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Project Gutenberg Australia HomeReturn to Index of Poems
Where my lone camp is set—you bet
It is no paradise—
The only one who comes to get
Assurance that I’m livin’ yet,
Is Mucki, from the rise.
He’s seven feet from tip to tip,
An’ black with yellow bands;
His tail would make a bullock whip,
An’ he can take a mighty grip
With his clawed feet an’ hands.
His neck is showing green and mean;
He’s gettin’ old an’ slow;
He’s not a beauty, fat or lean;
Nor is he nearly half as clean
As some reptiles I know.
But he beguiles a grey long day,
When summer’s on the land;
An’ in his quaint gohanna way
He listens to the things I say
An’ seems to understand.
Just when the cowbells chime meal-time
He ambles up to me;
An’ that old lizard in his prime
Amuses like a pantomime
An’ keeps me company.
For tasty scraps to eat he’ll bleat,
An’ fossick in an’ out;
A fatty hide to him’s a treat,
An’ rotten eggs an’ putrid meat
The choicest things about.
His manners, I admit, don’t fit
Among the squeamish kind,
An’, sometimes, when I have to quit
The festive board, he crosses it
An’ leaves a wreck behind.
Still, on the whole, we do agree
Together fairly well;
A little iciness, maybe,
Springs up betwixt himself an’ me,
Which passing hours dispel.
But, ere the frosts can tinge the rye
Grassed valleys, he selects
His winter bed an’ says good-bye;
An’ then I miss his blinkin’ eye
Till Mucki resurrects.
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