To-day is our diamond wedding, old wife!
Some seventy summers and more
Since first we paired off in this battle of life
On thirty a year, and the run of a knife ...
What! You say I’m a blessed old bore!
Oh, yes, now we are, I admit, pretty right;
But still to that hard-grafting time
My mind often wanders in quiet delight
’Way down from the tree of prosperity’s height
That our industry’s helped us to climb.
And I picture the day to the station we tramped
With our characters safe in the swags—
A long weary walk, and, by George! you were camped;
And don’t you remember the lads had me stamped
As one of Glint’s runaway lags?
Well! well! now I wonder is _he_ living still—
The super that then bossed the run,
You know he was “Captain,” and I “Bo’s’n Bill”
In those pleasant old days when we lived on the hill,
And I scarcely knew life had begun.
A fine lot of fellows now, wife! were they not?
And genuine, too, to the core;
And, if they weren’t quite on to the spot
In their speech—there’s one thing they never forgot:
To leave the latch key in the door!
But then one ne’er dreamed as one worked straight ahead
What the future held for us in store;
Nor that thrift would build up from this stringy-bark shed
A right little, tight little cottage instead,
With enough in the stocking—and more.
We hadn’t much then in the furniture line—
That’s not to call gorgeous, you know—
But still round it all there’s a glow of sunshine
That makes the blood dance in this old frame of mine
In a stream that naught else can make flow.
Some magic hangs round the old iron-hooped tongs
And the splutter the tallow-lamp made ...
All seem to my memory like beautiful songs
As they float on before me in numberless throngs
From the depths of a fifty years shade.
But you must remember how proudly you’d bring
Home the cheque at the end of the year:
Then you were a queen, lass! and I was a king;
Though we usedn’t to lunch off a butterfly’s wing
Or any of that kind of cheer.
Have those pleasures all vanished, old girl! did you say?
What! Tears in those precious old eyes!
No, lass! for you’re dearest and fairest to-day
When the golden-haired girl has grown wrinkled and grey ...
We’re together, and shall be for ever and aye
In our home up above in the skies.
[Decoration: Gold miner with dolly pot]