It watched me in the cradle laid, and from my boyhood’s home <br />It glared above my shoulder-blade when I wrote my first “pome”; <br />It’s sidled by me ever since, with greeny eyes aslant— <br />It is the thing (O, Priest and Prince!) that wants to write, but can’t. <br /> <br />It yells and slobbers, mows and whines, It follows everywhere; <br />’Tis gloating on these very lines with red and baleful glare. <br />It murders friendship, love and truth (It makes the “reader” pant), <br />It ruins editorial youth, the Wantaritencant. <br /> <br />Its slime is ever on my work, and ever on my name; <br />No toil nor trouble does It shirk—for It will write, all the same! <br />It tantalized when great thoughts burned, in trouble and in want; <br />It makes it hell for all concerned, the Wantaritencant. <br /> <br />And now that I would gladly die, or rest my weary mind, <br />I cannot rest to think that I must leave the Thing behind. <br />Its green rot damns the dead, for sure—that greatest curse extant, <br />’Twill kill Australian literature, the Wantaritencant! <br /> <br />You cannot kill or keep It still, or ease It off a bit; <br />It talks about Itself until the world believes in It. <br />It is a Scare, a Fright, a Ghast, a Gibber, and a Rant, <br />A future Horror and a Past, the Wantaritencant!<br /><br />Henry Lawson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-wantaritencant/
