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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=350485" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>How Polly Paid For Her Keep</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Do I know Polly Brown? Do I know her? Why,<br>  damme,<br> You might as well ask if I know my own name?<br>It's a wonder you never heard tell of old Sammy,<br> Her father, my mate in the Crackenback claim.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">He asks if I know little Poll! Why, I nursed her<br> As often, I reckon as old Mother Brown<br>When they lived at the “Flats,” and old Sam<br>  went a burster<br> In Chinaman's Gully, and dropped every crown.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">My golden-haired mate, ever brimful of folly<br> And childish conceit, and yet ready to rest<br>Contented beside me, 'twas I who taught Polly<br>To handle four horses along with the best.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">&quot;Twas funny to hear the small fairy discoursing<br> Of horses and drivers! I'll swear that she knew<br>Every one of the nags that I drove to the “Crossing,” <br> Their vices, and paces, and pedigrees too.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">She got a strange whim in her golden-haired noodle<br> That a driver's high seat was a kind of a throne,<br>I've taken her up there before she could toddle,<br> And she'd talk to the nags in a tongue of her own.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then old Mother Brown got the horrors around her:<br> (I think it was pineapple-rum drove her daft)<br>She cleared out one night, and the next morning they<br>  found her, <br> A mummified mass, in a forty foot shaft.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">And Sammy? Well, Sammy was wailing and weeping,<br> And raving, and raising the devil's own row;<br>He was only too glad to give into our keeping<br> His motherless babe - we'd have kept her till now</div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">But Jimmy Maloney thought proper to court her,<br> Among all the lasses he loved but this one:<br>She's no longer Polly, our golden-haired daughter,<br> She's Mrs Maloney, of Paddlesack Run.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Our little girl Polly's no end of a swell (you <br> Must know Jimmy shears fifty thousand odd sheep) -<br>But I'm clean off the track, I was going to tell you<br> The way in which Polly paid us for her keep.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">It was this way: My wife's living in Tumbarumba,<br> And I'm down at Germanton yards, for a sale, <br>Inspecting coach-horses (I wanted a number),<br> When they flashed down a message that made me<br>  turn pale.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">&quot;Twas from Polly, to say the old wife had fallen<br> Down-stairs, and in falling had fractured a bone -<br>There was no doctor nearer than Tumut to call on,<br> So she and the blacksmith had set it alone.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">They'd have to come down by the coach in the <br>  morning,<br> As one of the two buggy ponies was lame,<br>Would I see the old doctor, and give him fair warning<br> To keep himself decently straight till they came?</div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">I was making good money those times, and a fiver <br> Per week was the wages my deputy got,<br>A good, honest worker, and out-and-out driver,<br> But, like all the rest, a most terrible sot.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">So, just on this morning - which made it more sinful,<br> With my women on board, the unprincipled skunk<br>Hung round all the bars till he loaded a skinful<br> Of grog, and then started his journey, dead drunk.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Drunk! with my loved ones on board, drunk as Chloe,<br> He might have got right by the end of the trip<br>Had he rested contented and quiet, but no, he<br> Must pull up at Rosewood, for one other nip.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">That finished him off, quick, and there he sat, dozing<br> Like an owl on his perch, half-awake, half-asleep.<br>Till a lurch of the coach came, when, suddenly losing<br> His balance, he fell to the earth all of a heap,</div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">While the coach, with its four frightened horses,<br>  went sailing<br> Downhill to perdition and Carabost “break,” <br>Four galloping devils, with reins loosely trailing,<br> And passengers falling all roads in their wake.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Two bagmen, who sat on the box, jumped together<br> And found a soft bed in the mud of the drain;<br>The barmaid from Murphy's fell light as a feather - <br> I think she got off with a bit of a sprain;</div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">While the jock, with his nerves most decidedly<br>  shaken,<br> Made straight for the door, never wasting his <br>  breath<br>In farewell apologies; basely forsaken,<br> My wife and Poll Brown sat alone with grim<br>  Death.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">While the coach thundered downward, my wife fell<br>  a-praying;<br> But Poll in a fix, now, is dashed hard to beat:<br>She picked up her skirts, scrambled over the swaying<br> High roof of the coach, till she lit on the seat,</div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">And there looked around. In her hand was a pretty, <br> Frail thing made of laces, with which a girl strives <br>To save her complexion when down in the city -<br> A lace parasol! yet it saved both their lives.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Oh, Polly was game, you may bet your last dollar -<br> She leans on the splashboard, and stretches and <br>  strains<br>With her parasol, down by the off-sider's collar,<br> Until she contrives to catch hold of the reins.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">They lay quite secure in the crook of the handle, <br> She clutched them - the parasol fell underneath.<br>I tell you no girl ever could hold a candle<br> To Poll, as she hung back and clenched her white<br>  teeth.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">The bolters sped downward, with nostrils distended,<br> She must get a pull on them ere they should reach<br>The fence on the hill, where the road had been<br>  mended;<br> The blocks bit the wheels with a “sroope” and a <br>  screech;</div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">The little blue veins in her arms swelled and <br>  blackened;<br> The reins were like fiddle-strings stretched in her grip;<br>When the “break” hove in sight, the mad gallop <br>  had slackened,<br> She had done it, my word, they were under the whip.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">They still had the pace on, but Polly was able<br> To steer 'twixt the fences with never a graze,<br>They flashed past the “Change” where the groom at<br>  the stable <br> Just stood with his mouth open, dumb with amaze.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">On the level she turned them, the best bit of driving <br> That was ever done on this side of the range,<br>And trotted them back up the hill-side, arriving<br> With not a strap broken in front of the “Change.”</div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">And the wife? - well she prayed to the Lord till<br>  she fainted;<br> I reckon He answered her prayers all the same -<br>He must have helped Polly, it's curious now, ain't it,<br> To see a thin slip of a girl be so game?</div><div style="margin:10px 0"></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Did I summons the driver? I had no occasion -<br> The coroner came with his jury instead,<br>Who found that he died from a serious abrasion -<br> Both wheels of the coach had gone over his head.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Barcroft+Henry+Thomas+Boake">Barcroft Henry Thomas Boake</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=350485" data-title="How Polly Paid For Her Keep de Barcroft Henry Thomas Boake" data-description="Do I know Polly Brown? Do I know her? Why,
  damme,
 You might as well ask if I know my own name?
It's a wonder you never heard tell of old Sammy,
 Her father, my mate in the Crackenback claim.



He asks if I know little Poll! Why, I nursed her
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