Original Poetry.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 392, 12 November 1903, Page 5

Original Poetry.

A REPLY.

By the graves of my noble ancestors and all the M'Gregor's and M'Nab's in the kingdom of Inverness, things have come to an appalling issue when the cream of Scottish heroes are thus rudely handled by a poor benighted savage of the Southern Seas. * * .- * * Anonymous Toucher or Olutcher, Dark child of a man-eating race, Enlightened by contact with Scotchmen, How dare you my verses menace 1 Uncultured, unculptured, and vultured By orgies satanic and vile, What ravings have swollen thy pimple And loosen'd your arrogant bile. Sardonic, bubonic, thy vomit, In straggling measure your rhyme; To see thy scribble on paper Is reckoned by Scotchmen a crime. Sad plighted, excited and blighted, What howlings I trace in your strain, To measure thy sword in this duel Oh, welcome thrice welcome again, The meal for our brave-hearted heroes, In basin, on plate, or in can, The essence of muscle and marrow, The stuff to make you a man. Our milkmaids in constancy queenly, By virtue and charity blest; Their coyness in wooing and cooing Are mingled with heavenly zest. As maidens the cream of all beauty, Deep matured by motherly love, As wives the fount of all blessing O'er-flowing by showers from above. Free-bootersyou call our brave heroes— Dark savage and wild screaming owl— The salt of the earth are my clansmen, Bef uted thy maddening howl. My heathery mountains and misty, The home of the brave and the free, Where Angels might use from the heavens The verdure of mountain and lea.

I'm proud of my mountains and valleys, Each corrie and sweet-scented vale, Each rippling streamlet and fountain Green heather, adorning each dale. Surpassing ail else in their grandeur, _ Their summits have riven the sky, As if t'were ladders from heaven, By which to get there when we die. Erratic my pencil and faulty, Describing such scenes I am lost; And fain would admire them in silence, Not speaking until 1 am crossed. Oh, Scotia, dearest and fairest, Excelling in war and in song, Oome, gird on thy kilt and we'll crush them, These prattlers of spurious song. Come belted in plaid and blue bonnet, Majestic thy step and thy mein, Advance, I will sing thee a sonnet, 'Twill tingle thy blood in each vein. Play ever thy war pipes and sing on, Appealing so keenly to me ; Tho' here in a wilderness barren, Far over the ever-green sea. Let Ishmael's progeny swagger, In staggering, stammering rhyme; To follow the savage much further I'd lack for sense and for time. Farewell poor child barbaric, I fain would not write in this strain If you had not rifted my chanter— Yet welcome again and again. A. O. KOBERTSON. Alexandra, November 4th.