mate -- such men / As he have little love for filthy lucre; / His luxury was a whisky now and then, / And now and then a friendly game of euchre.
They tell me he is dead: 'On top? That's so, / Died at the handle, mate, which is accordin' / As he should die and if you're good, you'll know / Jo pannin' prospects in the River Jordan. '