[Editor: A poem by Grant Hervey, published in his “Cuts and Carvings” column in The Sunday Times (Perth, WA).]
The Land Where the Long Liquors Grow.
When we’ve wrote the “They Says” with an empty ink vase, and we’ve glanced over the final “revise,”
There’s a Land that we seek with our thirsts all a-creak and the light of pure joy in our eyes.
’Tis a Land where the beers do hang downward like spheres of the peach or the apple-tree’s fruit,
Where the fountains of drink murmur gladly and sink down our necks in a frantic pursuit !
’Tis a Land of delight in the midst of the night, where we journalists stand in a row,
All purging our pangs with the vintage that hangs in the land where the Long Liquors Grow !
When the last “proof” is read, do we toddle to bed like citizens sober and grave ?
Nay, we hie to the Land where the drink-buds expand and the whiskies do blossom and wave !
With a blasphemous cheer lo, we speed for our beer and the girl who distributes the same,
Whom we kiss o’er the bar as we screech for “Three Star” and cold “Polly” to tincture its flame !
With a howl of delight, ho, we race thro’ the night, and hasten to drown all our woe
In an ocean of drink (with our eyes all a-wink) in the Land where the Long Liquors Grow !
When the gas-engine snorts ho, each TIMES man cavorts, and he reaches for coat and for “tile,”
For he’s thro’ with his graft, and he yearns for a raft on an ocean of booze for a while !
Just to lean o’er the edge with his lips in the sedge, and a glad, gulping sound in his throat,
As he sucks, up the sea in his larnyxal glee and splashes the froth all a-gloat !
So we lean in the Realm where the gum-trees and elm are replaced by the beer-bushes low,
And the juice from their roots streams a-down in wide chutes in the land where the Long liquors Grow !
’Tis a Land of pure joy, sans a trace of alloy we’ve assayed and tried it for years,
Where we race in delight when the paper’s “all rights and we clamor all loudly for beers !
Oh, we know it so well that from Heaven or Hell would our thirst-ghosts come galloping back,
Each seeking the land where the beer-buds expand in an orchard of wassail and sack !
And when we are dead — me, “Blower” and “Ed.” — may our souls meet and lean in a row
Each publishing-night on the chests bloused in white in the Land where the Long Lotions Grow !
Source:
The Sunday Times (Perth, WA), Sunday 18 January 1903, page 12
Editor’s notes:
Blower = Dryblower (Edwin Greenslade Murphy), who wrote the column “Verses and Worse” in the The Sunday Times (Perth, W.A.)
Ed. = editor; in this instance, the editor of the The Sunday Times (Perth, W.A.)
They Says = “They Say” was a column in The Sunday Times (Perth, W.A.)
Three Star = the name of a brandy (alcoholic drink); presumably Martell’s Three Star Brandy, as Grant Hervey referred to this in his poem “A Molloy Melody” (although there was another brandy available at that time by the name of “Hennessy’s Three Star Brandy”)
[Editor: Corrected “elm and are” to “elm are”.]
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