A Rhyme of the Pretty Girls of Colac
In this dear Southern land of ours,
Of pretty girls there’s no lack;
And there are none more fair to see
Than the pretty girls of Colac.
But as, tho’ in the universe
Unnumber’d suns are burning,
There’s only one that shine’s for me,
Despite the scholar’s learning.
So, ’mongst the sweetest, fairest maids
That e’er were born of mothers,
There’s one that seems more fair to be,
And sweeter than the others.
Oh ! I can tell what no one knows —
And yet ’tis worth the knowing —
About this maid, the sweetest thing
Upon the earth that’s going.
Her lovely eyes are full of shades,
Where mirth delights to linger;
Her hair is bright and shines like gold,
When stretch’d upon the finger.
So quick, so warm, her bosom throbs,
And she withal so modest,
That one can see it heave and fall,
Altho’ ’tis rightly bodic’d.
Ah yes, in this dear land of ours,
Of pretty girls there’s no lack;
But none these are more fair to see,
Than the pretty girls of Colac.
And he that loves not pretty girls,
Or does not love them rightly,
Deserves to dream of witches foul,
And be tormented nightly.
L.L.
Source:
The Colac Herald (Colac, Vic.), Tuesday 31 May 1892, page 3
[Editor: Corrected “Ryhme” to “Rhyme”.]
Recall reading the poem in the Colac library and it was
” there’s no lack of pretty girls in Colac,
just a shortage of men who know how,
how to treat a girl right”
Memory plays strange tricks, then the COVID kicked in and walking past the old red post box to the historical society they were closing the doors so I couldn’t check on a family myth that one of ours was the first white baby in Colac which I always thought was east of Melbourne and the book with the poem was , Pioneer women of Colac, and the society said fifth in research to a letter of Marianne Ford the said person in the family myth, suppose I’ll never know as there was another poem in the book on pioneer’s about a baby being attacked by a pig and survived, could be one of the other four, could be.