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Robert W Service - The Low-Down White
Work rating: Low

This is the pay-day up at the mines, when the bearded brutes come down;
There`s money to burn in the streets to-night, so I`ve sent my klooch to town,
With a haggard face and a ribband of red entwined in her hair of brown.

And I know at the dawn she`ll come reeling home with the bottles, one, two, three —
One for herself, to drown her shame, and two big bottles for me.
To make me forget the thing I am and the man I used to be.

To make me forget the brand of the dog, as I crouch in this hideous place;
To make me forget once I kindled the light of love in a lady`s face,
Where even the squalid Siwash now holds me a black disgrace.

Oh, I have guarded my secret well! And who would dream as I speak
In a tribal tongue like a rogue unhung, `mid the ranch-house filth and reek,
I could roll to bed with a Latin phrase and rise with a verse of Greek?

Yet I was a senior prizeman once, and the pride of a college eight;
Called to the bar — my friends were true! but they could not keep me straight;
Then came the divorce, and I went abroad and "died" on the River Plate.

But I`m not dead yet; though with half a lung there isn`t time to spare,
And I hope that the year will see me out, and, thank God, no one will care —
Save maybe the little slim Siwash girl with the rose of shame in her hair.

She will come with the dawn, and the dawn is near; I can see its evil glow,
Like a corpse-light seen through a frosty pane in a night of want and woe;
And yonder she comes by the bleak bull-pines, swift staggering through the snow.
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