TO A BLACK GIN.

Tuapeka Times, Volume V, Issue 248, 31 October 1872, Page 9

TO A BLACK GIN.

Daughter of Eve x draw near ; I'woultl behold thee. Good life ! could ever arm of man enfold thee ? Did the same nature that made Phryne mould. Thee? Come thou to leeward ; for thy balmy presence Savoureth not a whit of mille-fleuresconse . My nose is no insentient excrescence. Thou art not beautiful, I tell thee plainly ; O thtm nngainliest of things ungainly, . Who thinks thee less than hideous dotes insanely. ■ . ' Most unsesthetical of things terrestrial, Hadst thou indeed an origin celestial ? They lineaments are positively bestial. Yet thou my sister art, the clergy tell nic, Though, truth to state, thy 'brutish looks " compel iue To hope these parsons merely want to sell me. A hundred times and more I've heard and read it, But if St. Paul himself came down and said it, Upon my soul, I could not give it credit. " God's image cut in ebony," says some one, Tis to be hoped some day thou mayst become one, The present image is a very rum one. They face, " the hun'iau face divine !'' Oh Moses ! I can't get over it ; which, I suppose, is Because no bridge upon thy sunken nose is. i Thy nose appeareth but a transverse section ; Thy mouth has no particular, direction— ' A flabby-rimmed abyss of imperfection. Thy skull development my eye displeases, Thou wilt not suffer much from brain diseases, Thy facial angle forty -five degrees is. The coarseness of thy tresses is distressing, With grease and raddle firmly coalescing ; cannot laud thy system of " top-dressing." jßffhy dress is somewhat scant for proper feeling--1 As is thy flesh, too — scarce tl'y bones concealing ; Thy calves unquestionably want rs-vealing. Thy mangy skin is hideous with tattooing, And legible with hieroglyphic wooing — Sweet things iv art of some fisicc War's doing;

For thou some lover hast, I bet a guinea, Some partner in thy fetid ignooiiny. The ''raison d'etre " of this piccaninny. What must he be whose eye thou hast delighted, His sense of beautj r hopelessly benighted. The canons of his taste how badly sighted. What must his gauge be if thy features Y J l eas< xl him ? If lordship of such limbs as thine appeased him. It was not " calf love " certainly that seize-l him.

And doth he smooth thine hours with oily talking? And take thee conjugally out a-walking ? And ci own thy transports with a tomahawking? I guess his love and anger are coaibined so, Kis passions on thy shou lders are defr.ed so, Kis ' ' passages of love " are " uuclerli:.ed" so. Tell me thy name— What Helen ? (Oh CEnone ! That name bsqueathed to one so f-jul and bo>i3 r , AvengetL well thy ruptuted niatrimonj-). Eve's daughter, with that skull and that complexion. What principle of " natural selection " Gave thee with Eve the most remote connexion ?

•Sister of L E L— of Mrs. Sfcow'e 100 — • Of E. B. Browning — Harriet Martineau, too. Do theologians know where fibbers go to ? Of dear George Eliot, whom I worship 'laily— Of Charlotte .Bronte and Joanna iJaillie— Methinks that theory is rather scaly. Thy primal parents came a period later, The handiwork of some vile imitator . 1 fear they had th.3 devil's " imprimatur." This is the retrospect. Now, what's before ■ thee? The white rnan's.heaveivl fear, would simply bore thee ; Ten minutes of doxology would floor thee. Thy paradise should be a land of Goshen, Where appetite should be thy sole dsvotion, ' And surfeit be the climax of emotion. A land of bunya-bunyas towering splendid, Of " sugar bags " on every tiee suspended, A paradise of sleep and riot blended ; tons of 'baccy, and tons more to follow; Of wallaby aS much as thou could'st swallow ; Of hollow trees, with 'possums in the hollow. There, undismayed by frost, or flood, pith under, As joyous as the skies thou roamest under, . There shouldst thon— Coo-ey! Stop; She's off ! Nt» woivler.

J, Bronton Stephens. Queensland, 22nd September.