The Low-Down White

This is the pay-day up at the mines, when the bearded brutes come down; There's money to burn in the streets to-night, so I've sent my klooch to town, With a haggard face and a ribband of red entwined in her hair of brown. And I know at the dawn she'll come reeling home with the bottles, one, two, three -- One for herself, to drown her shame, and two big bottles for me, To make me forget the thing I am and the man I used to be. To make me forget the brand of the dog, as I crouch in this hideous place; To make me forget once I kindled the light of love in a lady's face, Where even the squalid Siwash now holds me a black disgrace. Oh, I have guarded my secret well! And who would dream as I speak In a tribal tongue like a rogue unhung, 'mid the ranch-house filth and reek, I could roll to bed with a Latin phrase and rise with a verse of Greek? Yet I was a senior prizeman once, and the pride of a college eight; Called to the bar -- my friends were true! but they could not keep me straight; Then came the divorce, and I went abroad and "died" on the River Plate. But I'm not dead yet; though with half a lung there isn't time to spare, And I hope that the year will see me out, and, thank God, no one will care -- Save maybe the little slim Siwash girl with the rose of shame in her hair. She will come with the dawn, and the dawn is near; I can see its evil glow, Like a corpse-light seen through a frosty pane in a night of want and woe; And yonder she comes by the bleak bull-pines, swift staggering through the snow.