'Twas in the village of Ruily there lived a bonnie lass
With red, pouting lips which few lasses could surpass,
And her eyes were as azure the blue sky,
Which caused Donald McNeill to heave many a love sigh

Beyond the township of Ruily she never had been,
This pretty maid with tiny feet and aged eighteen;
And when Donald would ask her to be his wife,
"No," she would say, "I'm not going to stay here all my life."

"I'm sick of this life," she said to Donald one day,
"By making the parridge and carrying peats from the bog far away."

O' a' the toons that I've been in,
I dearly love Dundee,
It's there the bonnie lassie lives,
The lass I love to see. Her face is fair, broon is her hair,
And dark blue is her e'e,
And aboon a' the lasses e'er I saw,
There's nane like her to me
The bonnie broon-hair'd lassie o' Bonnie Dundee.

I see her in my night dreams,
Wi' her bonnie blue e'e,
And her face it is the fairest,
That ever I did see;
And aboon a' the lassies e'er I eaw,
There's nane like her to me,
For she makes my heart feel lichtsome,

What was the blackest sight to me
Of all that campaign?
A naked woman tied to a tree
With jagged holes where her breasts should be,
Rotting there in the rain.

On we pressed to the battle fray,
Dogged and dour and spent.
Sudden I heard my Captain say:
"Voilà! Kultur has passed this way,
And left us a monument."

So I looked and I saw our Colonel there,
And his grand head, snowed with the years,
Unto the beat of the rain was bare;
And, oh, there was grief in his frozen stare,
And his cheeks were stung with tears!

Wild air, world-mothering air,
Nestling me everywhere,
That each eyelash or hair
Girdles; goes home betwixt
The fleeciest, frailest-flixed
Snowflake; that ’s fairly mixed
With, riddles, and is rife
In every least thing’s life;
This needful, never spent,
And nursing element;
My more than meat and drink,
My meal at every wink;
This air, which, by life’s law,
My lung must draw and draw
Now but to breathe its praise,
Minds me in many ways
Of her who not only
Gave God’s infinity
Dwindled to infancy

I often wonder whether you
Think sometimes of that Bishop, who
From black but balmy Rum-ti-Foo
Last summer twelvemonth came.
Unto your mind I p'r'aps may bring
Remembrance of the man I sing
To-day, by simply mentioning
That PETER was his name.

Remember how that holy man
Came with the great Colonial clan
To Synod, called Pan-Anglican;
And kindly recollect
How, having crossed the ocean wide,
To please his flock all means he tried
Consistent with a proper pride
And manly self-respect.

He only, of the reverend pack

It was a Bishop bold,
And London was his see,
He was short and stout and round about
And zealous as could be.

It also was a Jew,
Who drove a Putney 'bus -
For flesh of swine however fine
He did not care a cuss.

His name was HASH BAZ BEN,
And JEDEDIAH too,
And SOLOMON and ZABULON -
This 'bus-directing Jew.

The Bishop said, said he,
"I'll see what I can do
To Christianise and make you wise,
You poor benighted Jew."

So every blessed day
That 'bus he rode outside,
From Fulham town, both up and down,

The Sunbeam loved the Moonbeam,
And followed her low and high,
But Moonbeam fled and hid her head,
She was so shy – so shy.

The Sunbeam wooed with passion;
Ah, he was a lover bold!
And his heart was afire with mad desire
For the moonbeam pale and cold.

She fled like a dream before him,
Her hair was a shining sheen,
And oh, that Fate would annihilate
The space that lay between!

Just as the day lay panting
In the arms of the twilight dim,
The Sunbeam caught the one he sought

Some day I shall rise and leave my friends
And seek you again through the world’s far ends,
You whom I found so fair
(Touch of your hands and smell of your hair!),
My only god in the days that were.
My eager feet shall find you again,
Though the sullen years and the mark of pain
Have changed you wholly; for I shall know
(How could I forget having loved you so?),
In the sad half-light of evening,
The face that was all my sunrising.
So then at the ends of the earth I’ll stand
And hold you fiercely be either hand,

Part One - The Calling


Let me sleep, for my soul is intoxicated with love and
Let me rest, for my spirit has had its bounty of days and nights;
Light the candles and burn the incense around my bed, and
Scatter leaves of jasmine and roses over my body;
Embalm my hair with frankincense and sprinkle my feet with perfume,
And read what the hand of Death has written on my forehead.


Let me rest in the arms of Slumber, for my open eyes are tired;
Let the silver-stringed lyre quiver and soothe my spirit;

A wild-bear chace, didst never see?
Then hast thou lived in vain.
Thy richest bump of glorious glee,
Lies desert in thy brain.

When first my father settled here,
'Twas then the frontier line:
The panther's scream, filled night with fear
And bears preyed on the swine.

But wo for Bruin's short lived fun,
When rose the squealing cry;
Now man and horse, with dog and gun,
For vengeance, at him fly.

A sound of danger strikes his ear;
He gives the breeze a snuff;
Away he bounds, with little fear,