HOW POLLY PAID FOR HER KEEP
Do I know Polly Brown? Do I know her? Why, damme!
You might as well ask if I know my own name!
It’s a wonder you never heard tell of old Sammy,
Her father, my mate in the Crackenback claim.
He asks if I know little Poll! Why, I nursed her
As often, I reckon, as old Mother Brown
When they lived at the Flats, and old Sam went a burster
In Chinaman’s Gully, and dropped every crown.
My golden-haired mate, ever brimful of folly
And childish conceit, and yet ready to rest
Contented beside me: ’twas I who taught Polly
To handle four horses along with the best.
’Twas funny to hear the small fairy discoursing
Of horses and drivers! I’ll swear that she knew
Every one of the nags that I drove to the Crossing—
Their voices, and paces, and pedigrees too.
She got a strange whim in her golden-haired noddle
That a driver’s high seat was a kind of a throne:
I’ve taken her up there before she could toddle,
And she’d talk to the nags in a tongue of her own.
