Spun before the gale--
Buy my heath and lilies
And I'll tell you whence you hail!
Under hot Constantia broad the vineyards lie--
Throned and thorned the aching berg props the speckless sky--
Slow below the Wynberg firs trails the tilted wain--
Take the flower arid turn the hour, and kiss your love again!

Buy my English posies!
You that will not turn--
Buy my hot-wood clematis.
Buy a frond o' fern
Gathered where the Erskine leaps
Down the road to Lorne--
Buy my Christmas creeper
And I'll say where you were born!
West away from Melbourne dust holidays begin--
They that mock at Paradise woo at Cora Lynn--
Through the great South Otway gums sings the great South Main--
Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again!

Buy my English posies!
Here's your choice unsold!
Buy a blood-red myrtle-bloom,
Buy the kowhai's gold
Flung for gift on Taupo's face,
Sign that spring is come--
Buy my clinging myrtle
And I'll give you back your home!
Broom behind the windy town; pollen o' the pine--
Bell-bird in the leafy deep where the _ratas_ twine--
Fern above the saddle-bow, flax upon the plain--
Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again!

Buy my English posies!
Ye that have your own,
Buy them for a brother's sake
Overseas, alone.
Weed ye trample underfoot
Floods his heart abrim--
Bird ye never heeded,
Oh, she calls his dead to him!
Far and far our homes are set round the Seven Seas;
Woe for us if we forget, we that hold by these!
Unto each his mother-beach, bloom and bird and land--
Masters of the Seven Seas, oh, love and understand.

MUNICIPAL.

"Why is my District death-rate low?"
Said Binks of Hezabad.
"Wells, drains, and sewage-outfalls are
My own peculiar fad.
I learnt a lesson once. It ran
Thus," quoth that most veracious man:--

It was an August evening and, in snowy garments clad,
I paid a round of visits in the lines of Hezabad;
When, presently, my Waler saw, and did not like at all,
A Commissariat elephant careering down the Mall.

I couldn't see the driver, and across my mind it rushed
That that Commissariat elephant had suddenly gone _musth_.
I didn't care to meet him, and I couldn't well get down,
So I let the Wa