[Editor: This song was published in The Old Bush Songs (1905), edited by Banjo Paterson. It was previously published (with variations, a longer version, under the title of “The Squatter’s Dirge To His Ladye Love”) in a letter to The Sydney Morning Herald, 11 December 1860.]
Dwell Not With Me
Dwell not with me,
For you’ll never see
More than a ’possum or a kangaroo,
And now and then a cockatoo.
Oh, would you wish,
Without a dish,
Your scanty meal from a piece of bark,
And a wood fire to illume the dark?
’Tis there you’d mourn,
’Tis there you’d mourn
The sweet woodbine
That round your lattice now doth twine.
Fond friends, don’t grieve
For scenes like these,
Or smart from bugs, mosquitoes, fleas,
Dwell not with me.
Source:
A. B. Paterson (editor), The Old Bush Songs, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1905, p. 19
Previously published (with variations, a longer version, under the title of “The Squatter’s Dirge To His Ladye Love”) in:
The Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney, NSW), 11 December 1860, p. 7 [in a letter to the editor]
Portland Guardian and Normanby General Advertiser (Portland, Vic.), 14 January 1861, p. 4
The South Australian Advertiser (Adelaide, SA), 18 February 1861, p. 3 [which cites the Launceston Examiner as its source]
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