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The Drunken Shearer’s Girl

Edward S. Sorenson

“To her shame it is that she cares for him”
    Said the gossips who knew her well;
“Before she’d break with that rascal Jim,
    She would sell her soul to Hell!”
Tho’ his blades were silent on Lambing Flat,
    And he’d gone to the Western whirl;
The finger of scorn was yet pointed at
    “That drunken shearer’s girl.”

Two years had passed, and a message came
    From the far-off Western field,
Bequeathing her in her sweetheart’s name.
    The all that his claim would yield;
For death had hold of the miner that
    Caused lips of the proud to curl,
And the finger of scorn was still pointed at
    The drunken shearer’s girl.

She packed her carpet in spite of all
    The women around her said;
And true as steel to a lover’s call,
    She’d see him alive or dead;
And she started off in her broad straw hat,
    ‘Cross creeks where the waters swirl:
As the finger of scorn was pointed at
    The drunken shearer’s girl.

She trudged for weeks ‘long the lone bush track,
    From the South to the Western land:
With her bundle e’er on her weary back,
    And a billy-can in her hand;
And she begged her rations of despots that
    Would insults at her hurl,
For the finger of scorn was pointed at
    The drunken shearer’s girl.

Her form was wasted, her cheeks were pale,
    When she came at last to his tent;
And she knelt by his bunk as she told the tale
    The heart of the drunkard rent.
“Good girl,” he said, “take the pile I’ve made.
    Nor share it with trollop nor churl.
For you’ll need it all since they call you jade,
    And a drunken shearer’s girl.”

“No, Jack,” she answered, “we cannot part—
    I’ll live or I’ll die with, thee!”
And she plunged a blade thro’ her aching heart,
    When his suffering soul went free.
And they laid her low in a lonely flat,
    Where the leaves of the sheoaks twirl;
For the finger of scorn, was pointed at
    The drunken shearer’s girl.

Edward S. Sorenson

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