ReEchoes Fron Coondambo Author:Robert Bruce General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1903 Original Publisher: J. Long Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select ... more »from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: m in THE SHADE Alack ! this heat, with flying dust. Oh, dear ! 'Tis much too near to burning fever's point. Our parboil'd livers will be cook'd, I fear, And all our functions roasted like a joint, Save far too fluent one that doth anoint Our sodden cuticles with perspiration, Which might indeed be measur'd by the pint And calls incessantly for perportation -- Successive liquid loans soon lost in liquidation. Too hot for work, we therefore loll about In coolest quarters handy to be found : And here I'll hazard just a lurking doubt, That mystic bourne, to which bad souls are bound By Nick and Company to be well brown'd, Can give a flamelet to this filthy place On Torrens' border, where the gasping ground, By open fissures in its drought-scarr'd face, Gulps superheated air like fainting human race ! The dust-grimed bindings of the books curl up, As if those volumes would some ass invite To search their pages for refreshing sup From learning's fount; but who, with fly-yex'd sight,. Would leave the printing in a sorry plight, By pouring on it perspiration's rains In mighty splashes, like the pelting flight Of hissing drops that rattle on the plain, When Jupiter, as " Pluv," turns on his thunder main. That cunning collie, in capacious hole Scratch'd by himself beneath a leaky tank -- Forgetting sheep's head he so lately stole And, crows to baffle, buried in a bank -- Tries hard to sleep, with slowly-heaving flank ; His vertebra too limp his tail to wag, With founder'd oyster he might justly rank ; For seedy swagsmen, flapping sweat-gri...« less