The Flowers

To our private taste, there is always something a little exotic, almost artificial, in songs which, under an English aspect and dress, are yet so manifestly the product of other skies. They affect us like translations; the very fauna and flora are alien, remote; the dog's-tooth violet is but an ill substitute for the rathe primrose, nor can we ever believe that the wood-robin sings as sweetly in April as the English thrush.--THE ATHENAEUM.

Buy my English posies! Kent and Surrey may-- Violets of the Undercliff Wet with Channel spray; Cowslips from a Devon combe-- Midland furze afire-- Buy my English posies And I'll sell your heart's desire!

Buy my English posies! You that scorn the May, Won't you greet a friend from home Half the world away? Green against the draggled drift, Faint and frail and first-- Buy my Northern blood-root And I'll know where you were nursed: Robin down the logging-road whistles, Come to me!' Spring has found the maple-grove, the sap is running free; All the winds of Canada call the ploughing-rain. Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again!

Buy my English posies! Here's to match your need-- Buy a tuft of royal heath, Buy a bunch of weed White as sand of Muysenberg Spun before the gale-- Buy my heath and lilies And I'll tell you whence you hail! Under hot Constantia broad the vineyards lie-- Throned and thorned the aching berg props the speckless sky-- Slow below the Wynberg firs trails the tilted wain-- Take the flower arid turn the hour, and kiss your love again!

Buy my English posies! You that will not turn-- Buy my hot-wood clematis. Buy a frond o' fern Gathered where the Erskine leaps Down the road to Lorne-- Buy my Christmas creeper And I'll say where you were born! West away from Melbourne dust holidays begin-- They that mock at Paradise woo at Cora Lynn-- Through the great South Otway gums sings the great South Main-- Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again!

Buy my English posies! Here's your choice unsold! Buy a blood-red myrtle-bloom, Buy the kowhai's gold Flung for gift on Taupo's face, Sign that spring is come-- Buy my clinging myrtle And I'll give you back your home! Broom behind the windy town; pollen o' the pine-- Bell-bird in the leafy deep where the ratas twine-- Fern above the saddle-bow, flax upon the plain-- Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again!

Buy my English posies! Ye that have your own, Buy them for a brother's sake Overseas, alone. Weed ye trample underfoot Floods his heart abrim-- Bird ye never heeded, Oh, she calls his dead to him! Far and far our homes are set round the Seven Seas; Woe for us if we forget, we that hold by these! Unto each his mother-beach, bloom and bird and land-- Masters of the Seven Seas, oh, love and understand.

MUNICIPAL.

"Why is my District death-rate low?" Said Binks of Hezabad. "Wells, drains, and sewage-outfalls are My own peculiar fad. I learnt a lesson once. It ran Thus," quoth that most veracious man:--

It was an August evening and, in snowy garments clad, I paid a round of visits in the lines of Hezabad; When, presently, my Waler saw, and did not like at all, A Commissariat elephant careering down the Mall.

I couldn't see the driver, and across my mind it rushed That that Commissariat elephant had suddenly gone musth. I didn't care to meet him, and I couldn't well get down, So I let the Waler have it, and we headed for the town.

The buggy was a new one and, praise Dykes, it stood the strain, Till the Waler jumped a bullock just above the City Drain; And the next that I remember was a hurricane of squeals, And the creature making toothpicks of my five-foot patent wheels.

He seemed to want the owner, so I fled, distraught with fear, To the Main Drain sewage outfall while he snorted in my ear-- Reached the four-foot drain-head safely and, in darkness and despair, Felt the brute's proboscis fingering my terror-stiffened hair,

Heard it trumpet on my shoulder--tried to crawl a little higher-- Found the Main Drain sewage-outfall blocked some eight feet up, with mire; And, for twenty reeking minutes, Sir, my very marrow froze, While the trunk was feeling blindly for a purchase on my toes!

It missed me by a fraction, but my hair was turning grey Before they called the drivers up arid dragged the brute away. Then I sought the City Elders, and my words were very plain. They flushed that four-foot drain-head and--it never choked again.

You may hold with surface-drainage, and the sun-for-garbage cure, Till you've been a periwinkle shrinking coyly up a sewer. I believe in well-flushed culverts ... This is why the death-rate's small; And, if you don't believe me, get shikarred yourself. That's all.