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, 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 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! 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, swift staggering through the snow.<br /><br />Robert William Service<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-low-down-white/
