Sweeney

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    It was somewhere in September and the sun was goin' down,
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    when I came in search of copy, to a Darling River town.
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     Come-And-Have-A-Drink we'll call it, 'tis a fitting name I think,
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    and 'twas raining, for a wonder, up at Come-And-Have-A-Drink.

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    Underneath the pub verandah I was resting on a bunk,
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    when a stranger rose before me, and he said that he was drunk.
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    He apologised for speaking, there was no offence, he swore,
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    but he somehow seemed to fancy that he'd seen my face before.


[Verse 2]
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    He agreed you can't remember all the chaps you chance to meet,
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    and he said his name was Sweeney, people lived in Sussex Street.
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    He was camping in a stable, that he swore that he was right,
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    only for the blanky horses walkin' over him all night.

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    He'd apparently been fighting, for his face was black and blue,
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    and it looked as though the horses had been treading on him too.
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    But an honest genial twinkle in the eye that wasn't hurt
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    seemed to hint of something better, spite of drink and rags and dirt.


[Verse 3]
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    He was born in Parramatta and he said with humour grim,
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    that he'd like to see the city, 'ere the liquor finished him.
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    But he couldn't raise the money, he was damned if he could think,
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    what the government was doing here, he offered me a drink.


[Verse 4]
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    I declined, 'twas self-denial, and I lectured him on booze,
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    using all the hackneyed arguments that preachers mostly use.
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    Things I'd heard in temperance lectures, I was young and rather green,
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    and I ended by referring to the man he might have been.

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    But he couldn't stay to argue, for his beer was nearly gone,
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    he was glad, he said, to meet me, and he'd see me later on.
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    But he guessed he'd have to go and get his bottle filled again,
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    and he gave a lurch and vanished in the darkness and the rain.
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    And of afternoons in cities, when the rain is on the land,
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    visions come to me of Sweeney with his bottle in his hand.