[Editor: This poem by E. J. Brady was published in Bells and Hobbles (1911).]
Maid of Gerringong.
She was riper than a cherry on the far New England slopes;
She was brighter than the vision of a poet’s virgin hopes,
And the days were all a picture, and the nights were all a song,
While I tarried and I married with the maid of Gerringong.
And the sun came up to greet us from the waters blue and wide,
And the Western hills were crimson with his glory when he died;
And the moon she queened above us ’mid her white, adoring throng,
While I drank my cup of pleasure with the maid of Gerringong.
Yea, the moon she lent her silver and the sun he lent his gold,
In the years before our sorrows and our sins had made us old —
But I’ll drain another beaker, and I’ll sing another song
To the love and youth that left me — like my maid of Gerringong.
Oh, my days of earth are numbered, as the days of men must be,
For our life is like the shadow of a sail upon the sea;
And ’tis idle now to wonder if that love was right or wrong,
But it haunts and haunts me ever, oh, my maid of Gerringong.
Source:
E. J. Brady, Bells and Hobbles, Melbourne: George Robertson & Co., 1911, p. 157
Editor’s notes:
Gerringong = a town on the southern coast of New South Wales, located south of Kiama and north of Gerroa and Berrys Bay
’mid = an abbreviation of “amid” or “amidst”: of or in the middle of an area, group, position, etc.
New England = a region in the north of New South Wales
’tis = (archaic) a contraction of “it is”
yea = yes; indeed; truly; an affirmation (especially an affirmative vote), an indication of assent
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