Explore "The Shanty" by Edward Dyson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
There are tracks through the scrub, there's a track / down the hill, / And a track round the bend from M'Courteney's / mill, / Where they slyly emerge from the bush and con- / verge, / You'll discover the humpy-the theme of this / dirge- / That is used for the sale of O'Sullivan's 'purge. ' / And if curses and cries, / And a blasting of eyes, / And a series of blasphemies fearful arise, / And a lunatic din, / And a racket like sin, / You can bet all you own the O'Sullivan's in.
It's a bark and slab hut, with a bar and a bunk, / And a man propped before it disgustingly drunk, / And a nameless galoot in a hand-me-down suit, / Straddling out on the grass, grim as death, and as / mute, / Trapping millions of rabbits that run from his boot. / When eleven lie round / In all shapes on the mound, / And two navvies are fighting like fiends on the ground, / 'Tisn't needful to say / It's the sweet Sabbath day, / And that trade at the shanty's uncommonly gay.