[Editor: This poem, regarding the sending of postcards (a very popular activity, 1900 to 1920), was published in The Northern Argus (Clare, SA), 16 November 1906.]
Postcarditis.
If you’re going on a journey to the mountains or the coast,
Send a post card.
If you’re torn away by duty from one you love the most,
Send a post card.
If you aimlessly awander through the country here and there,
Seeking pleasure, seeking money, seeking muscle, seeing air,
Keep a list of all the friends that you have cherished everywhere —
Send a post card.
If you’re sitting on a jury, if you must defend a trial,
Send a post card.
If you’re touring the Blue Mountains, or up Australia’s Nile,
Send a post card.
If you’ve got a message, write it, drop a line from day to day;
Send the little post-card picture if you’ve not a word to say;
Think of blonde and think of brunette, think of sad and think of gay —
Send a post card.
Though it’s gay and you are gloomy, though it’s glad and you are grim,
Send a post card.
If you want to tell your enemy just what you think of him,
Send a post card.
You will find the habit growing, till from every side the call
Will resound, though you be dining, dancing, sitting in a hall,
At a funeral or wedding — it’s the word that grips them all —
“Send a post card!”
Source:
The Northern Argus (Clare, SA), 16 November 1906, p. 3
Also published (with some differences) in:
The Evening Journal (Adelaide, SA), 25 February 1907, p. 2
The Kapunda Herald (Kapunda, SA), 18 February 1910, p. 2
Editor’s notes:
It appears that this poem was an American poem which has been Australianised. In this version, Australia is referred to, “If you’re touring the Blue Mountains, or up Australia’s Nile”; however, in the other two copies located of this poem, that line is given as “If you’re touring through the country of the Blackfoot or the Ute” (a reference to two American Indian tribes). Also, whilst this version renders “postcard” as two words (“post card”), the version published in The Evening Journal (25 February 1907) renders it as one word, which fits in with the second-last line of the poem, “it’s the word that grips them all”.
See: 1) “Blackfoot Confederacy”, Wikipedia
2) “Ute people”, Wikipedia
gay = happy, joyous, carefree; well-decorated, bright, attractive (in modern times it may especially refer to a homosexual, especially a male homosexual; can also refer to something which is no good, pathetic, useless)
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