I SUPPOSE it just depends on where you’re raised, <br /> Once I met a cove as swore by green belar! <br />Couldn’t sight the good old mallee-stump I praised; <br /> Well!—I couldn’t sight belar, and there you are! <br />But the faces in the fire where the mallee stump’s a-blinking <br />Are the friendliest I ever seen, to my way o’ thinking! <br /> <br />In the city where the fires is mostly coal— <br /> There! I can’t a-bear to go and warm my feet! <br />Spitting, fizzing things as hasn’t got no soul! <br /> Things as puffs out yaller smoke instead of heat! <br />But at home—well, it is home when the mallee-stump’s a-burning, <br />And the evenin’s drawing chilly and the season is a-turning. <br /> <br />And there’s some as runs ’em down because they’re tough. <br /> Well? And what’s the good of anythink as ain’t? <br />No. It’s nary use to serve ’em any bluff, <br /> For they’d use up all the patience of a saint. <br />But they’ll split as sweet as sugar if you know the way to take ’em; <br />If you don’t, there isn’t nothink in the world as’ll make ’em. <br /> <br />They’re tremenjus hard to kindle, tho’, at first: <br /> Like the friendship of the kind that comes to stay. <br />You can blow and blow and blow until you burst, <br /> And when they won’t, they won’t burn, anyway! <br />But when once they gets a start, tho’ they make no showy flashes, <br />Well, they’ll serve you true and honest to the last pinch of ashes <br /> <br /><br /><br />Charles Henry Soutar<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-mallee-fire/
