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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=357421" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>An Old Master</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">We were cartin' lathes and palin's from the slopes of Mount St. Leonard,<br>With our axles near the road-bed and the mud as stiff as glue;<br>And our bullocks weren't precisely what you'd call conditioned nicely,<br>And meself and Messmate Mitchell had our doubts of gettin' through.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">It had rained a tidy skyful in the week before we started,<br>But our tucker-bag depended on the sellin' of our load;<br>So we punched 'em on by inches, liftin' 'em across the pinches,<br>Till we struck the final section of the worst part of the road.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We were just congratulatin' one another on the goin',<br>When we blundered in a pot-hole right within the sight of goal,<br>Where the bush-track joins the metal. Mitchell, as he saw her settle,<br>Justified his reputation at the peril of his soul.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">We were in a glue-pot, certain —- red and stiff and most tenacious;<br>Over naves and over axles —- waggon sittin' on the road.<br>''Struth,' says I, 'they'll never lift her. Take a shot from Hell to shift her.<br>Nothin' left us but unyoke 'em and sling off the blessed load.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Now, beside our scene of trouble stood a little one-roomed humpy,<br>Home of an enfeebled party by the name of Dad McGee.<br>Daddy was, I pause to mention, livin' on an old-age pension<br>Since he gave up bullock-punchin' at the age of eighty-three.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Startled by our exclamations, Daddy hobbled from the shanty,<br>Gazin' where the stranded waggon looked like some half-foundered ship.<br>When the state o' things he spotted, 'Looks,' he says, 'like you was potted,'<br>And he toddles up to Mitchell. 'Here,' says he, 'gimme that whip.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Well! I've heard of transformations; heard of fellers sort of changin'<br>In the face of sudden danger or some great emergency;<br>Heard the like in song and story and in bush traditions hoary,<br>But I nearly dropped me bundle as I looked at Dad McGee.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">While we gazed he seemed to toughen; as his fingers gripped the handle<br>His old form grew straight and supple, and a light leapt in his eye;<br>And he stepped around the waggon, not with footsteps weak and laggin',<br>But with firm, determined bearin', as he flung the whip on high.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Now he swung the leaders over, while the whip-lash snarled and volleyed;<br>And they answered like one bullock, strainin' to each crack and clout;<br>But he kept his cursin' under till old Brindle made a blunder;<br>Then I thought all Hell had hit me, and the master opened out.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And the language! Oh, the language! Seemed to me I must be dreamin';<br>While the wondrous words and phrases only genius could produce<br>Roared and rumbled, fast and faster, in the throat of that Old Master —- <br>Oaths and curses tipped with lightning, cracklin' flames of fierce abuse.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then we knew the man before us was a Master of our callin';<br>One of those great lords of language gone for ever from Out-back;<br>Heroes of an ancient order; men who punched across the border;<br>Vanished giants of the sixties; puncher-princes of the track.<br> <br>Now we heard the timbers strainin', heard the waggon's loud complainin',<br>And the master cried triumphant, as he swung 'em into line,<br>As they put their shoulders to it, lifted her, and pulled her through it:<br>'That's the way we useter do it in the days o' sixty-nine!'<br> <br>Near the foot of Mount St. Leonard lives an old, enfeebled party<br>Who retired from bullock-punchin' at the age of eighty-three.<br>If you seek him folk will mention, merely, that he draws the pension;<br>But to us he looms a Master -- Prince of Punchers, Dad McGee!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Clarence+Michael+James+Stanislaus+Dennis">Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis</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=357421" data-title="An Old Master de Clarence Michael James Stanislaus Dennis" data-description="We were cartin' lathes and palin's from the slopes of Mount St. Leonard,
With our axles near the road-bed and the mud as stiff as glue;
And our bullocks weren't precisely what you'd call conditioned nicely,
And meself and Messmate Mitchell had our..."></div>
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