SELECT POETRY.

Tuapeka Times, Volume III, Issue 200, 30 November 1871, Page 7

SELECT POETRY.

A LAY OF THE LINE.

Gaged aloft in a. square deal box^ With.* baud .of panes all routid, That shakes .with the lon* train's whirring shocks. And rings with the whistle's sound. Here have I shrivelled and fallen grey, Through years .of frost and reek, To the burden of eighteen hours a day, r On eighteen ahillingdfe week.

This is the junction of Ludnowaware, As shown in the company's map ; The company post me yards in the air To guard against any mishap — A post of honour, you'll smile aud say, For a man so old and meek ; Why, yes ! for eighteen hours a day, On eighteen shillings a week. Early and late, through glare and dim, I rule the junction here : My levers ready, my lamps all trim, And my old head mostly clear ; Tiough now and anon my sense seems gone, As if in a truant freak ; What wonder ? 'tis eighteen hours a day . And eighteen shillings a week ! For days will come when the sun's intense, And I cannot help but doze ; And winter nights, when the air is dense, And my dull eyes ache to close. There's-aleep in the joints of the very points With their everlasting creak ; But there ! it ia eighteen hours a day,"' On eighteen shillings a week. The old woman pines on our scanty fare, That's ouly a sop to life ; We're forced to live on a deal of air, I and my thin-faced wife ; I ask for more, but I couldn't bear Nay, And they'd smile to hear me speak ; I'd rather work eighteen hours a day, At eighteen shillings a week. Hark ! there's the hum of the night express ; It sounds some distance yet, Heigho ! my hands they work at a guess ; Which point? I must not forget. Work's over, thank Heaven, when this is away. • "What signal ? don't know 'em from Greek— I'm sick of the eighteen hours a day, On eighteen shillings a week ! There now, that's over ; the train lifts passed ; There's rest at least for my brains ; And — what ! gone wrong ? Have I bungled at last ? Is there nothing will save the trains ? That whistle- that crash— those deaths in a flashily God, that agony-shriek ? Ob, the price they pay for a night and day, At eighteen shillings a week ?