Sing hey! for the sand-freckled plain; Sing ho! for the flower-flushed valley; A song for the ship-sprinkled main, And the sports where the wanderers rally,
A song for the lawn sloping down — The lawn with its terrace and fountain, But here's a song of the square white Town By the mist-wrapped, cloud-capped mountain!
The whitewashed, square-cut town, By the grey-green wind-swept sea; The moving throng, And the motor gong,
These sing the song for me! Sing hey! for the Town and its folk, The comers, the goers, the stayers; The just arrived waster, dead-broke,
The homeward-bound mummers and players; The white man suspiciously dark! The trooper-man, newly recruited; The hand-bagged and frock-coated clerk,
The pioneer corded and booted! The motley-peopled town! Its raw and cultured folk, Live, work, and play
‘ Twixt Mount and Bay, And bear one equal yoke. Sing hey! for the Town, and its dress, The garbs of the twenty-one nations:
The Kafir in blanket — and less, The lady in Paris‘ creations’; The-man-about-town, rather loud, The nigger in checks somewhat rasher;
Here, fez to the turban is bow'd, There, top-hat comes off to the‘ smasher.’ The particoloured town, Where plush and broadcloth meet:
Where Islam's green And Worth-wrought sheen Rub textures in the street! Sing hey! for the Town, as a town,
A song of its bricks and its plaster; The slum that is mouldering down — The mansion that's rising the faster. Sing hey! for its one-storied past,
Be-flagged, and be-stoeped, and be-whitened; Its five-storied future more vast, Its breadth to be broadened and heightened. The grim old, prim old town,
A brand-new vestment wears, And arc-lights purr Where blue-gums were, And the blanket-Kafir stares!
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