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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=408938" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Stranger's Friend</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">The strangest things and the maddest things, that a man can do or say,<br>To the chaps and fellers and coves Out Back are matters of every day;<br>Maybe on account of the lives they lead, or the life that their hearts discard—<br>But never a fool can be too mad or a ‘hard case’ be too hard. <br>I met him in Bourke in the Union days—with which we have nought to do<br>(Their creed was narrow, their methods crude, but they stuck to ‘the cause’ like glue).<br>He came into town from the Lost Soul Run for his grim half-yearly ‘bend,’<br>And because of a curious hobby he had, he was known as ‘The Stranger’s Friend.’ </div><div style="margin:10px 0">It is true to the region of adjectives when I say that the spree was ‘grim,’<br>For to go on the spree was a sacred rite, or a heathen rite, to him,<br>To shout for the travellers passing through to the land where the lost soul bakes—<br>Till they all seemed devils of different breeds, and his pockets were filled with snakes. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">In the joyful mood, in the solemn mood—in his cynical stages too—<br>In the maudlin stage, in the fighting stage, in the stage when all was blue—<br>From the joyful hour when his spree commenced, right through to the awful end,<br>He never lost grip of his ‘fixed idee’ that he was the Stranger’s Friend. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">‘The feller as knows, he can battle around for his bloomin’ self,’ he’d say—<br>‘I don’t give a curse for the “blanks” I know the hard-up bloke this way;<br>‘Send the stranger round, and I’ll see him through,’ and, e’en as the bushman spoke,<br>The chaps and fellers would tip the wink to a casual, ‘hard-up bloke.’ </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And it wasn’t only a bushman’s ‘bluff’ to the fame of the Friend they scored,<br>For he’d shout the stranger a suit of clothes, and he’d pay for the stranger’s board—<br>The worst of it was that he’d skite all night on the edge of the stranger’s bunk,<br>And never got helplessly drunk himself till he’d got the stranger drunk. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And the chaps and the fellers would speculate—by way of a ghastly joke—<br>As to who’d be caught by the ‘jim-jams’ first—the Friend or the hard-up bloke?<br>And the ‘Joker’ would say that there wasn’t a doubt as to who’d be damned in the end,<br>When the Devil got hold of a hard-up bloke in the shape of the Stranger’s Friend. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">It mattered not to the Stranger’s Friend what the rest might say or think,<br>He always held that the hard-up state was due to the curse of drink,<br>To the evils of cards, and of company: ‘But a young cove’s built that way,<br>‘And I was a bloomin’ fool meself when I started out,’ he’d say. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">At the end of the spree, in clean white ‘moles,’ clean-shaven, and cool as ice,<br>He’d give the stranger a ‘bob’ or two, and some straight Out Back advice;<br>Then he’d tramp away for the Lost Soul Run, where the hot dust rose like smoke,<br>Having done his duty to all mankind, for he’d ‘stuck to a hard-up bloke.’ </div><div style="margin:10px 0">They’ll say ’tis a ‘song of a sot,’ perhaps, but the Song of a Sot is true.<br>I have ‘battled’ myself, and you know, you chaps, what a man in the bush goes through:<br>Let us hope when the last of his sprees is past, and his cheques and his strength are done,<br>That, amongst the sober and thrifty mates, the Stranger’s Friend has one.</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=408938" data-title="The Stranger's Friend de Henry Lawson" data-description="The strangest things and the maddest things, that a man can do or say,
To the chaps and fellers and coves Out Back are matters of every day;
Maybe on account of the lives they lead, or the life that their hearts discard—
But never a fool can be ..."></div>
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