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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=408774" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Bards Who Lived at Manly</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">The camp of high-class spielers,<br>Who sneered in summer dress,<br>And doo-dah dilettante,<br>And scornful “venuses”—<br>House agents, and storekeepers,<br>All eager they to “bleed”—<br>The bards who tackled Manly,<br>Were plucky bards indeed!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">With shops that feared to trust them,<br>And pubs that looked askance;<br>And prigs who read their verses,<br>But gave them not a glance;—<br>When all were vain and selfish,<br>And editors were hard—<br>The bard that stuck to Manly<br>Was sure a mighty bard.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">What mattered floors were barren,<br>And windows curtainless,<br>And our life seemed to others<br>But blackguard recklessness?<br>We wore our clothes for comfort,<br>We earned our bread alway,<br>And beer and good tobacco<br>Came somehow every day.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Came kindred souls to Manly—<br>Outsiders that we knew,<br>And with them scribes and artists,<br>And low comedians too;<br>And sometimes bright girl writers—<br>Called “Tommy”, “Jack”, or “Pat”—<br>(Though each one had a sweetheart<br>The rest knew nought of that).</div><div style="margin:10px 0">’Twas not the paltry village<br>We honoured unaware,<br>Or welcome warm, or friendship,<br>Or “tone” that took us there;<br>We longed to sing for mankind,<br>Where heaven’s breath was free<br>We only sought the grandeur<br>Of sea-cliff, sands and sea.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And we were glad at Manly,<br>All unaware of “swells”,<br>Of doctors and of nurses,<br>And private hospitals;<br>With little fear of bailiffs,<br>And great contempt for greed—<br>The bards who lived at Manly,<br>They were a healthy breed.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Oh! moonlit nights at Manly,<br>When all the world was fair!<br>In shirts and turned-up trousers<br>We larked like big boys there.<br>Oh! glorious autumn mornings—<br>The gold and green and blue—<br>We “stripped” as well as any,<br>And swam as strongly too.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The artist had a missus,<br>Who rather loved the wretch,<br>And so for days together<br>He’d stay at home and sketch.<br>And then—I fear ’twas only<br>When things were getting tight—<br>The bards would shun each other,<br>And hump themselves—and write.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">When bailiffs came to Manly<br>They’d find no “sticks” to take,<br>We’d welcome them as brothers—<br>Their grimy hands we’d shake;<br>We’d send for beer in billies—<br>And straightway send for more—<br>And bailiff nights in Manly<br>Were merry nights of yore.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">There are some things that landlords<br>And law can’t do at all:<br>They could not take the pictures<br>We painted on the wall;<br>They could not take the table—<br>The table was a door;<br>They could not take the bedsteads—<br>The beds were on the floor.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The door of some old stable—<br>We’d borrowed for a drink—<br>A page of rhymes and sketches,<br>And stained with beer and ink;<br>A dead hand drew the portraits—<br>And, say, should I be shamed,<br>To seek it out in Manly<br>And get the old door framed?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">They left the masterpieces<br>The artist dreamed of long;<br>They could not take the gardens<br>From Victor Daley’s song;<br>They left his summer islands<br>And fairy ships at sea,<br>They could not take my mountains<br>And western plains from me.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">One bailiff was our brother,<br>No better and no worse—<br>And, oh! the yarns he told us<br>To put in prose and verse,<br>And sorry we to lose him,<br>And sorry he to go—<br>(Oh! skeletons of Pott’s Point,<br>How many things we know)!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The very prince of laughter,<br>With brains and sympathy;<br>And with us on the last night<br>He spent his bailiff’s fee.<br>He banished Durkin’s gruffness,<br>He set my soul afloat,<br>And drew till day on Daley’s<br>Bright store of anecdote.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He said he’d stick to business—<br>Though he could well be free—<br>If but to save poor devils<br>From harder “bums” than he,<br>Now artist, bard and bailiff<br>Have left this vale of sin—<br>I trust, if they reach Heaven,<br>They’ll take that bailiff in.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The bards that lived in Manly<br>Have vanished one and one;<br>But do not think in Manly<br>Bohemian days are done.<br>They bled me white in Manly<br>When rich and tempest-tossed—<br>I’ll leave some bills in Manly<br>To pay for what I lost.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">They’d grab and grind in Manly,<br>Then slander, sneer, and flout.<br>The shocked of moral Manly!<br>They starved my brothers out.<br>The miserable village,<br>Set in a scene so fair,<br>Were honester and cleaner<br>If some of us were there!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But one went with December—<br>These last lines seem to-night<br>Like some song I remember,<br>And not a song I write.<br>With vision strangely clearer<br>My old chums seem to be,<br>In death and absence, nearer<br>Than e’er they were to me.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Alone, and still not lonely—<br>When tears will not be shed—<br>I wish that I could only<br>Believe that they were dead.<br>With hardly curbed emotion,<br>I can’t but think, somehow,<br>In Manly by the ocean<br>They’re waiting for me now.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Henry+Lawson">Henry Lawson</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=408774" data-title="The Bards Who Lived at Manly de Henry Lawson" data-description="The camp of high-class spielers,
Who sneered in summer dress,
And doo-dah dilettante,
And scornful “venuses”—
House agents, and storekeepers,
All eager they to “bleed”—
The bards who tackled Manly,
Were plucky bards indeed!

With shops..."></div>
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