Original Poetry Column.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume IV, Issue 234, 26 July 1902, Page 3

Original Poetry Column.

From lime to time we receive the breathings of budding genius in the form of verse, blank or otherwise. As a taste for poetry is, like that for tomatoes, acquired, and we have not had the opportunity cf acquiring it, it does seem a pity to basket all effusions, for what we don’t care for our readers might. In future, therefore, wa will (space permitting) accept anything that is not libellous for this column. It may scare off many a precocious youth from being an editor. N.B. —No poem accepted unless accompanied by a tonic (XXX for preference) : otherwise a stomach that digests horseshoe nails for recreation might turn. Boy, tune up the merry Jew’s harp! We sing— SALT OF THE EARTH. Salt of the earth, sing the song of wretchedness ; Sing it strong and bitterly with ita shameful chorus. Drain again those hateful cups; it is your wine of Italy, ' It is the dregs of bitterness that the dormant creatures pour us, When before the Judgment Throne, who shall bear the blame of it. Naught was there to hold to save our parents steeped in crime. If heaven’s God’s a just one, ye shall pay no reckoning, Thou shell not bo called on for the way ye spent your time. Foul is our work and foal mast, our pleasure be. Scanty though our pleasure, we must catch it where we can; Drunkenness ap4 thieving, lying and debauchery, These are this world’s pleasures for the honest working man. Every year more bitter is the wretched harvest growing ; No longer can the reaper keep reaping and be'dum. Every year increases the debt of hate that’s owing, Every day brings nearer the dawn that soon must come. I, for one, have a strong objection to the bare faced push, And am in keeping with the laws of Nature. (Yours for ever and ever.) —Amen.