Collected Poetry by Andrew Barton Paterson

'Twas in scientific circles / That the great Professor Brown / Had a world-wide reputation / As a writer of renown. / He had striven finer feelings / In our natures to implant / By his Treatise on the Morals / Of the Red-eyed Bulldog Ant. / He had hoisted an opponent / Who had trodden unawares / On his "Reasons for Bare Patches / On the Female Native Bears". / So they gave him an appointment / As instructor to a band / Of the most attractive females / To be gathered in the land. / 'Twas a "Ladies' Science Circle"-- / Just the latest social fad / For the Nicest People only, / And to make their rivals mad. / They were fond of "science rambles" / To the country from the town-- / A parade of female beauty / In the leadership of Brown. / They would pick a place for luncheon / And catch beetles on their rugs; / The Professor called 'em "optera" / They called 'em "nasty bugs". / Well, the thing was bound to perish / For no lovely woman can / Feel the slightest real interest / In a club without a Man-- / The Professor hardly counted / He was crazy as a loon, / With a countenance suggestive / Of an elderly baboon. / But the breath of Fate blew on it / With a sharp and sudden blast, / And the "Ladies' Science Circle" / Is a memory of the past.

There were two-and-twenty members, / Mostly young and mostly fair, / Who had made a great excursion / To a place called Dontknowwhere, / At the crossing of Lost River, / On the road to No Man's Land. / There they met an old selector, / With a stockwhip in his hand, / And the sight of so much beauty / Sent him slightly "off his nut"; / So he asked them, smiling blandly, / "Would they come down to the hut?" / "I am come," said the Professor, / In his thin and reedy voice, / "To investigate your flora, / Which I hear is very choice." / The selector stared dumbfounded, / Till at last he found his tongue: / "To investigate my Flora! / Oh, you howlin' Brigham Young! / Why, you've two-and-twenty wimmen-- / Reg'lar slap-up wimmen, too! / And you're after little Flora! / And a crawlin' thing like you! / Oh, you Mormonite gorilla! / Well, I've heard it from the first / That you wizened little fellers / Is a hundred times the worst!