long time no see.... nice to see you again John.. how's the python?
seeing as we're doing favourite Henry Lawson poems... here's one of mine.....

DO THEY THINK THAT I DO NOT KNOW?
by Henry Lawson

They say that I never have written of love
As a writer of songs should do;
They say that I never could touch the strings
With a touch that is firm and true;
They say I know nothing of women and men
In the fields where Love's roses grow
And they say I must write in a halting pen-
Do you think that I do not know?

When the love-burst came like an English spring
In the days when our hair was brown,
And the hem of her skirt was a sacred thing
And her hair was an angel's crown.
The shock when another man touched her arm
Where the dancers sat round in a row;
The hope and despair, and the false alarm-
Do you think that I do not know?

By the arbour lights on the western farms
You remember the question put
While you held her in your quivering arms
And you trembled from head to foot.
The electric shock from her finger tips,
And the murmuring answer low,
The soft, shy yielding of warm red lips-
Do you think that I do not know?

She was buried at Brighton, where Gordon sleeps,
When I was a world away;
And the sad old garden its secret keeps,
For nobody knows today.
She left a message for me to read
Where the wild wide oceans flow;
Do you know how the heart of a man can bleed-
Do you think that I do not know?

I stood by the grave where the dead girl lies,
When the sunlit scenes were fair,
And the white clouds high in the autumn skies,
And I answered the message there.
But the haunting words of the dead to me
Shall go wherever I go.
She lives in the Marriage that Might Have Been -
Do you think that I do not know?

They sneer or scoff, and they pray or groan,
And the false friend plays his part.
Do you think that the blackguard who drinks alone
Knows aught of a pure girl's heart?
Knows aught of the first pure love of a boy
With his warm young blood aglow
Knows aught of the thrill of the world-old joy -
Do you think that I do not know?

They say that I never have written of love,
They say that my heart is such
That finer feelings are far above;
But a writer may know too much.
There are darkest depths in the brightest nights
When the clustering stars hang low;
There are things it would break his strong heart to write -
Do you think that I do not know?

slainte

alison