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<h2> The Low-Down White </h2>
<p>This is the pay-day up at the mines, when the bearded brutes come down;<br/>
There's money to burn in the streets to-night,<br/>
so I've sent my klooch to town,<br/>
With a haggard face and a ribband of red entwined in her hair of brown.<br/>
<br/>
And I know at the dawn she'll come reeling home<br/>
with the bottles, one, two, three —<br/>
One for herself, to drown her shame, and two big bottles for me,<br/>
To make me forget the thing I am and the man I used to be.<br/>
<br/>
To make me forget the brand of the dog, as I crouch in this hideous place;<br/>
To make me forget once I kindled the light of love in a lady's face,<br/>
Where even the squalid Siwash now holds me a black disgrace.<br/>
<br/>
Oh, I have guarded my secret well! And who would dream as I speak<br/>
In a tribal tongue like a rogue unhung, 'mid the ranch-house filth and reek,<br/>
I could roll to bed with a Latin phrase and rise with a verse of Greek?<br/>
<br/>
Yet I was a senior prizeman once, and the pride of a college eight;<br/>
Called to the bar — my friends were true!<br/>
but they could not keep me straight;<br/>
Then came the divorce, and I went abroad and "died" on the River Plate.<br/>
<br/>
But I'm not dead yet; though with half a lung there isn't time to spare,<br/>
And I hope that the year will see me out, and, thank God, no one will care —<br/>
Save maybe the little slim Siwash girl with the rose of shame in her hair.<br/>
<br/>
She will come with the dawn, and the dawn is near; I can see its evil glow,<br/>
Like a corpse-light seen through a frosty pane in a night of want and woe;<br/>
And yonder she comes by the bleak bull-pines,<br/>
swift staggering through the snow.<br/></p>
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